Maybe it's more prosaic than what you expected (I did), but it's there: > Haworth's drinking water, they believe, came from springs which were contaminated by

Maybe it's more prosaic than what you expected (I did), but it's there: > Haworth's drinking water, they believe, came from springs which were contaminated by rainwater that had soaked through the church graveyard - which was close to the parsonage where the Brontes lived. Long-term exposure to the bacterial infections this caused could have weakened the constitutions of the siblings and those of their neighbours, whose average lifespan was only around 26.