Last Days In Winchester

Jane Austen left Chawton on may 24, 1817, to seek medical help in the nearby city of Winchester. Elizabeth Jane Timms traces those final weeks of her life. line drawings by Ellen Hill c1901

The house on college street in Winchester was the last place that Jane Austen called home. Home to her for fewer than eight weeks, it is certainly the saddest of all her addresses. Seventeen miles from the cottage at Chawton, where she lived from 1809 to 1817 with her mother, her sister Cassandra and their friend Martha Lloyd, it was for painful reasons that she was forced to move again. We must hope that it was a small comfort to Jane that Winchester – where she was going – was still very much within her beloved Hampshire. Probably because of growing illness, she had abandoned work on her new novel – later published as Sanditon in 1925 – noting the date (March 18, 1817) that she laid aside her pen.

Scenes from Jane’s own novels come to mind here – of Harris the apothecary at the bedside of Marianne Dashwood, or perhaps the sad irony of Mrs Bennet, surrounded by her smelling salts and complaining about the pains in her head and the beatings at her heart. The exact nature of Jane’s illness has been the subject of great speculation with a variety of theories suggested, ranging from Addison’s disease (a detailed posthumous diagnosis by Sir Zachary Cope) to Hodgkin’s disease. Initially Jane was treated by William Curtis, the Alton apothecary, until he pronounced himself unable to help her further.

Jane and Cassandra left Chawton on May 24, 1817, travelling to Winchester in the carriage of their brother Henry, with Henry riding beside them, making the journey in pouring rain. Jane had come to be treated by the highly respected Dr Lyford, consulting surgeon of the County Hospital on Parchment Street, who treated his patients in their own homes. Jane wrote to her nephew James-Edward on May 27, 1817: “Mr Lyford says he will cure me & if he fails I shall draw up a Memorial & lay it before the Dean and Chapter & have no doubt of redress from that Pious, Learned & Disinterested Body.”