Tuberculosis Ward

Badsley Moor Lane Hospital was run by Rotherham Corporation and in 1909 they went into negotiations with the Board of Guardians (the committee who ran Rotherham's' Workhouse and its hospital) with a view to provide accommodation for patients with tuberculosis. The Workhouse Hospital had treated patients with tuberculosis for many years but patients that needed special treatment were sent to sanatoriums all over England. This method of treatment  proved to be expensive so a committee made inquires to maintain sanatorium of its own. The Guardians paid for an Open Air Shelter at a cost of £150 this was based at Badsley Moor and  was opened in January 1910. The Corporation bared the cost of the maintenance and patients treatment but the Guardians would pay for the treatment of any patients from the workhouse under the Poor Law at a charge of £2 per week.

By July the same year the Board of Guardians formed a special committee to deal with the administration for the tuberculosis shelter and to look into the possibility of building an indoors tuberculosis sanatorium. The committee consisted of twelve members, two of which were women. The Guardians wanted an area that pauper patients suffering from this disease could be on their own. By March the following year the first purpose built institution of its kind in England opened its’ doors to its first tuberculosis patient. The original date for the building to open was 10th March 1911, but this was delayed for a few days due to some structural work on the building being not quite complete. The committee had already looked into the possibility of opening the temporary structure at Kimberworth.

The new ward consisted of one of the old fever hospital temporary buildings, and outbuildings from the old farm that were altered and extended to meet the requirements. A sleeping veranda with a glass roof had been added to the two wards and kitchen and accommodated between twenty and thirty males, the first man who entered the hospital was a local man who arrived from having been nursed in Deanhead. The building on the north-east boundaries of the site had also been altered and extended to provide accommodation for a caretaker and nurses bedrooms, sitting rooms, kitchen and laundry room etc. painting the ward was also completed, at a cost of £120. All the alterations at an estimated cost of around £800,  had been constructed by Messrs Wm. Thornton and Son under the supervision of and to the design of Mr. David B. Jenkinson an architect and surveyor of the Imperial Buildings, Rotherham. The building work must have been watched with enthusiasm by the patients, with the long endless days and very little else to occupy them.

From October 1921 Oakwood Hall Sanatorium became the main hospital in Rotherham for the treatment of tuberculosis. The disease was known by a number of names throughout history, such as phthisis, scrofula, tabes, bronchitis, inflammation of the lungs, hectic fever, gastric fever and lupus. Frequently tuberculosis was confused with many other diseases until medical practices advanced. The word “phthisis” was used by the ancient Greeks because of the wasting effect upon the body, owing to the profuse diarrhoea which takes place in the terminal stage of the disease. Phthisis was defined as wearing the lungs away or consuming of all the muscular or fleshy parts of the body. Tuberculosis seems to have been around since time began. The Romans practised climatherapuetic treatment, by treating Phthisis patients in warm and dry climates. The disease seemed unstoppable until a German bacteriologist called Robert Koch isolated the agent or germ that  infected the patients in 1882. Treatment for the disease didn’t make any real progress until new antibiotics were tried between 1945-1960. Pthisis is a word commonly used to describe Pulmonary tuberculosis but actually refers to any wasting disease in which the whole body may be involved or only part of the body. Tuberculosis is a disease, which may affect almost any part of the body. For example Abdominal Phthisis is Tuberculosis of the intestines and mesenteric glands, or glandular Phthisis which is Tuberculosis of the lymph glands. etc.

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© Neil and Janet Croft 2005