I was at home chatting to my mum recently, and she was reminiscing about days gone by.
One story she mentioned was very sad indeed. A local family’s 10-year-old son had fallen over while playing and he suffered a nasty graze due to the rough road surface. He developed an infection and died. Mum is not sure exactly when it was, but thinks sometime in the 1930s when antibiotics were not readily available.
It’s startling to think that something as everyday as a child falling over could lead to a family losing their child. Now, if a wound becomes infected, your doctor will prescribe you antibiotics which should quickly clear it up. Today’s parents rarely need to worry if their child has a minor mishap in the playground.
Although some forms of antibiotic were discovered earlier, it was Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928 that led to a revolution in healthcare. Antibiotic use really took off in the 1940s after chemists Ernst Chain and Howard Florey developed a way to purify penicillin enabling it to be mass produced.
Initially it was strictly rationed and during World War II was restricted to the military, but once the war was over, it became available to the general public via their local doctors. However, it would still have only been available to those who could afford to buy it. Not until the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948 was the whole population able to benefit.
In the early 2000s, I was commissioned to write the history of the Benenden Healthcare Society, a mutual health organisation originally established to combat high rates of deaths from Pulmonary Tuberculosis among postal workers. My research on that book taught me the devastating consequences TB had on the service and its employees.
In the late 1800s, Post Office clerk Charles Garland was appalled at the plight of his many colleagues who were contracting and dying from tuberculosis. In 1900, about 300,000 people nationally were suffering, but only 22,000 a year could be treated. The dusty, cramped offices in which sorting clerks and telegraphists worked were ideal conditions for the airborne disease to flourish. These employees earned just a few pounds a week and could not afford to pay for healthcare. Even if a worker did take time off for treatment, it meant no income for their family, so there was enormous pressure for them to return to their jobs, which they often did before they were fully cured. This meant they would continue to infect co-workers, and would likely die from the disease anyway.
Garland suggested a ‘mutual’ way of helping his colleagues. If he and the thousands of his fellow Post Office employees each contributed a small amount of their wages into a fund, they could raise enough money to help those who contracted TB.
His idea took off, and his new society was able to fund the building of a sanatorium near the village of Benenden in Kent which welcomed its first Post Office patients in March 1907. It was long before an effective cure for TB was found, so the main treatment was rest, fresh air and hope. Patients would be wheeled outside in their beds every morning, no matter how cold it was, and doors and windows remained open day and night. In 1910, one long suffering patient wrote a postcard to his wife: ‘Dear Lolly. This picture shows the result of the snow storm I told you about some time back. I did not sleep so cold as you might think it was, colder last night than I have ever known it to be here. With fondest love from Gilbert.’
Receiving treatment at the sanatorium meant employees did not return to work until they were fully cured, and thus infection rates reduced. However it was not until the early 1950s that fewer patients meant empty beds and the effectiveness of antibiotics on TB were finally being felt. The Society refocussed its core services away from TB and towards things like cancer and diagnostic consultations.
TB is still around today, although much less prevalent in the UK. It used to be known as the ‘artists’ disease’ thanks to fact that several writers, painters and composers succumbed to it, most notably Emily and Anne Bronte, Franz Kafka, Chopin, Modigliani and George Orwell.
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This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 19th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 17th June 2026
The Countryman's Daughter 