Painswick and Sheepscombe also became victims of the industrial revolution when the steam engine was invented. It began to replace the water-powered mills. Without need of water, mills and factories sprang up in towns all over England. Then it was the water mills that could not compete with the steam engine mills. As the mills along the Sheepscombe and Painswick streams began to close, some of the larger mills tried to avoid closing by replacing men, women and children in the less important jobs, so they wouldn’t have to pay the higher wages. This failed and caused wages to take another drop.

People struggled through the depression with very little money. Their few sheep and cattle and land provided the food so they were able to feed the family, although the diet was sometimes monotonous. Those that lived in the isolated villages were able to avoid the crowding, the crime, the riots, etc., but they could not escape the dreaded disease of consumption. One fifth of all the deaths were from it. It was fatal before they developed drugs to cure it and inoculations to prevent it. We now call it tuberculoses or TB for short.

People were not aware consumption was caused by bacilli and it spread through families unchecked. It was spread from the sputum of the patient and also by drinking the milk of an infected cow. At first it was believed that the bloody sputum was caused by a broken blood vessel in the lungs when coughing from a cold. They believed that the cold was caught from a draft, so to avoid catching a cold, they shut the windows and doors even in hot weather. The hot stuffy room soon filled with bacilli from the patient’s cough.

The first symptom was the swelling of the glands in the neck. As the tuberculosis began to form in the lungs, they coughed up the bloody sputum. They became anemic and suffered from cold sweats at night. They became dehydrated and feverish. Ulcers formed in their mouths and on their skin. They became emaciated and the lower limbs swelled with fluid in the tissues. This caused ever-present pain and suffering. As the disease advanced to affect the brain, the victims suffered from a high fever and delirium. Then they lapsed into a coma and then death. How frightened and heartsick the parents must have been to see the dreaded symptoms appear in one child or loved one after another. Not surprisingly, many of the Richins fell victim to this disease.