Under an Artificial Sun

This is the second post for the Wellcome Trust funded project Under an Artificial Sun by filmmaker and writer Debbie Ballin from Leeds Arts University. I am researching the Stannington Sanatorium archive and using the research to develop a multi-disciplinary arts project. I have now finished the initial archive research phase of the project and am working on the creative writing phase of the project. I am using the archive materials and oral history testimony as inspiration for a collection of short stories.

In my last blog post I had just started listening to the twenty-six oral history testimonies recorded for the ‘Voices of Stannington’ project. It took me until the end of October 2018, to finish listening to this extraordinary collection. I learnt a huge amount from these recordings and was deeply moved by many of the experiences recounted in the interviews. Then in November 2018, I had the pleasure of meeting four former patients of Stannington Sanatorium face to face: Nora, Tom, Eleanor and Muriel. They very kindly shared their memories with me over tea and cake. Meeting former patients and hearing their testimony first hand added further layers and depth to my growing understanding of childhood hospitalisation at Stannington.

Then in early January 2019, I finished transcribing a large number of the oral histories. I wanted to personally transcribe many of the interviews so that I could really listen in depth to the memories and hear not just what was being said, but the way it was being said. Listening intently in this way, allowed me to connect with the emotion in people’s voices as they recalled their childhood experiences. Some people spoke about that time with ease and warmth, others found it very difficult to find words to express what had happened to them. Some memories provoked laughter and happiness others great sadness. It is sometimes what is not said that is most telling in oral history interviews, the moment when someone pauses to gather themselves after recalling something particularly painful, or the way their voice trails off as they reflect on an experience.

One of the most resonant memories in all the oral histories and one of the things that moved me the most in the interviews I recorded with Tom, Nora, Muriel and Eleanor were stories of being separated from parents and family at such a young age.

Eleanor who was around five years old when she was admitted to Stannington, recalls: “Me and another little boy both had TB and we were both sent to Stannington Sanatorium on the same day. That was the worst day of me life …I was screaming the place down. I was really terrible, so they had to put me in a strait jacket and of course that upset me grandmother …., well I was just distraught but any way time got on and I settled in.” 

This is echoed by Muriel who was only two years old when she first arrived at the sanatorium says, “My sister said … they took me in and they put me in a cot and it was a long corridor and they could hear me screaming all the way as they walked out. Me, sister says to this day she can still hear me, ‘don’t leave me Mammy’ you know, but. I must have settled in alright.”

Visiting day was only for one Sunday afternoon, every two months. Nora who was nine when she was admitted to  Stannington spoke of her excitement at seeing her father on her first visiting day: “I remember looking around and seeing me dad and saying ‘Oh daddy,’  I remember that and I made a beeline straight for my father and of course he said, ‘hello pet,’ you know lifted us up and I jumped into his arms and I nearly knocked him out. I give him such a crack on the head …always remember that.”

Whilst Tom who was five, remembers the terrible experience of waiting all day for his father to arrive: “I remember sitting up in bed all day on the Saturday waiting for me father to come in through the gates cos he said … ‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow when he left,’ and I looked for him all day and of course he never came, so I was in tears all day waiting for me father to come.”

Later, Tom relates how it felt when his parents did eventually come and visit him; “I felt strange … quite frankly. I hadn’t seen them for two month you know.”

Once I had finished transcribing the interviews and collating the archive material I had gathered, I began thinking about how to develop the creative writing. This phase was initially really challenging. I had read and listened to so much material that it was hard to know where to begin. I knew I wanted to explore the experiences of children of different ages, background, genders and with different forms of TB. But I also wanted to collage together the archive materials I had found in the Matron’s Medical Day Book, redacted medical records, the Educational Logbooks from the Sanatorium School, the Management Committee Reports and the publicity brochures from the sanatorium.

I fumbled around in early February experimenting with different approaches that combined the oral history and archive materials. I edited together extracts of the oral history to create themed segments and inter-cut these with sections of archive material. But couldn’t find a way forward that didn’t feel stilted, awkward or forced.

Then one warm morning, in mid-February I started to write a short story about a seven-year-old girl, Elsie’s experience of arriving at Stannington Sanatorium. It flowed easily and I found I could explore the themes and emotions that resonated with me by telling the story from a child’s perspective. I have now finished a draft of Elsie’s story and started a second short story about a seventeen -year-old girl called Sylvie with TB of the hip. I am planning two other short stories, one through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy called Eddie and one about an older boy at Stannington during the Second World War whose name I haven’t decided on as yet.

The intention behind the short stories is to encourage enhanced empathy with the experience of childhood TB. Once I have competed all four short stories I want to find a way to collage factual material together and interweave it between the short stories. The aim of bringing factual and fictional together in this way is to highlight the contrast between the child’s eye view and the ‘official’ institutional and medical records of the sanatorium. I hope this will allow new and extended readings of these ‘official histories’ that can help us to develop our understandings of the emotional legacy of these personal experiences.