Newcastle and Tyneside: Martineau Connection (extract from Wikipedia)

In 1839, during a visit to Continental Europe, Harriet Martineau's health broke down. Her chronic ill-health was due to an ovarian cyst, and she visited her brother-in-law, the celebrated Newcastle upon Tyne doctor Thomas Michael Greenhow on several occasions to try to alleviate her symptoms - on the last occasion staying for six months in the family house at 28 Eldon Square. She then moved down-river to Tynemouth, where she stayed at Mrs Halliday's boarding-house, 57 Front Street for nearly five years from 16 March 1840. A plaque marks the house where she produced at least three books, including a novel about the Haitian slave leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, The Hour and the Man and Life in the Sick-Room, describing her life in Tynemouth. She also devotes some hundred pages of her Autobiography to this period. Notable visitors included Richard Cobden and Thomas and Jane Carlyle.

Harriet had expected to remain an invalid for the rest of her life and delighted in the freedom her telescope allowed. Across the Tyne was the sandy beach "where there are frequent wrecks - too interesting to an invalid... and above the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys flying their kites; lovers and friends taking their breezy walks on Sundays..." She also gives a lyrical picture of Tynemouth:

When I look forth in the morning, the whole land may be sheeted with glistening snow, while the myrtle-green sea tumbles... there is none of the deadness of winter in the landscape; no leafless trees, no locking up with ice; and the air comes in through my open upper sash, but sun-warmed. The robins twitter and hop in my flower-boxes... and at night, what a heaven! What an expanse of stars above, appearing more steadfast, the more the Northern Lights dart and quiver!

During her illness she for a second time declined a pension on the civil list, fearing to compromise her political independence. Her letter on the subject was published, and some of her friends raised a small annuity for her soon after.