Background
She was born in Hartshead, Yorkshire. The second child and daughter of Reverend Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria Brontë (née Branwell) was born some time in 1815.
She was born in Hartshead, Yorkshire. The second child and daughter of Reverend Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria Brontë (née Branwell) was born some time in 1815.
On 1 July 1824, Maria, 11 and Elizabeth, nearly 9, joined the Cowan Bridge School with Charlotte and Emily following soon after in September. The food provided by the school was generally poorly cooked and unhealthy, and the cook was reported to be "careless, dirty, and wasteful". She was not academic, and while the school records show that Maria, Charlotte and Emily were to be trained to be governesses, Elizabeth"s destiny was listed as "housekeeper".
Accordingly, Mr.
Brontë did not pay the extra £3 a year for Elizabeth to learn French, music and drawing, that he did for his other three girls. The school register read:.
When Elizabeth was just a few months old, the family moved from Hartshead to Thornton. Elizabeth Gaskell wrote in her biography of Charlotte Brontë that a certain "Mission Temple" (probably the inspiration for the character in Jane Eyre) offered a glimpse of Elizabeth"s behaviour in this letter: Gaskell also wrote, adding that this had become quite of a habit: By the winter of 1824, Maria"s health had been deteriorating quickly. She was withdrawn from school on 14 February and died of tuberculosis on 16 May that year.
Over the following six months, one girl was to die at school and twenty more, one third of the roll, were withdrawn ill, and six of them died soon afterwards.
Fifteen days later, on 31 May, Elizabeth was withdrawn, too, the school record stating that she "left in ill-health". She died the same year, six weeks after Maria.
She was buried at Saint Michael and All Angels churchyard and her tombstone reads Matthew 18:3:.
