Stannington Sanatorium was England’s first Tuberculosis sanatorium specifically designed for children. Using the oral history testimonies, stored at the Northumberland Archives, this talk attempts to reconstruct the patient’s experience of their time at this historical medical site. From these narratives we can begin to piece together what life was like within the hospital. Such stories offer an authentic account & they tell us something unique about the ways in which we visualise our memories and how we tell them to other people.
This talk will be presented by Ryan Fallon, a second year PhD student at Newcastle University. His work explores how the child patient experienced medical treatment in the North-East of England from the 1900s to the present day. Ryan’s research often uses ‘memory history’ to explore how we construct narratives of ourselves and our experiences.