Quarantined in a TB sanatorium

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

What it was like to be a child quarantined in a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in the 1950s. Ann Shaw was nine when she was first admitted to the Craig-y-nos sanatorium in Wales and 13 when she was finally allowed home. Until antibiotic treatments came along, to stop the disease spreading, TB patients were kept apart from the general population and their families, often for years. This included babies and children, leaving many traumatised. Ann Shaw tells Louise Hidalgo about the half-life they lived in the sanatorium.

Picture: boys on the balcony of the Craig-y-nos TB sanatorium; fresh mountain air was regarded as one of the best treatments for TB (Credit: from the private collection of the family of Mari Friend, a former patient at Craig-y-nos)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
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0:35.4	Sounds.
0:36.4	Hello and
0:45.0	the BBC World Service I'm Louis Adagnogo and today we look back at one of the
0:50.0	one of the first experiments in modern disease containment. Tuberculosis is still
0:55.4	one of the biggest killers in the world, but for 200 years it caused one in every four
1:01.2	deaths. By the late 90th, early 20th century, the disease still had no cure.
1:07.0	And so hundreds of sanatoriums were built across Europe and North America to treat TB sufferers but also to quarantine them.
1:15.0	Children, even babies were among those cut off from the world and their families, sometimes for years.
1:21.0	Anne Shaw was one of them.
1:25.0	It was March and it was cold and windy and I saw this huge castle. I thought that's not a hospital, not that I knew what a hospital looked like and my father carried me in and they said that was it three days it'll only be for
1:46.1	three days and you'll be back home and so I agreed but it turned out to be four years and
1:51.6	one day.
1:53.0	Anne Shaw was nine when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to the Craggy Knoss Sanatorium
1:59.4	in South Wales.
2:01.0	The year was 1950.
2:02.6	It's probably difficult now if it's so far back to realize the fear that TB had, it was the
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