Life in a Welsh Tuberculosis Sanatorium, 1922- 1959
Spring 2014 ORAL HISTORY 109 PUBLIC HISTORY The Children of Craig-y-nos: life in a Welsh tuberculosis sanatorium, 1922- 1959. Reflecting on the project’s challenging issues by Carole Reeves Abstract: The Children of Craig-y-nos, a public and oral history of life in a Welsh tuberculo- sis (TB) sanatorium, began in 2006 as a daily blog and has achieved international recognition. Although elements of the project have been passed to the community in which it originated, as was the intention, its creators have remained the point of contact for potential spin-off pro- jects and for troubleshooting dark and challenging issues. These include disturbing revelations of institutional abuse; long-standing misconceptions about the sanatorium and its staff which have resulted in anguished lives for some ex-patients; ethical issues relating to individual and community responsibility; and archiving the project’s valuable but ephemeral resource, the blog. Lessons learned may help others contemplating a project in which digging up the past might unearth long-buried secrets and pose problems for the future. Key words: blogs, children, sexual abuse, sanatorium, public history, tuberculosis The Children of Craig-y-nos, a public and oral later. The project has also inspired public per- history of life in a Welsh tuberculosis sanatorium formance art projects involving school children, (1922-1959), was begun in November 2006 by university students and young people from the Ann Shaw, an ex-patient and former journalist Prince’s Trust,5 and there have been three pho- who started a daily blog to post her own mem- tographic exhibitions including a summer exhi- ories and collect those of others.1 An edited ver- bition in 2008 at Swansea Museum.6 The online sion was published as a print-on-demand book version of this exhibition was selected by the All- in 2009, co-authored by Ann and myself as the Party Parliamentary Group on Global Tubercu- project’s medical/oral historian, funded by an losis to feature on its home page.
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