The old Lie; The Good Old days.

Whenever I hear some-one rabbiting on about how wonderful things were in the "good old days", or complaining about the perceived short-fallings of our terrific National Health Service, I think of this old gravestone in the graveyard of St Machar's Cathedral.

What a sad story it tells. Lieut. Sanderson of his Majesty's Royal Navy buried his daughter Mary Cicely in 1829, at the age of 3 months, little knowing that 2 years later he would be burying Eleanora, aged only 11 days. Sadly, at that time such tragedy was the norm rather than the exception in Britain. There is no mention on the stone of the fate of the Lieutenant and his wife. Perhaps the navy sent them to another port, and they died elsewhere, leaving behind their two infant girls, alone in an Aberdeen graveyard.