TB
A health worry on the estate
Trainees at St. Helier Hospital in the early 1970s
Christine Hyatt-Steel (née Boddy)
There was “a good deal of tuberculosis on the St. Helier Estate” announced Lady Benn in 1936 at the Standing Conference of Surrey Tuberculosis Care Committees in November 1936. This was inevitable considering that so many residents had moved from very poor housing conditions in London. Indeed, some residents were actually moved to the estate because of such health problems.
The risk of cross infection was high and in 1936 twenty guineas was awarded to the St. Helier Care Committee so that children from infected homes could be boarded out and also to ensure care for children whose mothers resisted a lengthy period in a sanatorium from worrying who would care for the family. Care before the use of antibiotics was a lengthy process, often involving moving the patients some distance away from home.
All my teenage years were taken up – I was at home in bed for eighteen months, then I went away for eighteen months. I went to Milford Sanatorium near Guildford way. I've been fine ever since. They caught it in the early stages but bed rest didn't do the trick so I had to go away to get treatment. They collapsed your lungs and they pushed in air every week to keep the lungs down. Then when I came home I still carried on going up the hospital to have that done. Then they gradually stopped it. So my teenage years weren't like other youngsters'. (Anon)
When St. Helier Hospital was built a special separate ward was built to prevent cross infection. The use of antibiotics made treatment quicker and more successful.