How I survived the White Plague

In post-war years, the National Health Service's mass mobile x-ray unit was a familiar sight as it toured schools, workplaces and communities in County Durham in an effort to catch and defeat the disease in its early stages. By then, effective drug treatments had been developed, vaccination had been introduced and, happily, TB soon faded into the background.

It was so different when my mother, Jenny Young, died at home in Durham, in October 1941, from pulmonary tuberculosis. She was 37. I was just six and, to this day, I have no idea when or how she contracted the disease, though it took time to develop and possibly dated from around my birth in 1935.

Years after her death, I was frequently told by aunts and my mother's close friends how beautiful she was. Even in a recent conversation, a Durham cousin reminded me how Aunt Jenny's beauty was the talk of the family. Apparently, one of the more noticeable characteristics TB imposed on its sufferers was a luminescent whiteness of the skin and rosy pinkness of the cheeks, a sort of Gothic glamour - but I suspect my relatives wouldn't make this connection at the time.

I still recall my mother being active at the start of the Second World War when my father went into the fire service, but she soon went into decline, weakened by the coughing of blood, night sweats and general malaise that affects TB patients. She received no effective treatment that I am aware of, but I know my father was worried about the doctor's bill. At the end she was bedridden in the front room downstairs and I was whisked away to stay with aunts and family friends while she died and was buried in St Oswald's Cemetery in Stockton Road, Durham. Because this was an age when children were protected from such unpleasantness, I hadn't a clue of what was happening and my bewilderment was compounded when I was removed further from home to the children's TB sanatorium at Earl's House, in Lanchester Road, Durham. I was to be "under observation" for six months.

Earl's House still stands but is now part of a much larger NHS complex. It began as an industrial school in 1885, but from 1921 to 1953, it was a sanatorium for boys.

I spent several bedridden days totally miserable and bewildered in the east wing of the sanatorium, showing the usual symptoms of a boy in distress, bed-messing, truculence and the like. My questions about my mother were gently fended off, the family line being that she was in hospital, too.

I was upset emotionally but felt not the slightest bit ill, though I settled down when I was transferred to the west wing where I served the rest of my time. There was an oft-repeated rhyme: "East wing, west wing, home's the best thing", but I don't think anyone made a successful home run.

However, records of the sub-committee running Earl's House through the 1930s survive at Durham Record Office and they chime very much with my memories of the place. In 1934, it was reported that among the patients discharged was one with "very little hope of recovery" and another named boy who was sent home following an attempt to run away.

Earl's House seems to have had between 75 and 80 patients at any one time and, as an example of the outcome of their treatment, the record for September, 1936, shows 15 admissions and eight discharges. These included: one boy, aged four, who died of pulmonary TB after 41 days as a patient; one, aged 12, who was allowed home after 369 days, the disease "arrested"; and one, aged three, who was discharged after 181 days as non-tuberculous - a situation not dissimilar to my own.

J Menzies McCormack, Medical Officer, reported in 1934 that the sanatorium had an average of 30 boys in bed all day, who during their stay had no education. "Some of these boys are in bed two or three years and, in my opinion, regular teaching should be available." The head teacher reported she was unable to undertake this work "owing to the fact that the difference of ages makes it impossible to deal with them all in one class".

The committee was having none of this and instructed the MO to confer with the teachers and devise a scheme for a trial period of six months. I had little teaching, other than just before my discharge, but by then there was a war on and teacher shortages.

Clearly, the sanatorium served a useful purpose but, as children, we were unable to appreciate it and were occasionally frustrated by being confined to our wards. Sometimes, tantrums led to a culprit being restrained in a strait-jacket strapped to the iron-framed bed until he quietened down - a severe and distressing method of dealing with the situation for frightened victim and onlookers alike.

There were sorrowful times, too, when the grim reality of tuberculosis hit home. We would become aware that a child among us - usually one new to the ward - was mortally ill and we quickly grasped that the end bed near the night sister was one to be avoided. Sobbing relatives would arrive, screens arranged around the bed, hushed conversations held and quietly, mysteriously, all would be spirited away...

Next day the regime would continue under the formidable Sister Bates (I think that was her name), a strapping lady. Temperature-taking, recorded on the chart at the foot of the bed; injections in the backside; inspections and stinging iodine treatment for ringworm which everyone seemed to catch despite stringent hygiene; and regular weighings seemed to be the extent of the treatment. When the weather was fine, there was plenty of fresh air on the balcony. The food was awful - offerings such as liver and tripe being particularly abhorrent to kids.

Though I had plenty of pals during my stay at Earl's House, only one name remains with me, that of a boy called Burdon. I never met any of them again after my discharge in spring, 1942. I would like to think most of them survived to enjoy reasonably normal lives, but I guess a fair number would not have made it.

When the time came, my excitement about being allowed home was severely tempered by the fact that my father could no longer conceal the truth. He took me along to the cemetery and, by her graveside, gently broke the news to me about Mam. The resilience that seems to be built into children saved the day for Dad. I don't know now exactly what my feelings were but I can't remember crying. We just walked home and, with no further fuss, we had our dinner.

* David Young is a retired newspaper editor who was born and brought up in Durham. On leaving the Johnston Grammar School in 1953 he joined the Durham Advertiser as a trainee reporter. He is author of The Streets Where We Lived (£8.95, from WH Smiths, Waterstones and Durham Library), a recently-published account of his wartime childhood in Durham.