Aunt Belle’s Diary

Things to Consider           Teacher's Notes

I believe I speak the truth when I say I have seen more luxury since being in Torquay than in all my previous life, and I know I never saw such pitiable poverty before. Half clad children with hungry pinched faces, and grown up beggars with something worse than either hunger or squalor upon their countenances are to be seen everywhere…

Torquay, I have said has an unusual amount of wealthy people. It has also a seeming monopoly of invalids. Some days, I found the pleasure of our walks along Rock Walk and the sands perfectly destroyed by the number of infirm old people, and still more lamentable, deathly looking young people who haunt that particular place of pleasure I have almost concluded that a too famous health resort cannot be a healthy place…

Torquay weather outdoes anything else I ever encountered in the way of fickleness. Since the day we went to Dartmouth, yesterday, is the only day we have had entirely free from rain… explanations and apologies for the state of the weather are getting to be a very monotonous theme of conversation… There is really no need for apologies, for the rain comes only in showers, between which one can generally enjoy being out

These are extracts from a diary written by an American visitor, Belle, who with her sister Jeane, visited Britain in 1892-93. They stayed in Torquay from 17th November 1892 until 24th March 1893.