Four miscarriages, mental illness, blindness and doctors who blamed her: The hidden hurt of Catherine Cookson
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She became one of the UK's best known novelists, selling more than 120 million copies of the around 100 books she wrote throughout her life.
Inspired by her impoverished upbringing, Catherine Cookson wrote a lot about northern England and some of her most famous works were adapted for television.
But hidden behind the success, which also earned her being made a dame, was a woman who privately wrangled with mental and physical illnesses that caused her to eventually go blind, and struggled through the anguish of four miscarriages that led to an overwhelming depression.
Catherine was diagnosed with hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia, a rare vascular disease which caused bleeding from the fingers, nose and eyes. She had inherited the cruel condition from a father she never knew.
As she went to doctors they brushed aside her multiple miscarriages , some appearing to blame her, others having no time for the woman who was struggling to have the child she so desperately wanted.
When she was 42 and in hospital, struggling with mental illness, she was relegated to the scrapheap - laughed at when she asked if she could carry a baby if she stayed in hospital for nine months.
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The man she had asked said she was simply "past it."
Catherine started writing as therapy, launching a career that was to span decades and made her one of the most widely read novelists.
It took her more than a decade to recover from her mental illness, and her struggle is documented in her previously undiscovered but brutally honest memoir, Before I Go, that was found in her attic.
The memoir was part narrative, part diary entries and littered with hand written notes.
Also found in the attic of her home, which was left almost perfectly preserved, was a novella Saint Christopher and the Gravedigger, a satire set in the working class community of the north east.
Catherine was born in County Durham and brought up by her grandparents, believing her alcoholic mother Kate was in fact her sister until she was six.
She left school at 14 and worked in a workhouse before meeting a woman named Annie (Nan) Smith who lived with her and her mother. Nan was originally a friend and something of a mother figure, but turned out to be someone who persecuted her over her relationship with Tom, who she was later to marry.
Before I Go was found tucked away in her attic after her death in 1997 at the age of 91 and sheds light on Catherine's struggles, including her time with Nan and her marriage to Tom.
Emilie Marneur, Editor-in-Chief at Amazon Publishing UK, who worked with a team on putting together Before I Go, said: "I was astonished to realise how ill Catherine Cookson was throughout her life and struck by the strength and resilience that seeped through every page of this book.
"Here is a beloved writer, a national treasure, writing incredibly prolifically who experienced terrible trauma and anguish throughout her life and no one knew about it.
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"The thing that jumped out at us was the total lack of support Catherine got from the medical profession – it had a huge impact on her state of mind and feels so pertinent today, when we’re only just starting to understand mental health.
"She veered between doubting herself and what she was experiencing, feeling incredibly angry at the cavalier and dismissive attitude of her doctors, and wanting to get up and fight them.
"There’s a wonderful scene where she argues with a doctor who suggests that her breakdown happened because she didn’t have enough gumption. She bitingly replied that having gumption is the only reason she’s got through any of it.
"That force of character is imbued throughout the book."
An extract from Before I Go
When did I become pregnant again? I’ve lost touch of the dates. Tom was in a state as I’d been warned not to let it happen. I was constantly bleeding from the nose and tongue – and then there was the cordite
poisoning. But I was determined to have a baby. When I had the house to myself, I sang. Moreover, I was now a commercial artist and doing drawings for J. Arthur Dixon of the Shanklin Press, Isle of Wight. at came about by uke, as I have explained elsewhere. All of the artists were at war and they were looking under the bottom of barrels – that’s how I got my chance.
Now and again, we would entertain some of Tom’s pals who were instructors alongside him in Madley – Joe Raine, Joe Golding and Reg Greatorex. I did sketches of them. It was one of the few pleasant times I experienced in that town.
en one morning, I was on my knees doing the hearth when I felt a click in my side. I gasped, covered my face with my hands and rocked myself like a Muslim at prayer, crying inside, ‘Oh, no, no. Please God, no.’ But yes, I was to lose the third.
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In hospital, just before they took me down, I said to the sister, ‘Sister, I . . . I have the habit of swearing when I come out of chloroform. Will you please put me where nobody can hear me?’ I can see her throwing her head back and laughing as she said, ‘No, I won’t. We want some entertainment here, and we only get that kind from parsons or priests.’
Following the loss, I became very low in myself. I was always tired and had a constant feeling of illness on me. I was also becoming full of self-pity for this girl who hadn’t a father. Nothing that had happened to me would have happened if only I’d had a father. I recall trying to laugh myself out of it and saying, ‘Well, you must have had – you’re no relation to the Holy Mother.’
"There were one or two light moments I can recall about that time. One was when I met one of the women from the munitions factory. She had the loudest mouth and the slowest hands on her long table. ‘Oh, Mrs Cookson,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t like it back there now. You wouldn’t be able to stand it. Everything’s changed.’
Then she went on to describe the plan I’d sent in. I gurgled inside while sympathising with her . . .Religion was rearing its superstitious head again too. Was I being made ill because I was questioning the Catholic faith?
I went to the surgery. The doctor who saw me was youngish. If I remember rightly, he wasn’t English and was of an impatient nature. He had no time for women he termed neurotic and who cried in his surgery.
Before I Go – A Memoir by Catherine Cookson is published by Lake Union, a division of Amazon Publishing. Available in paperback original and as a Kindle e-book priced £4.99/£3.98.