On this day in 1842 Elizabeth Branwell died. Branwell wrote" I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood."

Elizabeth Branwell, Aunt to the Bronte children who brought them up, was buried at Haworth. She had died aged 66 on 29th October.

Aunt Branwell had always enjoyed robust good health, but on the 25th October 1842, she suffered a constriction of the bowel, and died four days later. Charlotte and Emily were still in Brussels, and returned home too late for the funeral. But Aunt Branwell's two favourites' the 'baby' Anne, and the only boy, Branwell Brontë , were both there, and it is Branwell who has left us the warmest testimonial to his aunt. Writing to his friend Grundy on the day his aunt died

Branwell concludes " I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood." Elizabeth Branwell left most of her money to Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. They used some of it to finance their Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), the beginning of their careers as published writers. www.bronte.org.uk


When Maria Brontë was terminally ill with cancer in 1821; her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moved into the Parsonage to help run the household. She subsequently spent the rest of her life there raising the Brontë children - to whom she was known as 'Aunt Branwell'. She provided much of the children's education, including needlework and embroidery for the girls. This rarely seen portrait was sketched in 1799, when Elizabeth was 23 years old - and many years before Maria had even met Patrick Brontë. Ellen Nussey declared that Anne was her aunt's favourite. Elizabeth Branwell died at the age of 66, on 29 October 1842, after a short, but agonising illness (believed to be a blockage of the bowel). The whole Brontë family were devastated; in particular Branwell, who, later that day, wrote to his friend Grundy:

'I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood.'mick-armitage