Sir John A. Macdonald's wife, Isabella may have married him out of desperation, speculates Dr. James McSherry of The University of Western Ontario. She was 34. If a woman of those times was not betrothed or married by 19 or 20, the obstetrician told Family Practice magazine, "the family began to think about putting her away. Many of the sanatoriums or asylums in Upper Canada were originally designed to deal with unmarried women who didn't stay home and do the housework."
From the Globe & Mail, 19 February 1996