Hartlepool Sports & Leisure
Hartlepool Transport
A Potted History Of Hartlepool
Hartlepool Trade & Industry
Hartlepool Health & Education
Hartlepool People
Hartlepool Places
Hartlepool at War
Hartlepool Ships & Shipping
Brierton Isolation Hospital
Brierton Isolation Hosptial was part of a Catholic Charity group we used to visit regularly.
It was the old fashioned way of handling TB/Consumption/.
The outer area on the side of the main building was a glass house open each end to the weather, wind blowing through.
The patients (about 12?) were lying in beds thinly covered with a blanket or two. Beside each bed was a table - the main most often used item was a spitoon. The patient would be talking, break off start coughing up phlegm and have recourse to the spitoon.
They all had memories - one I recall used to have dogs and told us the best way to worm them was to feed them with the filter butts of cigarettes.
Later it became a nursing home and part of the hosptial in the grounds was a ward of single rooms but each was glass walled so the nurse sitting at the office at the far end could see across all the patients in her charge without leaving her room.
Tony Hay
Related items :
Brierton Lane Isolation Hospital
