Under an Artificial Sun

27/03/2019 by Northumberland Archives

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.

Volunteers and Research – Berwick Record Office

03/04/201918/03/2019 by Northumberland Archives

Volunteers at the Berwick Record Office are encouraged to research people or events mentioned in the records they index. This enhances the lists and is an opportunity to bring together information from a number of sources that the Archivist may not have the time to collate.

Following a thread

Helen is a volunteer at the Berwick Records Office and has been involved in a number of projects – particularly those with schoolchildren. Recently, she has been looking through the Borough Surveyor’s notebook (featured in an earlier post) for references to Berwick men who served in World War I and decided to find out more about one of them – Sidney Hill.

Sidney Hill

Sidney Hill was born in Berwick in 1900. He was drafted towards the end of the war and from 1918-1919 served on HMS Kildonan – a patrol gunboat that monitored the British coast.

In 1936 he was appointed the first Housing Officer of the Berwick-Upon-Tweed Town Council. However, in 1937 he and his wife emigrated to Salisbury in, what was then known as, Rhodesia to take up a post on the Bulawayo Railway. This followed “malicious rumours” that he was involved in financial irregularities at the Council. However, The Mayor appealed for this gossip to stop, in the Berwick Advertiser on the 29 June 1937, saying neither he nor the Surveyors Department was under investigation.

Local newspapers are a useful source of information for this kind of research and the Archives has a collection of them dating back to the early 19th century. The Berwick Advertiser and Berwickshire News regularly carried reports about Berwick people who lived in other parts of the world. Helen also looked at national sources – such as the census of 1901 – to find out about Sidney’s family background.

Armenia Tabor

My own curiosity was piqued last week by reading the petition of Armenia Tabor, the widow of Thomas Tabor, a Freeman of Berwick-upon-Tweed (Draft Guild Minute Book 1738-1755 B 2/4). She asked the Guild if they would pay for her to return home to Holland because, she said, she had become “burthensome ” to the Incorporation. They agreed as letting the meadows and stints to which she was entitled as a Freeman’s widow would defray the expense of sending her home.

It is interesting that, as a Freeman’s widow, Armenia was able to bargain with the Guild to improve her lot. The Borough Archives are a rich source of information about women’s lives – though not all of them as lucky as Armenia. Guild petitions and court records, for example, illustrate what life in a Garrison town was like for ordinary women through incidental and direct references to them.

Possible baptism of Thomas Tabor, Transcripts of Berwick Holy Trinity Church Baptisms

And, it is likely there is much more to be discovered about Armenia and Thomas should someone want to look. Were they brought together by war (the War of the Spanish Succession took place around the time they might have met), did trade with the Netherlands play a part or was it something else entirely? What happened to her when she left Berwick?

Would you like to join us?

If you are interested in researching stories like this we are looking for volunteers to help us.

At 2 pm on Saturday 23rd and on Tuesday 26th March we will be holding introductory sessions for potential volunteers at the Berwick Record Office in Walkergate. Please come along if you are thinking about getting involved. We want to hear what interests you.

BERWICK ADVERTISER, 14 MARCH 1919

15/03/2019 by Northumberland Archives

GARDENS AND ALLOTMENTS

HOW TO GROW POTATOES AND ONIONS

At the annual meeting of the Berwick and District Gardens and Allotments Association held last month, Mr Carmichael, hon. treasurers, suggested it would be a good plan to have lectures on the cultivation of vegetables. The committee took up the suggestion in a practical manner, and the first of these lectures was delivered on Tuesday evening in the Long Room, Corn Exchange, by Mr J. Jackson, gardener to Lord Joicey, at Ford castle. The subject of Mr Jackson’s paper was “Potatoes and Onions and their cultivation”. There was a splendid turnout of members and those interested in gardening. The Mayor (Ald. J. Plenderleith) President of the Association was in the chair, and was supported by Councillor Elder and Mr R. Bradford, chairman and joint hon. secretary of the Association respectively.

CHATTON

Reference was made under the Lowick news of our South West Edition last week of the flight over the district of the airship N, S. 7. Since then a fatality has occurred in connection with the airship. When rising from Newcastle Town Moor on Tuesday, 4th March, Sergeant Johnstone having seized the rope the airship unexpectedly rose through a burst of sunshine having caused extra buoyancy.

The thrill of the spectators can be imagined when the saw the unfortunate man clinging to the rope till some sixty feet from the ground his strength failed and he crashed to his death, which took place a few minutes from his fall. The Air Service is full of perils, and it is to be hoped that these will be diminished by science before that much talked of aerial posts are established.

A large body of the Canadian troops has left the camp, which is now very small in its proportions. They have not only left their mark upon the landscape, but also upon the roads. It is to be hoped that the road authorities will be alive to the interests of the ratepayers, and get the Government to recoup a fair share of the enormous expenditure which will be required to restore the highways to their normal condition.

HOLY ISLAND

The engagement was announced on Wednesday of Mr Edward Hudson, of Queen Anne’s-gate and Lindisfarne Castle, Northumberland, and Mme. Guilmina Suggia, the famous cellist, who is of Portuguese nationality.

Mr Hudson, who is the chairman and managing director of “Country Life,” is well-known in the north as the owner of the Castle at Holy Island, which dates back as far as 1500. Mr Hudson has furnished the Castle in a most tasteful manner, which is quite in keeping with its romantic history.

LOCAL NEWS

A Glasgow Herald correspondent, in an article on the Old Border Bridge at Berwick mentions, that Cromwell and his army crossed the Tweed by the bridge when in 1650 they marched to Scotland in order to persuade or compel the nation to the rule of the Commonwealth.

The Restoration of the Monarchy brought benefit to Berwick, for Charles II allowed the corporation an annuity of £100 from the Customs of their town or from those of Newcastle for upkeep of the Old Bridge. In 1700 William III ordered the sum to be paid from the Exchequer, and this arrangement is still maintained for the repair of the now ancient structure.

SPITTAL NOTES

Private Andrew Wood, K.O.S.B., is one of Spittal’s war veterans who has been recently demobilised. This gallant Tommy joined up at a period of life when he was far beyond military age, but the irresistible spirit was there, and forced him to action. Since joining up he has passed through the hottest of the fighting on the Western front; and without hesitation we can affirm that the fault would not be his if many a “Jerry” did not pay the full penalty of his misdeeds at the muzzle end of Andrew’s rifle. He has all the pluck and keenness of the true British fighter. We regret that since his home-coming he has been confined to bed, and sincerely trust that his recovery will only be a matter of days, and that renewed health and strength will be his, and a bright and lengthy future in which to enjoy life.

Sergeant George Brigham, Dental Section, R.A.M.C., is now demobilised after having been with the forces since hostilities commenced. On joining up he took up duties as a dispatch rider, admittedly a dangerous occupation, yet George stuck it, placing many hair-breadth escapes to his credit, until finally the strain so told upon an otherwise robust constitution that his removal from the work became a necessity, and he was placed at his own profession in the dental section of the R.A.M.C., where he held the rank of senior sergeant, and had charge of one of the departments. Prior to enlistment he was an assistant with Mr R.R. Riddell, Surgeon Dentist, Quay Walls. We wish him good health and luck in the future.

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