Genealogy Chat

Just got a death cert. GUncle died of TB aged 28 in 1921. My query is -- What treatment would have been available then to make him more comfortable? ...I know there was no cure. Any info anyone has about this disease would be gratefully received. With thanks Jen

It seems rest and fresh air were what was prescribed before antibiotics came in, in the 1940's. Have a look at this site, although it doesn't give much information:- http://www.micklebring(.)com/oakwood/ch18.htm remove brackets. Kath. x

Well, no pencillin available, nothing much that would help - they went in for the fresh air, countryside approach then. They were usually taken to hospitals in the country to be fed and kept clean and warm - TB was often associated with poor living standards.

Jane Kath and Heather - Thank you I will look at that web page later. I agree with the poorish living conditions - looks like he lived in a 2 up/down back to back with a big family, but it would seem he didn't go to hosp as he died at home .....although he may have been sent home to die. Under occupation it says .....Potter's Trower's attendant. (ex army) - maybe the ex army is the clue as his gravestone has all the army details and his occp. as 'driver'.............perhaps he caught the TB in the army and they discharged him to die at home. All maybe's ! It was just the thought of him dying with no treatment......horrible....and it was only 80 odd years ago. Thanks again Jen

Thanks Kris - will do. Jen x oooops - where have you gone!!

Hi Jennifer My 1st cousin once removed was a TB nurse and died aged just 24 of TB in 1929. I have a lovely photograph of her and it's so sad that she was trying to help others and yet fell victim to it herself. Debby

Debby - that is sad - and these kids were so young & in what should have been the prime time of their lives....terrible. Where did your rellie work? Jen

if he were in the army when he contracted it and was sent home, there should be a pension floating about somewhere? Dont know that occupation - would it be Potters Thrower rather than Trower? May be it was an automated pottery making machine he attended to. Even when I was a kiddie - in the 50s/60s there were still sanatoriums for TB and people still dying from it. Thats when the mass TB innoculations came out. I seem to remember that there was a mobile x-ray machine in a lorry and it would turn up every year or so and everyone in the street would queue up and troop through it. Apparently having thought we erradicated this disease it is now reappearing down to the number of immigrants coming here and we are now the worse country for TB in Europe.

Thanks Heather, Oh for a spell check facility on here :0)))) Yes it is thrower! I may just pursue the army line .... there may be some snippets there....thanks Jen

Have you tried finding him in the WW1 records on NA documents on line?

Jennifer I'm not sure yet - she was born in Hampshire. I have a herbal remedy book that belonged to her and a photo of her in her uniform. Debby

TB was very rife and a killer before antibiotics were discovered. The Bronte family, DH Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and George Orwell are just a few well-known folk who succumbed. My gt grandmother Emma died of TB aged 37. My mother told me that her mother Gladys (Emma's only child) had no memory of her, other than walking with her in an invalid chair by the seaside and that she had been at the Royal Seabathing Hospital in Margate. This led me on a right goosechase. The RSH records had no Emma Smoothy. Got the death cert - she didn't die when Gladys was 7. Gladys had just had her 11th birthday, and Emma died at their home. The death cert said she'd had phthisis certified 3 years. So I don't know whether she was kept at home in isolation so Gladys wouldn't catch it, which might explain why Gladys couldn't remember her, or whether her death was so traumatic she forgot. nell

May be Gladys was passed to live with a relative Nell. The kids did seem to be shifted around a lot then.

My mothers uncle sadly died of TB... he was 31, this was in 1945....

You may be interested to read what i wrote about my G-g-g-grandfather: James Stewart had been diagnosed with Pulmonary Tuberculosis in 1877, an infectious disease of the lungs. TB is caught by breathing in droplets containing the bacteria, for example, when an infected person coughs or sneezes. In many people who become infected, the immune system successfully fights off the infection. Anyone can get TB, but it’s more likely if you already have another disease, don’t eat well, or live in overcrowded or sub-standard housing. Sometimes latent tuberculosis becomes active years later. This is known as post-primary TB and is more likely if the immune system is weakened by other problems. TB is characterised by several symptoms; a persistent cough accompanied by large amounts of phlegm, sometimes bloodstained; swollen glands, especially in the neck; tiredness; loss of appetite; weight loss; sweating at night; chest pain on breathing-in caused by inflammation of the membranes lining the lungs (pleurisy). The initial TB infection normally affects the lungs but often spreads to lymph nodes. It can also affect bones, joints and kidneys, and cause a type of meningitis (inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord). By May 1880 his condition now included Laryngeal Tuberculosis, an uncommon and highly virulent, infectious form of the disease infecting the larynx, or the vocal chord area. His additional symptoms would now have included: hoarseness; pain on swallowing foods or fluids; pain in the ear; the constant sensation of something in the throat; a harsh, high pitched sound to his inward breathing; frothy, alkaline bloodstained sputum; a swollen throat. Tuberculosis caused the most widespread public concern in the 19th and early 20th centuries as the endemic disease of the urban poor. In 1815 England it accounted for one in four deaths; by 1918 one in six deaths in France were still caused by TB. After the establishment in the 1880s that the disease was contagious, TB was made a notifiable disease in Britain; there were campaigns to stop spitting in public places, and the infected poor were ‘encouraged’ to enter sanatoria that rather resembled prisons. James's plight would have been an extremely distressing experience for his family. He would have been struggling for breath, rasping, perhaps unable to speak. With swallowing becoming increasingly difficult even eating would have been an ordeal. His emaciated body must have been a painful reminder for Catherine of her childhood at the height of the Potato Famine. On 1st June the three children Kate, Sarah and Jamie were admitted to Fulham Workhouse, who sent them onwards a couple of days later to become inmates at the West London District School in Ashford. This was clearly to spare them the distress of witnessing their father’s lingering but now inevitable death. Their final farewell to their waning father must have been touching in the extreme, though the room would have been rank with the unfortunate man’s foul breath as a result of his condition. James died on 30th June. The witness was 49-year old Ellen Oakham, who also lived with her husband in the house.

In 1949 when I was a few months old my uncle died of TB probably contracted during the war, 3 years later my father developed TB, (one can't imagine how he must have felt), and was in Banstead (in Essex I think, I know it was a long journey, we lived in Stratford, and we didn't go to see him very often) TB sanitorium for 18 months, but fortunately recovered, penecillin being available by then. In 1980 we bought part of an old TB sanitorium in Devon. I have some photos, which may give you an idea of what one was like, (though they weren't taken for that reason so are far from perfect) when I sort my scanner out I'll send them to you if you are interested. Medical staff who came in contact with TB qualified for an extra weeks holiday a year, in the hope that that would help them stay fit enough not to contract the disease. Mavis

Good morning, Just caught up with your interesting stories - thank you for taking the time and trouble to share them with me ( and a few hundred others!) What a terrible disease this was and still is - although we grumble about health care provision in this country - we truly don't know how lucky we are, and these stories attest to that. Thanks once again Jen Mavis - thank you for your kind offer, however i do have some pics myself from old books. best wishes jen x

My mother caught TB in 1966 when I was 4. She was wisked off to hospital for months. All the local children were given injections. My mother was offered the chance to try one of the new drugs which meant she was cured quicker.

hi jennifer, i had t.b. in 1968-9 i was taken into hospital in south mimms, potters bar i was given injetions every day , [my bum used to be sore] i was also expecting my daughter at the same time which the doc's were worried about, but in may of 1969 i had my daughter and she was fine. hazel.

A few years ago the coffins in the crypt of a church in (I think) Austria, were removed. They were a couple of hundred years old and the bodies were subjected to modern diagnosis and research. The research done on these bodies has now proved that there is a gene which determines whether you have a propensity to get TB. It explains why in some families there were some who were unscathed while around them their siblings and parents succumbed. Victoria