Welcome to my blog for ‘Under an Artificial Sun,’ a new Wellcome Trust Bursary Award project investigating the impact of childhood TB at Stannington Children’s Sanatorium. I am going to chart the projects progress on this blog as it develops and evolves over the next six months.
I am now reading through the Matron’s Medical record book and the Stannington Sanatorium School Educational log books. These beautiful handwritten texts contain detailed descriptions of the day to day life of the sanatorium. The daily rhythms and routines, the nursing staff, teachers and doctors’ the development of the building and resources and the shifts in medical approach and educational thinking. Threaded through them I have found descriptions of the key historical events of the early twentieth century: the declaration of the First World War in 1914; the armistice celebrations in 1918; the Spanish flu, which led to the deaths of four of the children at the sanatorium and the evacuation of the sanatorium to Hexham Hydro during the Second World War. The research is already raising lots of questions. What was it like to be isolated and separated from family and friends? What did it feel like to be confined to your bed for long periods of time? Was it boring? Or was it fun having lots of other children on the ward to play with? Did the experience make you more resilient and stronger? Or did the effects of the illness still persist in later life? Was it lonely? How did all that time to think effect your creativity and imagination?
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AuthorDebbie Ballin is an academic, writer and filmmaker based at Leeds Arts University ArchivesCategories |