Older Than My Years
This is the last entry in Mary Hutchinson's diary, which she began in January, 1927, when she was 13.
Mary was chronically ill, suffering from tuberculosis and having to endure lengthy stays in hospital from time to time. Although she wrote of those episodes, she never mentioned the nature of her condition. Only once did she use the term ‘consumptive illness’, speaking about someone else. Most of her entries were about family life, friends and her love of nature and poetry.
The Hutchinsons were a very close-knit Methodist family living in Thirsk, North Yorkshire. John and Mary had five children: Annie, married to Arthur Nesbitt and living in Canada, Harold, a student at Cliff College, Alice, Nellie and Mary, the youngest, who was 13 when she began her journal.
Mary wrote "It is my hope that some day someone may find my simple daily record interesting or that someone may be helped and comforted by something I have written in its pages.”
She died when she was 21.
Her hope has become reality. Her diary lives on.
