Death rates in Craig-y-nos

Dr Carole Reeves writes:

We’ve been curious to discover the accurate death rates since there are few existing records relating to the hospital. Many people talk about friends ‘disappearing’ during the night but it’s hard to get at the actual numbers.

I was very disappointed to find at the National Library of Wales that there were only two Annual Reports of the Welsh National Memorial Association, one for the year ended 31 March 1935 and one for 1945. Whatever happened to the others?

The most comprehensive was the 1935 Annual Report, which revealed that from December 1933 to December 1934 the death rate in Craig-y-nos was about 15 per cent but most of these (12.5 per cent) were adults. At the time, the hospital was still admitting adult men. The ratio of adults to children during that year was exactly 50:50.

The death rate from TB for the whole of Wales in 1938 was 0.08 per cent compared with the rate in England of 0.06 per cent. At the moment, I’m not sure that it will be possible to find a good set of death rate figures for Craig-y-nos over the years but the rate for 1934 does reveal that children were better survivors than the adults.