Sylvia Moore (née Peckham) 1953-57

Sylvia was admitted to Craig-y-nos as an 11 year old. She remained there for five years, and then she returned to nurse for a further two years.

"I lived with my father and I think it was due, actually, to poor upbringing. Luckily for me, I had appendicitis and was admitted to hospital to have the operation where they discovered I had TB. In those days it was really poor diet, poor upbringing.

So you spent more or less the whole of your teenage years there?
Yes, I did.

Are your memories happy or sad?
Fantastic. It was a wonderful, wonderful place.

Glenys and one or two other people (ie. Beryl Richards and Ann Williams) have said that you had a good attitude. Glenys told me about the tennis and how you wanted to watch Wimbledon and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I wasn’t allowed to sit up. I wasn’t allowed to get off my back and of course Wimbledon was starting and I adored Wimbledon. We’d had this television set donated to us, and I asked if I could watch it. Glenys turned round and said, ‘If you sit up I shall put the screens around you for the rest of the day.’ And I can remember those words so vividly and I was feeling so sorry for myself. I thought, ‘Oh well, that’s it.’ But within about twenty minutes or so in she comes with two porters dragging this most enormous dressing table with a mirror on it and positioned it so that I could see the television and watch Wimbledon. Now, that’s true dedication, isn’t it? People wouldn’t think of doing that sort of thing.

Glenys instigated a lot of things.
She was the most fantastic nurse, she really was.
Everyone has said that about her.
She deserves an OBE really.

Did you not have a mum?
No, I did not. My mother and father divorced when I was just over a year old so I was brought up with my father and between his sisters as well. Six months here, six months there …

Did you have any brothers and sisters?
No, I was an only child.
It was monthly visiting and only my father came to visit, and then he couldn’t always afford to come up so I didn’t see him every month.
Where did they live?
Llanelli, which took three and a half hours on the bus. So it was a full day journeying.

What about the food?
The food was absolutely fantastic. I can’t remember the chef’s name but he was an enormous person. But he did brilliant, brilliant food – good wholesome food.

What about entertainments?
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go to those because I was on my back for three years so I didn’t get to go to any of those.


Did you have TB in the lung?
Yes, in both of them. I wasn’t expected to come out. I was really poorly. I was put in a room next to Dr Hubbard.

Did they give you streptomycin?
Yes, thank goodness they did and I was able to take it because that’s what pulled me through.

Glenys did say that you were very poorly. She did say that you were very, very sick.
That’s right. I was well under six stone. I had nothing on me at all and I always remember Dr Hubbard when I first went in there. First of all, I was covered in iodine from when they swabbed me all over to have the appendix operation. She came to examine me and she pulled the clothes back and said, ‘What is this?’ As if I hadn’t bathed, you know. Then I told her what it was and she said, ‘Oh, I see, such a lot of mess for a little cut.’ I always remember her saying that to me. Then she gave me an examination and said to me, ‘Do you like milk?’ And I said, ‘Yes, yes.’ I was almost too frightened to talk to her really. She said, ‘Good, you drink for me lots of milk – four or five pints a day – and we’ll get on well together.’ And out she walked. She used to come in and see me two or three times a day. She was lovely. A very formidable lady, mind. She’d put the fear of God into anybody, I would think, but she had the patients’ interests at heart. That was her first and foremost thought.




There are mixed responses to Dr Hubbard. Some people have said she was awful and others say that they owe her their health.

I have great, great admiration for that lady. Yes, she used to come into the ward and if she saw anybody sitting up that shouldn’t be, she’d shout at them, and they’d get down straight away. We could hear her coming because, unfortunately, she’d had polio herself, you see. We could hear her coming up the corridor so quite often she never caught any of us. She was a wonderful, wonderful lady, she really was.

Peter Wagstaff said that it was due to her that he got out of bed. He was in bed for four years and she got him up within six months of her arrival at Craig-y-nos.

That’s right and the same applied to a couple of others that were there as well, according to Peter. She said, ‘What are they doing in bed? Get them up and get them up now.’

You were in for five years. That really took your whole teenage life away. And you were on your back for three years?

Three years, yes.
What ward were you on?

I was on Ward 2. I was up in this room with Dr Hubbard for eighteen months on my own.
Then little Joan Nicesro – she was deaf and dumb …
Well, she came in with me and she taught me the deaf and dumb alphabet and we communicated, but she was only there for about four months that I can recall. Then she was put into another ward and then Theresa came in to me – Theresa Thomas, as she is now – Theresa O’Leary she was then.

She was another one who wasn’t expected to go out.
Theresa and I became great friends. I was there on my own for about eighteen months and then I think six or nine months with company before I went down onto Ward 2.on the balcony.

What about education? What about the schooling there?
No, I didn’t receive any education because I was so ill that they wouldn’t let the teacher near me, put it that way. Not because I was infectious because, luckily, through streptomycin, they stopped the TB germ working, but I wasn’t allowed to move, to write or to do anything.

As far as education is concerned, I’m self-taught.

What about your decision to go back there as a nurse.
That was pre-empted by Dr Williams. There were three of us. There was Theresa (O’Leary), Diane Hughes and myself. We were all about to be discharged. Well, I nagged to go home really because I had done my grading.
This took the best part of fifteen months, it was that slow. Then he (Dr Williams) said, ‘Yes, you’re alright, you can go home.’ But I had to be very careful. Then he just got us together and he said, ‘Don’t you think it would be a wonderful idea if you came back to nurse here?’ We all sort of looked at each other and thought, ‘Well, great,’ because that’s an offer of a job, isn’t it?
We thought, ‘How wonderful is that. Why not?’ So in January the following year the three of us went back there. I was discharged in the November and I went back in the January but of course it was a ploy, wasn’t it, to keep an eye on us.
I was there for about two and a half years and Diane and Theresa, I think, about the same length of time.
It was a ploy on his (Dr Williams’) behalf and very cleverly done. We learned afterwards from Sister Powell that she was to keep an eye on us and make sure that we didn’t overdo things to start with, and not to be out late at night and all that. It was very, very cleverly done and it kept a good eye on us for about the first year. Then after that we were allowed to do what we wanted to do, more or less.
Did you live in the nurses’ home?
Yes, we did.
Having been there as a patient for five years, you didn’t mind going back?

Not in the least. It was our home, it really was home. The nurses were absolutely fantastic. We had a great deal of fun with them. They really did used to entertain us. For example, we had the domestics chasing Glenys with a wet sponge into the ward so that we could see what was happening. They were wonderful like that.

Did it feel strange being on the other side?
No, because when I went back there, I went back into the children’s ward, and I was only there for about nine months before they transferred all the children (in 1958). Then it became a ward for ex-miners with silicosis, and the other wards became geriatric. So it ceased to be a hospital for tuberculosis.

Did you stay there or did you go with the kids to Talgarth?
No, I stayed at the hospital.

Tell me your typical day as a nurse. What sort of things would go on?
We usually had a seven o’clock in the morning start. We’d go onto the ward and we had thirty beds (to make). Those beds had to be made within half an hour.
Two nurses per bed. They were totally stripped, mattresses turned, backs of the beds wiped, put back with crisp sheets, etc., and the patients put back into the beds. Breakfast was then served and then on would come Sister Powell and she’d do the inspection. In those days the corners of the counterpanes, if they were not at ninety degree angles, she’d pull the counterpane up and tell you to make the bed again. It had to be absolutely spot on.
My daughter runs a bed and breakfast and she does hospital corners as well.

What else would happen?
Then it would be bed-bathing the patients. That would take most of the morning. Then the domestics would clean the ward; then it would be lunch for the patients or getting them out of bed and putting them into the chairs or taking them outside for a walk. The days went very, very quickly there. In the evenings when matron came on her six o’clock round, she’d come in with a beautiful red setter dog that she had, named Patty. She’d come on the wards and the dog would follow her around, but before she came on, all the nurses had to roll down their sleeves and put their white cuffs on, and stand by the beds while she came round. Honestly, talk about Hattie Jacques. She was just like her.
Did she bring the dog onto the ward?

She did, and Dr Hubbard used to bring the cat onto the ward.
She had a cat called Thomas. That cat followed her everywhere.
The cat used to come onto the ward and around with her. The patients used to love it, absolutely love it. She absolutely adored that cat. Glenys, you see, has a phobia about cats, so when the cat used to come onto the ward, Glenys would climb up onto a table. She had a dreadful phobia for them.

She didn’t mention that.
No, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t mention the cat because she hated the thing (laughs). It was wonderful. They used to bring the animals on and the TB patients used to absolutely love it.

Theresa O’Leary is now living in the vicarage where Betty Lewis used to live. She bought it. It’s the vicarage on Penwyllt Road in Pen-y-cae, just below the hospital. She’s Theresa Thomas now.

Sister Betty Lewis is the niece of the first sister at Craig-y-nos, Sister Margaret Phillips, who lived in Penwyllt. Margaret Phillips was there in the early 1920s and set up the hospital with the first matron. Margaret Phillips married somebody called Lewis and all the very early photographs of the hospital that we have came from her son, Phil Lewis. I only found out that Betty Lewis was related to her when I interviewed her.
She remembered being very fond of Dr Hubbard and she used to take her out to tea in her car and shopping in Brecon. Apparently, she took the place of Sister Winnie Morgan. Was that right?

I wouldn’t know because I was a patient of Dr Hubbard when Sister Lewis was running Ward 2, and I didn’t know of her until I came down into that ward. I do remember an occasion – I don’t know if Sister Lewis told you this – where none of us were behaving in the ward.
Well, she came into the ward with a bandage around her head, and she had smeared it with some sort of jam or something or other. She came into the ward and she said, ‘Look what you have done. You’ve made Sister bang her head. Now, will you all please be quiet.’ We all thought, ‘Oh, did we really do that?’ She wasn’t very good at controlling us, put it that way. She was too soft for her own good! Whereas others would just come in and bang the door with the side of their fist and say, ‘Will you all rest now!’ Or else … Sister Lewis was lovely but soft.
She is quite sweet, actually, and amazing for ninety-nine. What made you leave?
Well, I met my husband, Donald, in April 1960.

He’d just started there and he was walking near the nurses’ home and I had the window slightly up. Do you remember the lemon Jiff squirters?
I’d filled one of those with water and squirted him with it as he went past, for devilment. He found out who it was and he returned the compliment, on the ward, needless to say. I ran into the sluice room and stood with my back to the door and my legs sort of apart. Of course the door of the sluice room didn’t go right down to the ground, and underneath came this lemon squirter, and of course I was absolutely soaked. That’s how it started. We got married about ten months later.
He was an engineer, wasn’t he?
Yes, he was.

Everybody has said that you were full of fun and were a bit naughty!
I was, yes. Apparently, I used to roll bottles across the ward in the middle of the night.

Beryl Richards (Rowlands) told me about that. She said that it happened the first night she was there and she was absolutely petrified, and stayed under the bed covers all night. She later knew that it was you. Of course, it was the fear of ghosts, wasn’t it?

That’s right, yes, and of course it was a wooden floor and the sound of these bottles rolling across. I got another girl into trouble, apparently, when I thought Glenys was in the lift. I said to her, ‘Glenys is coming down in the lift. Jump out and frighten her.’ She and Christine (Bennett) both did it and of course it was Dr Hubbard, wasn’t it. Lots of things went on and a lot of them are hard to remember until someone jogs your memory about them.

What with being there as a patient and nursing there, it was about seven years in total, wasn’t it?
That’s right. I was there really from eleven to nineteen years of age altogether. There are quite a few girls who would say that they were the happiest days of their childhood.

I think Christine Bennett does.
Yes, she’s the one who got into trouble with Dr Hubbard.

Why do you think some children found it very unhappy and some children didn’t?
I think perhaps it may depend upon the age that they were at the time, but I think, like entering a hospital today, it’s all very frightening anyway. It’s no different really. I honestly think that they perhaps exaggerated the position because they were so young. It’s so difficult to say why really. I’ve heard of one example where somebody said that Dr Hubbard had pulled a plaster off her neck and pulled her skin along with it. Now, Dr Hubbard would never ever have done that. Yes, she might have taken the plaster off and caught the hairs on the nape of the neck but she wouldn’t have done anything of that nature at all and not cared about it. Another one said that she got locked in a room by Dr Hubbard all on her own. Never, because there were no locks on any doors in any of those rooms. She would never have done anything like that. There’s one girl, Ann Williams, I don’t know if you’ve spoken to her.

Yes, I have.
What has she said?
She was quite happy there.
There you go. The happiest days of her childhood, she said.

She was also in bed for about three years.
Yes, but she was up on blocks and virtually upside-down.

Did you have the dreaded gastric lavage?
Oh yes, indeed, where you had to swallow the tube. Luckily for me, I was very good at swallowing. A lot of people are not. They washed the contents of your stomach out, and they did that for three days in a row. Luckily for me, with streptomycin, at my very first test the bug had stopped.

You were lucky.
I was very, very lucky.
Did you have streptomycin when you first went in?
Yes, I had two injections a day because they couldn’t give it to me in one. They had to split the dose, which meant that I had an injection in the morning and an injection in the evening. I had that for one year and then I went onto one injection for the next two years. So your backside became like a pincushion.

Glenys told me that she became terribly sensitive to streptomycin after giving it so frequently. She ended up not being able to anywhere near it.
She couldn’t. It affected her eyes.
She said it was dreadful and she was moved to the X-ray department.

She did occasionally still do it but she suffered afterwards. She was brilliant at giving injections, Glenys was. We had some that weren’t so good but it had to be like that because the experienced ones often developed the allergy (to streptomycin).
I never gave streptomycin. By the time I went back nursing and once the children had been transferred, it wasn’t a TB hospital. And of course I was just a student and wouldn’t have been allowed to give it anyway.

How long were you there before they all got moved to Talgarth?
About nine months. The children didn’t go to Talgarth. They went to Llandough and Rhydlarfa Hospitals which is towards the Rhondda Valley. That’s where the children went.

Did you know that Adelina Patti had some beautiful peacocks?
Oh, Jacko?
That’s right, a peacock and a peahen.
They were just there in the grounds. They were well looked after and it was lovely to see them when you did your grading and went for your quarter of an hour walk as far as the first oak tree. After that you’d go as far as the second oak tree and that sort of thing.

After you left, did you have to keep going for check-ups for a long time?
No, not once I went back there nursing. I didn’t have any more check ups. But unfortunately for me, because I didn’t have an operation … well, actually, it was Dr Patrick Mulhall … he did his very first bronchoscopy on me.
I saw him the other day at the reunion (in April 2007) and he said, ‘Oh my word, you survived.’ Because they didn’t have the proper equipment to do it, I was tipped up on this table and strapped to it whilst they took the photographs (they used rigid bronchoscopes in those days, not the flexible fibre optic scopes used now). I should have had an operation to have part of my lung removed, and I didn’t. Consequently, when I was twenty-four, I became seriously ill and I got aspergillosis (a severe lung infection caused by a fungus of the Aspergillus species). It obviously got into my cavity that I still had there and it caused an immense amount of bleeding and I was haemorrhaging rather badly and I went into the Brompton Hospital, London, because they couldn’t find out what it was. There was a Professor Scadding there.

He found out what it was, luckily, and I had an operation in the Brompton.
Virtually all of the left lung was removed there.

So you had a rough time.
Yes, unfortunately. If I’d had the operation it wouldn’t have happened, but where I got the aspergillosis from was just a puzzle. They had no idea.

You’ve been okay ever since, have you?
Absolutely fine.
You never had any recurrence of TB?
No, nothing at all. As a matter of fact, when I had the operation, the very first thing they said to me was, ‘What you need to do is to go and get yourself pregnant.’

So that’s what you did?
That’s exactly what I did.
How many children did you have?
I had two, a boy and a girl.

TB does compromise fertility and some ex-patients didn’t have children.
Did Glenys ever tell you about the BBC programme that was made there?
It was done in the late 50s. It was a night time programme where they wanted really to just have Patti’s voice in the background singing, ‘There’s no place like home,’ and a nurse going around the wards with a candle. It was Glenys that was chosen for the job. Did she tell you that?

There were all sorts of things that she didn’t tell me and I feel that she was reticent about these sorts of stories as if she didn’t want to be in the limelight or to say too much about herself.

She was chosen for the programme. You didn’t really see her. She just walked around the ward and patients were just lying down in the beds and she’d go up to them and just have a look. The BBC did that programme and it was late 50s.


Have you been told about the gardeners giving the patients boat rides on the lake?
Whilst the nurses are always in the forefront, the gardeners did a tremendous amount. They were so friendly and they did an awful lot for us as well. Indeed they did, and the porters. They were all absolutely great there.
The head gardener was Edgar, wasn’t he?
Yes.
There’s a photograph in the exhibition of a load of girls sitting in a boat.
That’s right. Edgar was the head gardener and Alfie Rapado. They all did their bit."


Sylvia Moore (née Peckham)in telephone interview with
Dr.Carole Reeves, Outreach Historian with The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London .

Can TB be liberating?

You may think this an odd question to ask but: can disease be liberating?


A radio discussion the other day on Albert Camus, the French intellectual giant and writer led one speaker to remark that for Camus, a bright working class lad who developed TB in his late teens it was in effect a “liberating experience” without that he would have stayed within the “petite bourgeoisie” culture of his day confined to the life of a schoolteacher.

Now that route was denied him he had to find alternative means of earning a livelihood. So he came to Paris and became writer and journalist.

I wonder if there are any around who regard their own experience in the same way?


In my own case having a relapse at 19 years of age did in fact become a “liberating experience” though I did not think so at the time. Until then I was heading for a teacher training college in Bristol .


Instead two hospitals later - Sully, near Penarth and Pinewood Rehabilitation Centre near Wokingham, both establishments of which I cannot speak highly enough- saw me back into the educational system with my expectations raised well beyond being a primary school teacher. So, in curious way, that relapse opened the window for me into a world I would never have experienced and a life in journalism that was far more exciting than a primary school teacher in rural Wales.

Brecon exhibition

Thanks to the staff at Brecon library the exhibition is going to be extended until the end of January which will allow more people to visit and schools too.

The local newspaper, the Brecon and Radnor Express, will carry an item on the extension. We are very grateful to Brecon Library for allowing this exhibition to have such a long run.

Childhood experiences: sense of injustice

“You never forget what happens to you in childhood. It remains with you for the rest of your life.”

No, this was not a comment made by a former child patient but said by the distinguished journalist and broadcaster John Humphrey's speaking on the radio about his early childhood in a poor working class area of Cardiff and how he got beaten by his headmaster for being late one morning for school after he had struggled to deliver newspapers in a snowstorm.

Yet a similar sense of injustice comes through in many of the children's stories we are hearing. They felt they were unjustly punished for seemingly minor offences- beds pulled out into centre of the ward or corridor or even put out overnight on the veranda for talking after the lights were turned out . ( See yesterday's blog of Winnie Gammon's experiences).

In my own case I remember being penalised for allegedly throwing away a dental brace.

But I was very proud of my brace and saw it as an opportunity to have my teeth sorted out. However, I could not eat it with it in and it had to be taken out before meals. Then one lunch time it disappeared from my locker.

The punishment ordered by Dr Huppert was that all “privileges” had to be stopped: no walks, no cinema.

While other girls went off in groups I was forced to stay alone on the balcony.
Yet the brace mysteriously reappeared about a month after I left Craig-y-nos. One girl claims to have found it in the rhododendrohm bushes.

Yes, I could sympathise with John Humphreys sense of injustice in getting caned for being late after battling through a blizzard.

No ghost in the machine- mystery solved

The mysterious photo used in the blog last week has been identified.
Joan Wotton ( nee Thomas) visited her daughter, Beth’s, home and after looking at the blog said she recognised it as
Langdon, the porter and the young woman is Gaynor . It seems Gaynor had a crush on him.

And yes it did come from Joan’s collection which has been emailed to me.


Langdon, the porter, with Gaynor

The book “Children of Craig-y-nos”

I am starting to get emails for people wanting to know where they can buy the book!..have to reply and say that we are still doing the research though - Lottery funding permitting - we do hope to publish it this year.

Winnie Gardiner (née Gammon), age 81,- Craig-y-nos 1927

Winnie at the recent Patients Reunion

Winnie Gardiner was admitted to Craig-y-nos in 1927 as a nine month old baby and remained there for five years.

She did not have TB. though at the time they thought she had a condition known as "TB of the stomach".
Only at 60 years of age was her condition finally diagnosed - celiac disease, an allergy to gluten.


"All the time I was in Craig-y-nos they thought I had TB of the stomach. Of course, I ended up being fragile, no body at all, walking around in callipers.
I came home in callipers. I had such skinny legs.
I suppose I was restricted because we weren’t allowed to play out for hours on end or run around. We could go down on the grass for a while and someone would be there with us, seeing that we didn’t run off or go out the gates, but I think it was lack of exercise really.

Visiting
Mother could only afford to visit every six months. It was up to the social people whether they’d allow her a second visit but she had one every year definitely (Winnie’s mother was receiving parish relief). Once or twice she said she asked for a second one – the beginning of the year and the end of the year at Christmas. Not that I knew her anyway, you know. At five-years-old you wouldn’t remember after six months if you haven’t seen someone.

Where did your family live?
Limeslade, in a wooden bungalow. They used to call it holiday village. We lived there all our lives. Well, until I was ten.
Your mother came from London?

A cockney, yes. She wasn’t accepted very well, not in the family that she married into. She used to talk funny.

Sister Phillips with a child (early 1920's)

Memories of Craig-y-nos in the 1920’s.
It was very hard-going. You got dumped into the bath every night – about three of you in a huge bath. We’d all sit in it and they’d wash all our hairs first then get us out. Three of us at a time and then into bed. It was all rush, rush, rush. I don’t know how many nurses they had on there but you only saw one or two in our ward with the younger children. Of course, they weren’t all walking.

Do you remember which ward you were on?
The conservatory.

You grew up there really, didn’t you?
Yes, until I was five.

Did you think about your parents?
No, it never entered my head. I never knew I had four brothers. I never knew that until I came home, and they just sat looking at me with their mouths open. Whether my mother had told my older brothers that I existed, I don’t know, but they just stared at me and I just sat with my back to them because they were four boys. But, lucky for me, I had a younger brother and we grew up together very close, like twins. Where he went I went, and where I went he went.

Do you remember any of the nurses and the doctors?
Nobody. They all seemed very old to me. I suppose some of them must have only been in their twenties really but they all looked old to me, and they wore heavy clothing. Navy blue or black frocks – navy blue I think it was.

Punishment
Were you put outside if you’d done something wrong?
Oh yes. Well, if you were naughty and giggling and laughing when everybody was supposed to be going to sleep, they’d say, ‘Right, any more of this nonsense and out on the veranda you go.’ I was one that was always out on the veranda. Yes, we’d stay there all night with a bit of tarpaulin over the top of the cot.

Did they bring you in during the day?
Oh yes, we’d come in in the morning and they’d take us to get dressed. I can’t remember what clothes I wore or anything like that but we did change into a frock or a skirt or something. They’d wash us and give us breakfast.

Do you remember any of the food?
Oh yes, it was horrible. The smell of it was. The smell was all over the place. I know now what it smelled like – lamb stew, lamb stew, lamb stew!
All the time, yes, and it was a grey colour on your plate – in a dish. And very smelly! But that’s what we learned to live on. We did eat it. I suppose I must have remembered it when my mother used to make stew at home when I got back home to the bungalow. I remembered that it was that sort of smell.

Celiac disease
Did you always have stomach problems from a child?
For most of my life if I changed my diet in any way – had something richer or something I wasn’t used to – I would always have a bad stomach, diarrhoea or sickness. I couldn’t take rich things. At home I didn’t have any trouble. My mother was told that I could survive on white meat, banana, bread and butter. As long as I had the banana and white meat I’d be alright – and fish. We did have a lot of fish, mind.

I never told anyone that I’d had TB because I wanted to go into the RAF, which I did, and I didn’t tell them. I did tell the doctors when I was pregnant that I was born with TB and I’d spent some time in Craig-y-nos. They were interested and said, ‘Where did you have it?’ ‘In the stomach.’ ‘Oh, you don’t have TB in your stomach. Never heard of anybody having a TB stomach.’ It was just passed over but they always sent me with the children to the TB clinic after they were born. I’d have to go up there to the clinic (for TB and miners’ chest diseases). I didn’t always go there though. Once I found out what they were looking for I thought it was ridiculous that my children would have it, but I did go with my last child because he was a bit fragile. He was always fragile.

How many children did you have?
Four. Two girls and then two boys.
Have you got lots of grandchildren?
Oh, I’ve got dozens. They’re coming out of the woodwork? (laughs).

Going into the RAF
You had to wait till you were eighteen to join.
Myself and a friend who lived in Carmarthern at the time, we both signed up the same day in the YMCA down here. That was April (1944), and they said, ‘You can’t come till you’re eighteen.’ We were both eighteen in the July, so we had to wait until then. We signed on (in April). They said they’d send us papers, which they did. I think it was the 18th or 19th July that we had our pips and we were on our way to Manchester.
I was in the RAF from 1944 until 1947.
And I enjoyed every minute of it. Yes, and I could have changed my whole life at that point and I never did. We both kicked ourselves for that when we came out. They wanted people to go to Germany and round the country, but you must have been in the Forces for over three years, and we had. We had the choice, either go to Germany and become sergeants or come home, and we hummed and hahed and hummed and hahed, and in the end we both came home.

Do you regret that?
Oh yes. I did a couple of years later. I wished I’d gone.

Marriage
I came out of the RAF in December 14th (1947) and I got married on December 18th. It was my childhood boyfriend. He’d come back from Singapore, so we got married.
Is he still alive?
Oh yes, he divorced me. He’s remarried.


Good memories of Craig-y-nos
Well, we enjoyed being together as children. I can’t remember being miserable or crying all the time. I cried sometimes especially when I was out in the garden. I think, being so young and not knowing any other home, I just thought it was home. It was just where I lived. I don’t know what I thought really. I never knew about school or buses or trains or my mother or the village we lived in, Limeslade. I’d never seen any of it so I had no thought of the outside world, which was a sad thing for the older girls of my age group.

They did have a mother, they did know their home, they did know they had a father. When they came in at about six or seven or eight, they’d all had their own bedrooms – that was the sad thing, really, because they used to cry a lot when their mother was coming or going.

Some people have said that it actually gave them problems in later life. They felt that it gave them psychological problems in later life, being there. Did you feel that?
No, I didn’t feel any of that because they say what you don’t have you don’t miss. The biggest shock to me was just sitting outside of the bungalow at home and wondering who those boys (my brothers) were.

Going home again
Did you find it difficult to settle back into your home because you’d never know it as a home, had you?

No, but because I was used to having children around me – all of us (in Craig-y-nos) were children together – I accepted four boys. It didn’t mean anything that they were my brothers because I didn’t know what brothers and sisters were. I’d never had one, but of course I’d always had children around me so I was not nosy or worried about it.

Life inside the Glass Conservatory
What did you do to pass the time in Craig-y-nos? You obviously didn’t have any schooling.
None whatsoever. I can’t remember drawing or writing on paper or anything like that. I don’t remember having a doll or a teddy bear, except the big one on the wall.
It was huge, the size of a man. As tall as a man.

Where did that come from?
The local mayor, all dressed up in a mayor’s clothes with a big gold chain round his neck, delivered it to us a day or two before Christmas. It landed on my lap. Well, it was standing up on the floor, and I thought it was mine. I broke my heart for that. I can remember crying for that, thinking it was mine because he gave it to me! I really thought it was mine.

But it was just for the ward.
They put it up on the wall with a ladder and it was high enough for the nurses to go underneath. We couldn’t even touch it or reach it. Nobody played with it. I think I must have been about two or three when it happened because I watched it for two years or more, and I thought it looked dirty. It wasn’t so bright and yellow as it was when it came there.

What did you do to pass the time?
I don’t think we did much. We were very restricted in noise – no shouting, no running up and down the ward or anything like that. We sort of lay immobile unless we were outside, and then we could only stay outside for half an hour or an hour, and then come back in again. Sometimes nurses would come and sit by children who were crying or hurting or whatever, and then we’d have two or three nurses in the room because somebody new had come in or somebody else was crying but we just had to sit quietly then while the nurses calmed them down. In all probability I cried from the time I was nine months old until I was two and got used to being where I was. I don’t remember that far back. It was a way of life for us, that’s all.

“Like an orphanage”
Later on, when I came home, I found out what an orphanage was like because I had friends in school who belonged to the orphanage, and I thought, ‘Well, they’re very much like we were in hospital.’ They came at a certain time, they went at a certain time, they had food at a certain time, they went to bed at a certain time, which is not what happens in a home.


Visitors
Did other children have visitors more often that you?
Oh yes.
Did you ever wonder why you didn’t have any?
No. Most of them were in for a good couple of months and their mothers got to know us (who didn’t have visitors) and they’d walk up to our beds or cots and give us a sweet or a piece of chocolate or something. The parents would go up and down to the children they knew who didn’t have visitors.

How did it affect your mother? Did she ever talk about it?
She said that she would cry every time she got there and when she was coming away because she knew she couldn’t come back again for six months or a year. There was no way she could get up there again. Between six months and a year I don’t remember missing her because it just seemed to me a place where I lived, and I don’t think my mother explained to me that I had brothers at home and where we lived and all that.

I wouldn’t have remembered because I was under five then. I think, even coming out of there when I did, was something that might have been happening to children like me. Being sent home because there was no more they could do for you. They thought I had TB I suppose. They treated me I suppose for TB but there was nothing more they could do for me anyway. I believe there was a sort of close down of money matters. I thought about it later on when I was older and I know things were very sparse. We didn’t have as many treats or nice things. After I was getting older and talking to my mother, she said it was probably close to closing down (Craig-y-nos) but of course it didn’t until the 50s.

Going outside in the grounds
We stayed in until they opened the doors and told us we could go out for half an hour or an hour or whatever the weather allowed us to do. We loved being out there.
Oh, we loved it. We went mad, I think! It was an awful lot of noise, I know.
We had the run of the whole ward but we weren’t allowed to run up and down it. We had to walk. We got used to being indoors, and then we could play on the veranda if it wasn’t warm enough to go down on the grass. We could stay out on the veranda, not that you could do much on a wooden veranda but we sat or played out there, whatever games we played. I don’t remember even seeing a book. I don’t really remember seeing a book or a Bible or a choir or songs or singing or a Sunday School. I suppose there was a church or chapel up there.


Movement within the castle
Did you ever go to anything in the Adelina Patti Theatre? Did they have any shows or concerts?

I didn’t know anything about the other part of the hospital at all. We never got past the big hall. I don’t remember even going upstairs to the other floors, ever. When you get into the hall and see the stairs, I just thought people lived up there, or children. I probably did get taken up there but I can’t remember. I can’t even remember where the bathrooms were. They must have been on the ground floor with us, somewhere.

Darkness
I remember that it was never dark there. It was always daylight. At least, I thought it was always daylight. The only time I can remember it being dark was when I was pushed out onto the veranda and then I could see the stars. We were all in bed by seven o’clock, I imagine, so it was always light. It was lit by gaslight, not electric light.


Winnie Gardiner (née Gammon) was in conversation with Dr Carole Reeves, Outreach Historian with The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine University College London.

Podcast: "A day in the life of Ward 2" (1951)

This is my first podcast so I hope it runs.
It is a based around a parcel I received from my mother. As you know all parcels were opened and searched.
(Warning: it is slow to download )

To view other video clips related to "The Children of Craig-y-nos" go to the internet channel:
www.Youtube.com/childrenofcraigynos


Here is a transcript for those who have difficulty downloading audio ( or don't have the patience!).


Mabel, the cleaner, says there is a parcel for me in the office.
“How can I let Sister Morgan know that I have found out,?” I ask Carver.

“Tell her you are expecting a parcel from your mother cause she promised you a new jumper and you are cold and you are waiting for it to arrive.”

I wasn't so sure. My clothes had been a subject of some dispute between Dr Huppert and my mother. A few months ago I had been told to write home and tell mother to bring me in some clothes because I was now going to be allowed up.

So a parcel arrived and for the first time in nearly two years I had proper clothes to wear.

I remember the excitement when Sister Morgan handed me the parcel , already opened, as that was the custom to search everything and the feeling of slight disappointment that mother had sent me grey clothes, a grey skirt, grey twinset and grey socks. I had hoped, indeed expected, a bit of colour.

It was not to be. However, I was delighted to have proper clothes again and put them on feeling very proud.


No doubt I looked a bit peculiar,like some kind of orphan in institutional clothing which in a way is what I was, not that it bothered me though I could see that I was dressed differently from the other girls.

However, it bothered Dr Huppert for on the next visiting my mother was ordered to go and see her.

A rare event. She wondered what had happened.
Later she came back and told me.
“She says I must get you some clothes suitable for a little girl to wear, not grey, you must have some clothes with colour in them.”

Shortly after that a red sweater arrived.

So now I am the proud owner of a red sweater.
After the fracas over my clothes I thought it unlikely Sister Morgan would believe mother had sent me another jumper.
One was enough.

Sometimes though she would send me sweets or even as a special treat a box of chocolates. This is what Mavis had reported seeing in Sister Morgan office.

Now we had long had our suspicions that Sister Morgan kept our parcels for days before handing them over.

She would say she had to search them for improper food though why this search should sometimes take a week was beyond us.


Once Vera the ward boss challenged her on this and demanded to know if a parcel her mother had sent her for her birthday had arrived.

It had and the result of this is that Sister Morgan held on to it for another day.

She suspected some cleaners could be bribed to tell the girls about the parcels. This was not the case with Mavis, who had told me without expecting anything in return.


So I decided that it would be better to keep quiet and wait with growing excitment for the parcel, knowing it was there in Sister Morgan’s office.


Two days later Sister Morgan handed me my parcel. It was indeed a box of chocolates, a magazine on budgies and a new vest.
Everything had been opened, including the
box of chocolates ( only three missing) and the letter from mother.

Joan Wotton (nee Thomas) 1950-52

Wordsworth refers to certain memories as “spots of time”.

So it is that Joan and I pour over shared reminiscences, scavenging for bits of information that will illuminate dark corners of our childhood history in Craig-y-nos Castle.

Joan ( left) with Elaine

I remember Joan as a very pretty teenager. She used to love to sing and would entertain the girls with her repertoire.

She has mixed memories of the staff:

“Auntie Maggie” -” was everyone's favourite”. I do not tell her that Auntie Maggie became blind and died about ten years ago.

Nurse Glenys Davies “she didn't like me I don't know why. I had nothing. We were as poor as church mice” .

Dr Huppert - who shouted at her for wearing a lilac bedjacket - she objected to the colour and Miss White remonstrated with her telling her “not to be cross with me.”

Sister Morgan - she used to switch the radio on every Sunday morning for the religious service, the only time we got to listen to it.

The dentist ( aka Santa Claus) who fondled her breasts and pressed himself against her so that she refused to go to see him again even though she had toothache.

She loved writing letters and one day she wrote to the Editor of the teenage magazine Girl asking if they would like to do a feature on the girls in Craig-y-nos.

“And I got a most dreadful row from the matron and sister for daring to suggest it.”

Some letters going out were opened.
Now this was news to me though I knew that parcels and sometimes letters in parcels were opened coming in.

She recalls two girls Rita and Marjorie running away. They just walked out with the weekend-visitors ( adults were allowed visitors every weekend unlike the children who were only allowed visitors one weekend every month). They got as far as Ystradgynlais before being caught and brought back.



Once during a bad fall of snow the bus couldn't get as far as Craig-y-nos and visitors walked the last few miles. She remembers her father sitting on the balcony with frozen hands and her young brother having to stand out in the courtyard waiting.


Some time after leaving Craig-y-nos Joan had a relapse and she was sent to Cimla hospital for the removal of a lung.
“It was a lovely, lovely place, so different from Craig-y-nos. To me that was a workhouse.”

Joan Wotton (nee Thomas) 1950-52

Joan ( centre) with Gwyneth (left) and Elaine

“Do you remember how we used to comb the nits out of our hair and collect them on newspapers and “click” them with our fingernails to kill them?”

We laugh. It’s over 50 years since we did this on the balcony of Ward 2 yet it only seems like yesterday that nit hunting was a recreational activity for us.

Joan Thomas was in Craig-y-nos at the same time as myself though she was five years older. For a time we were on the balcony together before , at 16 years of age, she was moved into the Six-Bedder.



Joan on the balcony

We share many memories.

“Do you remember the shooting lights?” says Joan.
“Of course!”
Joan is the first person I have met who recalls those strange lights that darted across the sky. Only last year did I learn that the Brecon Beacons was an area of intense “ UFO” activity during the early 1950s.

“And Joan Powell, the girl in plaster?”

“Yes she was in the next bed to me.”

“And the boiled eggs that always had a black rim around them?...
“Of course!"

“And the fried eggs that stuck to the plate? you could hold the plates upside down.”

“Yes, yes...” ( did not Dr Huppert catch me one day sending a fried egg back and ordered it to be returned to be eaten cold).

“ And cold pilchards for breakfast.”
“ I remember cold kippers.”

And the peculiar excitment of seeing my first kipper. This strange object lay there on a cold plate for breakfast, I pushed it around, sniffed it, tasted it, decided it was totally inedible so I resorted to my usual trick of dissecting food into tiny bits hoping to confuse the staff into thinking I had eaten at least some of it. To this day I cannot stand kippers for breakfast.

And so the memories come tumbling back.


Joan reminds me of the day:
“Your budgies escaped but they returned and sat on the balcony rail."

I tell her that after I left my budgies flew away, never to return.


Mary Jones
We both remember Mary Jones - but for very different reasons. Mary came from the Crickhowell area too and my mother used to give her a lift in her car.
Joan’s recollection of Mary is less happy:
“She knocked out my four front teeth- it was an accident though- she pulled the sheet from under me while I sat on a bedpan.”


Ann on the balcony
I tell her Mary remembers me as a “ shy, timid” girl.
Not so Joan.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying so but my memory of you is of an angry, prickly little girl. Always reading. Always with your head in a book and a big ribbon in your head. You had a little pixie face.”

Mmmm....I know I used to fight in my 4th year in Craig-y-nos when I was up and about. Because I was smaller than the rest of the girls I had to rely on other tactics to strength. So I developed a very nifty way with my nails and teeth. Yes, I do remember that....

Who are they? - spooky start to 2008

Here's a spooky start to tales from Craig-y-nos Castle when it was a TB sanatorium.

The following photo arrived on email along with a batch of others from Joan Wotton ( nee Thomas). Now her daughter, who sent me the photos on email, says the photo is not one of theirs and they have no idea who man and teenage girl. It is certainly not their mother Joan.

Answers please on an envelope, or better still on email, if you recognize either of the people in this mysterious photo.
( I am sure there is a reasonable explanation for this - I am just curious to know what it is.)

Brecon exhibition opens

If you have not already visited the Brecon exhibition then you still have time. It has been extended until January 14th to allow people who have not been able to visit it to do so.

Happy New Year for 2008!

I would like to wish everyone who has contributed to this blog and those who read it a very Happy New Year.

As Dr Carole Reeves said when she opened the Brecon exhibition this project would not have come as far or as fast as it has in the past year without the internet.

This year will see the publication of the book and an exhibition in Swansea.

Joan Wotton ( nee Thomas ) - 1950-53

Girls from Ward 2 out for their afternoon exercise.
(from let to right) Marjory, Sylvia, Anne and Polly

Colour comes to Craig-y-nos: this photo has just arrived on email from Joan's daughter Beth.
This is the first coloured photograph ( thanks to digital technology) I have received and it is also the first time Beth has emailed photos.

Well done!




This is a rare photograph of a man in Craig-y-nos. Is this Joan with her father ?

Joan says:" If anyone remembers me please get in touch. I was the one who had her teeth knocked out by Mary Jones, also I loved to sing and would often sing for the girls. I remember Rita, Marjorie, Anne, Polly, Gaynor, Rose, Irene,and Elaine.Rita and Marjory ran away but were picked up a few miles away down the road from Craig y nos."

You can contact Joan through her daughter Beth Rees.
email: p.rees80@ntlworld.com

I am looking forward to speaking to Joan as soon as the festive season is over - she says she remembers me. Certainly we were in at the same time.

The disease with no name

As a child my husband, Malcolm, had a TB in the neck in the early 1950’s. He lived in Yorkshire and was in hospital for two weeks receiving sun-ray treatment and he lost one term of school.


What has always puzzled me is that TB seemed to be treated differently in various parts of the country and I have a suspicion that somehow this was related to social class. Certainly in Scotland I keep hearing stories of how children were despatched to Switzerland for the cure.

So on a visit over Christmas to a 93 year old aunt in Yorkshire, I asked her about this. She had been a secretary to a hospital consultant and would visit Malcolm daily in his isolation ward and read stories to him.
And he was only in for two weeks. Yet every minute of those two weeks in hospital are written indelibly in his memory.

Even now, 50 years on, my aunt could not bring herself to utter the word “T.B.” She kept referring to it as an “infection” which he had picked up from “the local ice cream van”. Such is the power of language and the fear even today amongst older people that even the very mention of the disease could cause it like a genii to come leaping out of the bottle again and ravish a community.

Amongst my own family in rural mid-Wales the story was the same. References were made to “the exhibition in Brecon” though nobody dared mention what those photographs were about.


I am just as guilty.
We spent Christmas with my sister-in-law near Worcester, who I have known for over 30 years. She had no idea until late on Boxing Day evening when the subject got around to plans for 2008 and I mentioned “The Children of Craig-y-nos” book that my “dark secret “ came tumbling out of those four years confined within the walls of Craig-y-nos Castle.

Merry Christmas!

This is just to wish everyone a Merry Christmas as I depart south for Yorkshire ( to see Malcolm's 93 year old aunt) Wales (to see my family) and Worcester ( to see Malcolm's family).
Blog will resume on return to Scotland end of next week. Meanwhile a Merry Christmas to one and all.

Christmas time in Craig-y-nos

One of the earliest photos seen of Christmas in Craig-y-nos - 1924


Many children remember Christmas with fondness and nostaglia.

Christine Perry (nee Bennett )1954-57 recalls that every Christmas Day Dr Williams would come into Ward 2 to carve the turkey and later his wife and daughters would appear at the door to wish them a Merry Christmas.

“On Christmas morning all the patients would have pillow cases at the foot of their beds with presents in it.”

Mair Harris ( nee Edwards) 1950-52 air had already started at grammar school when she went into Craig-y-nos as a 13 year old. She was there for 22 months, and she has “very pleasant memories”of her time on the balcony and remembers Christmas as “a fantastic time”.



Vera Blewett (nee Paris) is held up in her cot - 1942 - on Christmas Day.

Small children often recall tiny incidents from their Christmas in Craig-y-nos.
RENEE (nee Griffiths) BARTLETT, aged 6 , 1945.
"I remember going in to the theatre at Christmas time to receive a gift from Father Christmas. I was given a sock which had an apple, a tangerine some nuts and dried fruit in it. I also remember having a doll there but when I left the hospital I was not allowed to take it home with me.


Children in the Adelina Patti theatre - 1920s


Rosemary Davies ( nee Harley) 1951 one of 11 children says she was made to feel “special” by being in Craig-y-nos and had lots of presents.

“At Christmas we had the pantomine. We were allowed to go to the see the babies ward. There was a mother in with two children one aged 3 years and another a couple of months. The mother was confined to bed, she couldn't see her children except through a window. I always remember that. She could wave to her children on Christmas Day.”

Haydn Harris was four years old when he went in 1937.
He recalls Christmas Day.
" The inside of the ward had a platform at one end, about four foot higher than there rest of the floor. As young as I was, I knew that it was best to keep away form the higher level. The “Iron Lungs” were situated there. These were machines that helped ‘extreme’ patients to breath. Except for their head and neck, the patient was completely enveloped in the machine. Very few patients came down from the platform alive.

The one occasion I didn't mind going up on to the platform was Christmas Day, 1937. Father Christmas arrived din the morning and sat at the edge of the platform with his sack. All the children that were capable went up on to the platform to talk to him, and receive a present. I seem to remember mine was a model truck."





Nurse Glenys Davies with some of the children in the Glass Conversatory - 1940's
Jean Hopkins ( nee Phillips) was in 1942 as a 12 year old with TB gland and she was not confined to bed.
"We had a lovely big Christmas tree in the ward. On Christmas Eve the nurses toured the ward singing carols. Christmas morning when we awoke there were presents for everyone at the foot of the bed."



Father Christmas (hospital dentist ) and Nurse Glenys Davies surrounded by children at the annual Christmas party.


Magaret Blake ( nee Howells) 1954
"The staff were very good. They did our Christmas shopping for us from the Boots catalogue."




Pat Hybert (née Mogridge), age 19, 1952 -1953
" I went in December. It was snowing, very, very cold, and being disappointed going in just before Christmas.
But there you are, we were all in the same boat up there in Craig-y-nos.




I can remember Harry Secombe coming there, that was on the Christmas, but I wasn't allowed down to go to that because I got out of bed and I shouldn't have done. "

The Christmas fish- Ward 2

Friends of the Hospital consulted Dr Huppert on an appropriate gift for Ward 2 for Christmas.

She suggested a tropical aquarium. Many of us thought an electric fire would have been more appropriate. No matter . We get the fish instead.

Their arrival causes great excitement.
It’s Carver who spots a certain irony.

“The fish are a lot warmer than us,” she says peering into the tankful of brightly coloured tropical fish .The exotic world of the aquarium sits in a corner of the ward, next to the French windows, a bright foil to the blank nondescript ward walls. We are enchanted. Meanwhile the castle windows with their bars are rattling in the winter gales and those of us on the balcony huddle under our canvas tarpaulins.

“They have got to live at 60F or they will die,” explains Miss White, our teacher.


Dr Huppert has even been known to call in some evenings just to gaze at the fish, an event not exactly welcomed by the inmates of Ward 2.

It is enough to see her once a week for Long Round without unexpected evening visits too.

She would stand at the tank admiring the fish and even dropping bits of food into it. She had her favourites.

Except tragedy struck.
Louise, the night orderly, a woman who enjoyed her cigarettes and sharing the details of her marital bed with the older girls, switched the aquarium off.

“Waste of electricity” she said and flicked the switch. After all none of us had any form of heating so it didn't make sense for the fish...well that was Louise’s thinking .

It was Carver who spotted the catastrophe next morning.

“Come and see this!” she shouts.
We scramble out of bed and rush to the tank.

There floating on the surface are seven dead fish.

The enormity of the event causes alarm in the ward.

“What will Dr Huppert say?”
“She will say we did it on purpose!”

To our surprise Sister Morgan regards the demise of the fish with a certain nonchanlance. She never did like them. She didn't want the aquarium in the first place, perhaps because it was Dr Huppert’s idea and also for it meant she had to squeeze the beds even closer in order to make room for the aquarium which needed lots of space.

Added to that they had to install an electric plug and this led to all kinds of disruption to the ward routine, not to mention the dust caused. No she was not an admirer of the tropical aquarium.

So she dismissed the demise of seven fish with a philosophical shrug.

“ I will got and get a plate,” she says .
She returns a few minutes later with one of our dinner plates and a large serving spoon.
Meticulously she lifts the dead fish out and places them around the plate.

“This will be a special treat for Thomas,” she says.


We watch captivated as she lays the fish out like a meal ready to be eaten which of course they were. For the cat.
Thomas. Officially he belonged to Dr Huppert except Sister Morgan harboured tender feelings for the cat too and the pair would fight for his affections. The result is that he was the most well-fed animal you could wish to see with a glossy black coat.


At the next Long Round Dr Huppert stops at the aquarium.

“How are my little fish doing” she murmured with something approaching affection in her voice. Sister Morgan tried to hurry her on.

But Dr. Huppert sensed something amiss. Out of the tank of thirty fish she knew some were missing.

“What’s ze happened to the Angel fish?” her broken accent had an urgency and edge to it as her eyes , hawk like, scanned the tank.


Sister Morgan turned her head sideways and winked with her left eye at us.

“Is there something wrong?” she says.


“I cant zee the big black striped fish either...or the red one? what’s gone wrong?”

She swung round and challenges Sister Morgan for an explanation.

Dr Williams, a gentle soul, waits for the inevitable explosion.

Dead fish are now top of the agenda.

“ I thought I saw them there this morning,” lied Sister Morgan.

Carver and I giggle as we sit around the big table in the centre of the ward waiting our turn. As it’s winter we are allowed to sit inside instead of by our beds on the balcony for the Long Round.


Had we not watched as Sister Morgan lift the dead fish out of the tank and feed them to Thomas, Dr. Huppert's big fat black cat, at the rate of one a day. After breakfast.

“Isn't that it over there?” says Sister Morgan pointing to a fish half the size of Dr Huppert’s favourite.

“No it's not!”
Dr Huppert gets angry, very angry.


She starts demanding explanations.

“Who in this ward has been tampering with the tank?”
She looks straight in the direction of Carver and myself.

We shake our heads. We are not guilty.
Like a ship in full sail Sister Morgan switches tac.

“How silly of me! I quite forgot to tell you but the heater was accidentally switched off by one of the night staff, I forget which one.”
She adds:” I do recall her saying something about a few fish dying.”

Dr Huppert explodes. She berated the entire staff, and patients too, of Craig-y-nos as incompetent, uncaring human beings not fit to be in charge of even a fish tank.

She demands the name of the culprit. Suddenly Sister Morgan remembers it and hands over the name, like a scalp, for she never did care for Louise.

“I will see her tonight,” said Dr Huppert.
God help Louise.

Dr. Mulhall - postscript

Dr Mulhall wrote the following letter to Dr Carole Reeves .

“The sanatorium originally had both male and female patients, but eventually the male patients were transferred to the North and South Wales sanatoria.

TB male patients, you can imagine, were difficult to control in the early days of strict regime.

One anecdote I heard was about two pals asked permission from the Sister to go to see the swans in their allotted time of exercising. After several hours absent from the ward, the two lads arrived back looking the worse for wear, and on being asked where they had been, informed the Sister that they had been to see the ‘swans’ playing at their home venue in Swansea! Who can blame them?

I was amazed to hear that all the medical records of that period were destroyed. There should be archives of the Welsh National Memorial Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis in Wales in the Temple of Peace and Health, Cathays Park, Cardiff, which was taken over by the Welsh Regional Hospital Board in 1948 by the National Health, but I expect you have already been through this route. The National Library of Wales possibly is worth trying. "

Dr Patrick Plunkett Mulhall

Dr. Mulhall


“I went to Craig-y-nos first in 1952 to assist the medical superintendent at the time, Dr Ivor Williams, and I was there until 1985. The last fifteen years or more I was on my own there, but I just visited once a week … to visit the patients and I did rounds and also held a chest clinic downstairs in the outpatients.



Nurse Glenys Davies


Glenys Davies was one of my nursing assistants at the time. The ppatients were getting on very well then at that time because in 1952 they were starting to get new drugs. They were there then for about three or four years before they were transferred to Talgarth sanatorium (in 1959), and they ended up there for a couple of years more I think.

I was based at Brecon. I ended up there as consultant chest physician. The latter part of the time, probably the last ten years, the chest patients completed their treatment and it was turned over to geriatric patients. I looked after those as well.

Could you describe the treatment regime?

It was a very strict regime. The regime was strictly bed-rest, as much rest as possible and good food and fresh air. A lot of the children spent most of their time on the balconies. Before my time there were more severe conditions prevailing when they used to be left there in the rain, snow, everything. Of course, they were covered up but they had to endure that as well. A lot of the children also were in plaster casts for tuberculosis of bone joints and spines. Other children had tuberculous glands of the neck. They were treated by ultra-violet rays and they had a course of treatment.

Most of my work was with the adults and they spent most of their time in bed but they were gradually given graduated exercises to get them rehabilitated and continued to walk outside the grounds. That’s how they recovered, most of them.

When I went there first, probably for the first ten years, there was a monthly surgical session where a surgeon came from Cardiff – Mr Dillwyn Thomas (Dr Mulhall – I found a Malcolm Eward Dillwyn Thomas in the Medical Directory, Thoracic Surgeon, Sully Hospital) – to do minor operations on the patients that needed surgical intervention such as cutting fibrous tissues (adhesions) in the pneumothorax (collapsed lung) cases. These patients were treated by pneumothorax – by insertion of air into the pleural spaces – and because of the disease, quite a number of the lung surfaces were adherent to each other and to the pleura on the chest wall, so they had to be separated to give a complete relaxation of the lung. It was collapsed down to its smallest size. The patients were reviewed by the surgeon for possible surgery in Cardiff, in the thoracic unit, to be transferred down there. For example, people with cavities. So, it was quite a lot of activity at that time.


Were there more people in Craig-y-nos with TB of the lungs or TB of the bones?
Oh, TB of the lungs. There were only a small number who had tuberculous bones. Those were children mostly.

Have you any idea what the mortality rate was? Because there are no hospital records, it’s very difficult to ascertain.
I don’t recall any deaths in my time. I think perhaps they were selective. The patients were selective in that the worst cases were transferred down to surgical units and didn’t come back. Perhaps some died after they went home, but I don’t recall any sad cases of people dying there (in Craig-y-nos).

And of course there was streptomycin?
Yes, streptomycin and PAS (para-aminosalicylic acid). That made a big difference indeed. It changed the outlook completely for people who had diagnosed positive TB.

One of the things that the children always mention with some horror is gastric lavages.

Yes, that was necessary to try and obtain some tuberculous bacilli in the gastric juices being swallowed. It was very difficult otherwise to get a specimen from the sputum. Some didn’t have much sputum or they swallowed a lot of it. It was important to know whether the child was positive or negative so far as tuberculous bacilli was concerned. That also dictated what treatment they should need. It was not a very nice procedure at all for children and in those days, perhaps … I wasn’t involved in that … in these days they’d be a bit more refined now. The techniques of doing that are with simple tubes now.


Is there any other medical information that would help give a wider perspective of the hospital?
Well, the new drugs, streptomycin and PAS came in. Eventually, they found that people were becoming resistant to them. Then a new drug came in called Isoniazid and that was useful to help solve the problem of preventing patients developing resistance to the drugs and become tuberculous resistant.

Did you notice resistance quite early on, particularly with streptomycin?
If it was uncontrolled, it became apparent about six weeks after treatment, and if patients – particularly outpatients – took their drugs intermittently or not continuously, that could give rise to resistance very easily. It’s the problem they have in the third world.

Absolutely. Some of the nurses (Glenys Davies was one) developed sensitivity to streptomycin. Was that a problem with staff giving the injections?

Not a big problem. There were only a few that had problems with it.



Dr Hubbard with some of the small children from the Glass Conservatory
Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you that you think is important?

I don’t think so. Of course, Dr Hubbard was there. I’ve seen photographs in the exhibition of Dr Hubbard
Dr Hubbard was a very strict doctor amongst the patients there (laughs).

Some of the children have good memories and some don’t. I don’t know what you would say about her.
Well, she didn’t seem to have much feeling in one way, and then at other times she was very kind. She was a person who lived on her own in a flat up at the top of the building and I used to have my lunch with her in the dining-room adjoining to it once a week. She would never talk about her experiences. She came from Vienna (she qualified MD in 1923 in Vienna), and when the Austrian Anschluss came into effect she got out before that. She had a lame leg (she seems to have had polio). She used to limp around, she was a bit overweight and a formidable figure to these children, I’m sure.

I think they were frightened of her.
Oh, I’m sure they were.

And she had an Austrian accent as well.
One of the gardeners was also there at the time of Adelina Patti.

Is that someone by the name of Hibbert?
I think it might be. He used to live in a house opposite the hospital.

One of his relatives is in contact with us. I think it’s his grandson (Glenys Davies is also related to the Hibberts). I also interviewed a 99-year-old lady who was Sister Betty Lewis. Do you remember her?

The name is familiar. Can you remember who was the first medical superintendent?

It was Dr Frank Wells. He was there until 1930 when Dr Lizzie Robertson Clark became superintendent. She was followed by Dr David William Fenwick Jones who was, in turn, followed by Dr Ivor Williams. Dr Jordan (Norman Theodore Kingsley) was a chest physician in Brecon but not at the Adelina Patti Hospital, unless he went there in a consultative capacity. He was a physician to the Welsh National Memorial Association.

Dr Jordan was a chest physician in Brecon as well, which was the post I inherited eventually.



Sister Margaret Phillips
The first sister was a lady called Sister Margaret Phillips. We’ve got photographs of her in the exhibition, sent by her son, Phil Lewis. (Sister Betty Lewis is actually the niece of Sister Margaret Phillips).



Sister Roberts.

There was a Sister Roberts. She took the place of Sister Outram when she retired.
She went to Talgarth sanatorium and became matron there.
She died eventually.( She died at aged 50 – her niece contacted us and gave us that information. Dr. Reeves )


A lot of the girls have talked about you. I think a lot of the teenagers fell in love with you (nurses too, according to Sylvia Moore [née Peckham]). They said that you were very kind.

Dr Patrick Mulhall in conversation with Dr Carole Reeves, Outreach Historian , the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London.