Friday 2 September 2011

Do you have a connecton with MHH? Do you have a story to tell?

I was a spinal TB patient for about 5 years (1943 to 1948), first in Wales, where my Dad was posted in the RAF (at Crossways hospital, near Cardiff), and then at the Marguerite Hepton Orthopaedic Hospital at Thorpe Arch, near Wetherby, Yorkshire. Eventually, developments in surgical techniques and antibiotics helped me recover fully.
I'm now 68, and I feel there's a story to be explored here about the hospital itself, the experience of TB patients at that time, and its effects on patients' later lives. It should be told by many voices - of patients, nurses, teachers, doctors and others who looked after us, and may be those of their children and grandchildren.
The hospital closed in 1985, became an old people's home and has now vanished under a housing development. Thanks to the Craig-y-Nos blog, about a similar hospital in Wales, and with good help from Dr Carole Reeves at the Wellcome Foundation Trust, this blog is gradually taking shape as people contact us to share their experience (See the link to the Craig-y-Nos blog on the left of the texts). We hope anyone connected with the hospital in the past will read the blog and add stories and comments, so that we can make a personal oral history.