Under an Artificial Sun

This guest blog is written by Debbie Ballin

I am a filmmaker and writer based at Leeds Arts University and was recently granted a Wellcome Trust Bursary Award to research materials in the Stannington Children’s Sanatorium collection at Northumberland Archives. I plan to use the research as inspiration for a new art work called, ‘Under an Artificial Sun.’ I am at the very early stages of the research so don’t, as yet, know exactly what form this will take, except that it will include creative writing and film. My interest in developing a project on childhood tuberculosis was initially inspired by an interview I found with the musician Tom Jones. In the interview he talked about how childhood TB had shaped his life.

‘Oh yeah, I would have been a coal miner, I would think, if I hadn’t had tuberculosis when I was 12.’ Tom Jones, Singer-Songwriter

I started to think about that experience from a child’s perspective and to wonder whether other similar stories of childhood tuberculosis existed. I began doing some online research and discovered the Stannington Children’s Sanatorium archive. This collection contains a wealth of material including: patients medical records and reports, radiographs, educational logbooks from the Sanatorium School from 1906 – 1970, a Matron’s Day Book from 1906 – 1933, photographs, ephemera and a collection of twenty-six oral history interviews with former patients recorded in 2013. I approached Sue Wood, Head of Collections at Northumberland Archives and she kindly supported my Wellcome Trust funding application and has helped me begin to navigate this wonderful collection along with the other archive staff.

My research focuses on the first fifty years of the sanatorium – 1906 to 1956. The period before antibiotics were widely available to treat tuberculosis. Most of the children hospitalized at Stannington at this time, were from working class backgrounds. A lot of them came from Newcastle and the nearby towns of Ashington, Blyth and Morpeth, but some from as far as Yorkshire and Wales. The children were aged from tiny infants and toddlers to young adults of seventeen and eighteen. They were often hospitalized for very long stretches of time, in some cases four or five years. The regime at Stannington was very strict, parents were only allowed to visit on one Saturday and treatments included fresh air, rest, healthy food and sunlight therapies.

I am interested in the emotional legacy of this experience and the way it shaped these children’s lives. What was it like to be isolated and separated from family and friends? What did it feel like to be confined to your bed for long periods of time? Was it boring? Or was it fun having lots of other children on the ward to play with? Did the experience make you more resilient and stronger? Or did the effects of the illness still persist in later life? Was it lonely? How did all that time to think effect your creativity and imagination?

I have started my research by reading the educational logbooks from the Sanatorium School (1906 – 1970) and the Matron’s Day Book (1906 – 1933). Through these, I am beginning to build a vivid picture of the day to day life of the sanatorium, the daily rhythms and routines, the nursing staff, teachers and doctors’ the development of the building and resources and the shifts in medical approach and educational thinking. Threaded through these records are the key historical events of the early twentieth century: the declaration of the First World War in 1914; the armistice celebrations in 1918; the Spanish flu, which led to the deaths of four of the children and the evacuation of the sanatorium to Hexham during the Second World War.

I have also started listening to the oral history testimonies which bear witness to deeply personal memories and experiences. Stories of the strangeness of arriving at Stannington and of homesickness and loneliness are interspersed with fond memories of individual nurses and doctors. There are tales of friendship and adventure, of nature rambles and pet rabbits and of dressing up for plays and pantomimes. There are stories of children being pushed out on the verandah in their beds no matter what the weather to take in the fresh air. Huddled up in warm clothes, red rubber blankets wrapped tightly around them, while snow piled up on the foot of their beds. Recollections of huge plates of tasty food and school in the garden sit alongside traumatic memories of pain, illness, sadness and fear.

In November, I plan to interview some of the former patients again to try and understand more about what it was like to have tuberculosis as a child and to be hospitalised for a long period of time. I want to weave their stories into a wider story about the life and history of the sanatorium. Whatever form the final project takes I would like it to enrich our understanding of historical TB and childhood hospitalisation and the way it shapes us as adults.