But with death, the letters excel in both the quantity of mention and intensity of detail.  In some way, Charlotte Slade must have found death much more of a marker in life than either birth or marriage.  Perhaps the fairly normal incidence of child mortality caused people to rejoice less at births, since they knew that the child’s survival was not automatic.  Charlotte did find the issue of her son’s marriage one of her regular themes.  Many letters carry both indirect and direct comments on his progress or lack of it.  More than half the letters refer to a death of some sort.

Most of the time, the notice of death refers to an elderly person: Old Munday, the aged Martha Brown, Mr Noad’s housekeeper, aged 74, old Mrs Watts, aged 82.  Against that we have the dreadful death of Mrs Harris as she gives birth, and the tragic ends of the two young women, Anne Fuller and Debby Slade.  In both cases, we hardly know these women before they have gone.  Despite the despair she must feel, Charlotte manages to give her son a clear and documentary report on the end of his sister.  Struck down by a cold caught on a walk one foggy day, her lungs, already in bad condition, eventually caused the decline.  We can feel the misery in the mechanical way that Charlotte recounts the timetable of her daughter’s demise: ill twelve weeks, no appetite eleven weeks, in bed five weeks.  The strength of their spiritual belief kept both women emotionally stable to the end.  I seem to know nothing but sickness and death writes Charlotte.  Virtually before anyone has recovered from the death of one village princess, they have to confront a second, for Anne Fuller dies. 

Different people dealt with these catastrophes in their own way.  Kezia wrote some poetry at the death of each.  Mr Forsayth helps the Slades through the pain by playing dominoes and smoking a pipe with Henry Senior.  Kezia found it helpful to view the bodies in death.  She found her dead sister’s features calm and quiet, not a frown.  Charlotte found solace in her faith.  She returns to the terrible event some eight months after its occurrence, speculating much on the positive.  Debby herself observed that by living she would have fallen temptation to sin.

Debby took almost three months to die, whereas in many of the other death notices the letters dwell on the suddenness of it all.  People are all right one minute and the next they have gone.  Early risers saw Joe Pope pottering around at 7.30, but a caller came round at about 9.00 to find him gone whilst his wife was round laundering for Mr Marris.  Mr Noad’s housekeeper was in perfect health at 9.30 on Sunday morning.  Before the service began at 11.00 she had become a corpse.  She told Miss Noad she suddenly felt poorly, went upstairs to die within half an hour.  Mrs Harris became a corpse much to everyone’s consternation shortly after giving birth, very distressed at her sin.  Aunt Fanny went out to sweep the snow.  After ten minutes someone came to look for her.  They found her sitting on the ground with her head resting on the wall, quite dead.  She had given no sign of infirmity earlier that morning.  Even old Beckley went quickly.  He caught a dreadful cold, visiting his sister on her deathbed in London.  His lungs became inflamed and carried him off quickly.  Prescient to the end, he asked the carpenter to make two coffins, one for him and one for his sister.  A day after his death came the news of his sister’s passing.  They both went into the same grave.

On other occasions, the letters inject an unwitting sense of humour into the last hours of individuals.  Take old Mrs Parsons, for example, not one to go quietly.  Right up to the end she grumbled and grumbled.  When the minister came to pray with her, she would have nothing to do with him.  Brandy was all she wanted, calling out for it constantly.  Or, Aunt Mary Ann at Upton.  She had pain in her side, but took greater consternation from the mob of relatives coming to catch her last moments.  As she whispered to people, I did not think I was so near death.  The insensitive Reverend MacDonald of Blewbury came and put her right about her time having come.  Duly informed, Aunt Mary Ann departed.

Related to tales of death are the mentions of suicide, both attempted and successful.  The letters touch on the subject twice.  In the first case, we hear how Mrs Fuller has decided to end it all.  In true storybook fashion, she manages to smuggle laudanum from a chemist, being saved when almost too late.  They found her black in the face.  The second time we hear about suicides, Charlotte has something special for us: five suicides and their attempts in the space of two weeks.  The reasons vary, from the understandable (embarrassed circumstances for Farmer Cooper and Mr Stanmore) to the perplexing case of William Butcher.  Due to have been married, he had lent twenty pounds, but could not recover his money.  His unfortunate fiancée journeyed down in expectation but found him a corpse.  Then George Keep, a petty thief who stole vegetables to sell to the railway workers, decided one evening in the pub to end it all.  His friends stopped him from doing the deed with his garters during a visit to the outhouse.  We might speculate whether a terrible concatenation of misery had caused such a spate of suicides and their attempts, or whether this count represented the normal state of affairs at this time.