Idilia Dubb
Encyclopedia
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
whose tragic demise in the abandoned Lahneck Castle
Lahneck Castle
Lahneck Castle is a medieval fortress located in the city of Lahnstein in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, south of Koblenz. The 13th-century castle stands on a steep rock salient above the confluence of the Lahn River with the Rhine, opposite Castle Stolzenfels, in the district of Oberlahnstein...
while vacationing in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
became celebrated through a diary she allegedly kept as she slowly starved to death.
In the late spring of 1851 Dubb had accompanied her father, mother, sister and brother on a holiday trip to Germany. On June 16, 1851, she set out to record landscape views of the Rhine river. When she did not return for supper that evening, the police were called and - it is said - they combed the entire area. However, no trace of her could be found and eventually her grieving family returned to Scotland.
In 1860 the ancient tower of Lahneck Castle was to be repaired. The workmen came upon a skeleton inside the top of the ruined tower. Along with the bones, they found pages of a sketchbook owned by Idilia. On the pages, she had recorded the horror of her final days. She wrote that she had managed to climb to the top of the tower on the rotted wooden stairs. When she reached the top of the tower, however, the stairs collapsed and she was trapped. Idilia was confident that people would see her signals for rescue. As she waved from a window, the boatmen waved back.
With no one to rescue her, Idilia slowly starved. In her final hours she determined to leap from the tower. But she leapt not. Her skeleton was found in the tower ruin on the top which was surrounded with an insurmountable 3-meter high stone.