The healthy children who were hospitalised for their own good

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In the 1930s, dozens of healthy children across Derbyshire were taken from their homes and placed in hospitals under a government directive which aimed to prevent children at risk from contracting TB. Connie Burgess (nee Topliff), now 81, of Chellaston, was one of them. At the age of seven, Connie waved a tearful goodbye to her mother and spent the next three-and-a-half years in the isolation hospital at Breadsall – as she told Sue Williams.

Connie Burgess (nee Topliff) today, recalling when she was confined in Breadsall isolation hospital, 74 years ago

Connie Topliff was just seven-and-a-half when her mother took her for a ride on a red bus to Breadsall Hilltop to a house with very big rooms.

There, she handed her over to a nursing sister, said “Look after her” and, with tears in her eyes, turned and left.

“I had no idea what was happening,” said Connie. “All I knew was that Friday was bath night and a couple of days later, I was given another bath and then taken on that bus ride.

“As far as I know, there was nothing wrong with me. I wasn’t ill. My mother never told me I was going to hospital and never said why.”

In fact, Connie was perfectly healthy. Yet she spent the next three-and-a-half years virtually imprisoned in the sanatorium at Breadsall, away from her family and friends and normal life.

Years later, she discovered that she was part of a preventative, pioneering scheme to place children from poor families, at risk of contracting tuberculosis, in hospital in order to build up their strength.

“I was the 14th out of 15 children in our family,” said Connie, now 81 and living at Chellaston.

“My dad had five children by his first wife and then another 10 by my mother. I was only three when he died in 1930, leaving mum with a big family to support.

“I never knew him. I just remember hearing people talking about him when he was laid out in his coffin in the front room, saying how cold he was. I thought it was mum’s fault because she wouldn’t light a fire.”

The ‘San’ - the isolation hospital at Breadsall in the 1930s

Connie’s parents were Mary and John Topliff. John was a joiner, supplementing his meagre wages by singing in pubs at night. The couple lived in a three-bedroomed house in Shaftesbury Street, Normanton, with most of their 15 children.

“We used to sleep six to a bed – three at each end. If someone said they were turning over, we all had to turn.

“Mum used to pay sixpence into a doctor’s club. When there was enough money, you could be ill. Otherwise, you couldn’t go to the doctor’s.”

No-one in Connie’s family had TB but she was always a thin, sickly child.

“If the wind blew, I was poorly. Once, I had to go to Mill Hill clinic for sun ray treatment. Maybe that was why I was singled out for the sanatorium.”

Connie was in the first class of Pear Tree Junior School when the school doctor, Dr Ray, ruled that she should go to the sanatorium. As far as she knows, she was the only child sent from the school.

“When mum left me, I was put to bed in a ward. The sheets were icy cold and there was no-one else there but me. Then, suddenly, a lot of kids appeared after morning school and gathered round my bed and told me they were going to stick huge needles in me. I was terrified.

“After the kids left again, Dr McCormick came to give me my injection. I had to be dragged, screaming, to the medical room. It was actually a test for TB. I came up in big bumps but I think that indicated I was OK.”

Despite the traumatic nature of her move, Connie, in fact, came to love the staff and her fellow inmates at the hospital.

“There were about 20 other children, all perfectly healthy – healthy enough to fight. We were in E block, which was separated from the isolation hospital by big, wrought-iron railings and a gate, which we were not supposed to go through. If we did, we got into trouble and were sent to bed.

“There were two wards, or dormitories really, one for boys and one for girls and, in the middle, was a kitchen.

Miss Jones, left, next to Sister Rose. Connie is centre front. Gertie Bartram and Margaret Pearson are behind her. The building behind is where the children lived. To the left, in the distance, is the isolation block

“We went to school inside the hospital. There was just one teacher who taught all ages together in the one room. She was Miss Jones and she was lovely. If ever you felt down, she would give you a cuddle and say, ‘Why have we got a long face when the sun is shining?’

“I remember there was a bright little boy called Fred. One day, Miss Jones brought in an arithmetic exam paper, which had been given to the boys at Bemrose School. She said: ‘If you can solve the problem, Fred, I’ll give you a box of chocolates’. Well, Fred solved it and he got his chocolates.

“Miss Jones taught me to knit. I knitted a red jumper when I was eight and wore it until it dropped off.

“Miss Jones used to put on concerts and shows for the parents when they came on Wednesdays.

“I remember a production of Sleeping Beauty, when a boy called Arthur came riding up on a hobby horse to kiss the princess, played by a girl called Jean. She suddenly sat up and said: ‘I’m not going to let him kiss me’.

“In Rumplestiltskin, I was the miller’s daughter, who married the prince.

“We had a concert hall at the hospital with a proper stage for our shows.

“We all loved Miss Jones. When she left to get married, everyone cried. All the children clubbed together and we bought her two cups and saucers. We never saw her again. When a new teacher came, we used to hide in the bushes until we eventually got to like her.”

Visiting at the hospital was from 2-4pm on Wednesdays and Sundays. Connie’s mother visited every Wednesday. Some of her brothers and sisters would visit on Sundays.

“Mum would walk all the way from our house in Normanton to Breadsall as she didn’t have the money for the bus fare. Then she would go from seeing me straight to work as a cleaner in the offices at the railway. She did three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. She weighed about six stones. She had to have a medical to get the job and the doctor said she wasn’t strong enough. She said her children would starve if she didn’t get the job, so he passed her. She worked there until we had all left home. She was a darn good mother.”

The sanatorium children were all allowed to go home three times a year – for four days at Christmas, four days at Easter and four days in the summer.

“The Mayor of Derby would come and give us all a gift on Christmas Day. Then, after our Christmas dinner, an ambulance would drop us off at our homes around Derby and collect us again four days later. It was very upsetting to go home and then have to go back again,” said Connie.

“I didn’t miss my brothers and sisters because I had a lot of friends in the hospital but I missed my mum. When she walked away on Wednesdays, I used to cry after her to let me go home with her.

“But everyone in the san was very kind to us, especially Sister Rose. I was never very good at eating food. The meals at the hospital were good, better than we got at home, but the porridge was terrible – lumpy and a funny colour.

Some of the healthy children who were taken into care at the hospital in a bid to stop them contracting TB. Connie is back, right. Sister Rose is left with the little girl she “adopted” Gertie Bartram, in front of her

“Sister Rose would sit with me, trying to persuade me to eat it.

“One day, she wasn’t there so I flushed it down the toilet. When she came back, she said: ‘Connie, you darling little girl, you’ve eaten it all. I’m going to reward you by giving you another lovely bowlful.

“She knew very well I hadn’t eaten it. She was a wonderful woman.”

The hospital had a sweet shop but, being from poor homes, none of the children had any money to purchase anything, which meant they had to use their initiative.

“There was a bowling green where people from the isolation hospital, who were not too sick, used to play. We would go and chat to them and they would give us a halfpenny to buy some sweets.

“If the nurse found out, she would take the sweets off us, saying we mustn’t go down there in case we caught something.

“We used to sit on the steps outside our block and watch as they carried dead bodies out of the women’s block. They were covered in a white sheet so you couldn’t see who they were. We used to say ‘I wonder if that is the woman who sneaked us some sweets?’ To us kids, it was quite exciting.”

During her stay at the sanatorium, Connie’s best friend was a boy called Cyril Jubb. They had the same mischievous outlook.

“We used to get up to all sorts. Cyril used to go through the gates into the isolation hospital to take comics to some of the sick children. We would play sliding games on the polished floors of the wards when we were supposed to be resting.

“Once, we even organised a strike. One day, they were short-staffed and we only had one probationer nurse looking after us. She was late with everything and, when it came to bath time, she put all the girls in one bath and all the boys in another in the same room.

“We were only about eight but Cyril and I decided we weren’t putting up with boys and girls being bathed together, so went and chanted: ‘We are not being bathed with boys’ outside the house of Dr Taylor, who was in charge.

“We were all put to bed!”

A demonstration of the humanitarian kindness of a simpler age was the “adoption” of a little girl called Gertie Bartram by Sister Rose.

“Gertie was only 10 days old when her mother died of TB in the hospital. There was nowhere for Gertie to go. Her father had a houseful of children at home already and could not cope, so Sister Rose kept her. She looked after her like her own child.”

At the age of 11, after spending three-and-a-half years in the sanatorium, the doctors finally decided Connie was well enough to go home.

The return was almost as traumatic as her initial removal.

“Our house looked like a doll’s house to me after the spaciousness of the hospital. The only bath we had was a tin one out the back in the yard.

“A lot of my brothers and sisters had left home but I was still sharing a bed, whereas I had one all to myself at Breadsall.”

Connie picked up her schooling where she had left off at Pear Tree School but found the size of the school overwhelming.

“It was all very strange. I didn’t like it. I missed my cosy classroom in the hospital.”

At 14, she left school and immediately started work as a nanny. She moved from there to a shop and then a factory.

With war looming and Mr Churchill asking persuasively for volunteers, she enlisted in the Army, hoping to be sent to Italy.

“Unfortunately, I was sent to Nottingham to work in the Army post office.

“I was disgusted. I could travel home nearly every night.”

In 1945, Connie met and fell in love with Bob Burgess, who taught mechanical engineering at Normanton Road college. They married in December and had two daughters, Glenis and Hazel.

Connie ran an off-licence in Chaddesden from 1969-80, when the couple retired and moved to Chellaston. Bob, sadly, died in 1988.

In the early 70s, more than 35 years after they had parted when she left the sanatorium, Connie tracked down her old friend Cyril Jubb and they have kept in touch ever since.

Looking back, she has mixed feelings about her three-and-a-half “lost years”.

“I will never know why I was sent there or why I stayed so long when I never felt ill.

“But we were always treated with the greatest kindness and perhaps they were right.

“Consumption was rife in those days and perhaps I wouldn’t be here today if I had been left at home with my mother struggling to cope.”

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