Heswall Sanatorium: Back in Time for Treatment

Old pictures of the Cleaver Sanatorium in Heswall are a reminder that we are no strangers to a pandemic.

In 1902, when the hospital was opened thanks to the efforts of Liverpool Parish, West Derby Union and Toxteth Park Township, its main mission was to treat children suffering from tuberculosis, known back then as consumption because symptoms included weight loss, and nowadays as TB for short.

Later, in 1950, the hospital, sited on Oldfield Road, became known as the Cleaver Sanatorium, named after the MP regarded as the inspiration behind the project.

TB is a bacterial infection spread by the exhaling and inhaling of tiny droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes close to someone else. It mainly affects the lungs, but it can affect any part of the body, including the tummy, glands, bones and the nervous system.

Nowadays it is treated with antibiotics. The first real success in immunising against tuberculosis was developed from weakened bovine-strain tuberculosis by Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin in 1906. It was called 'BCG' - for Bacille Calmette-Guérin - a term most of us have got to know over the years. The BCG vaccine was first used on humans in 1921 in France, but it wasn't until after World War II that BCG received widespread acceptance in Great Britain.

In the meantime, medical science advocated prolonged exposure to clean air unlike that of rapidly expanding industrial towns and cities like Birkenhead and Liverpool where TB was most active. A site close to the shore and facing the Dee Estuary in a quiet, rural environment must have seemed perfect and offered great hope.

There was no shortage of patients at the Sanatorium; at the beginning of the 20th century TB was one of our most urgent health problems, and catching it, in the absence of modern drugs, was often a death sentence.

The hospital's architects had created the ward without walls where sufferers could enjoy unlimited fresh and hopefully purifying air - often accompanied by ice baths.

It's not clear how effective such care was, but at least we can be confident that, for most of the children, the hospital was a pleasant change from tough, urban environments.

The hospital continued to look after children until 1940, when the imminence of German bombing raids against Merseyside led to their evacuation and the admittance of adult patients.

The Cleaver hospital served the community until its closure in 1983, coinciding with the opening of Arrowe Park Hospital. In 1988 the site was sold and the hospital demolished to make way for housing and, later on, the Hazelwell Care Home.

When the Sanatorium opened more than a century ago, tuberculosis was rife and deadly. Today it is still defined as a pandemic, but at least we can take some comfort from the fact that the BCG vaccine given to babies and vulnerable people is thought to protect up to 80% of them from the severest forms of TB for at least 15 years and probably much longer; and that, despite some strains of TB developing resistance to medication, in the vast majority of cases it remains curable.