LWC HEALTHCARE
Memories of the San
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Three Sternians share stories from their confinement in the SAN
have many memories of the San. We used to go there for eye tests and the same chart was used for everyone. All you had to do was recite OLTZBDN, (I remember it to this day), and you passed! I don’t think Joe Hazell was really that daft, but it made life easy for him. A stay in the San was not something one looked forward to. You had to be quite sick before you were sent there, and in the early 50s antibiotics were not in common use, so if, as my case, a chest infection was the problem one just had to let nature take its course, the only treatment being inhalations of Friar’s balsam three times a day. The food was not good, but it was expected that it would be eaten. It was cooked and served by Mrs Hazell to whom we had to be very polite. Breakfast consisted only of a large bowl of very thick porridge, this really was too much to stomach, and a lot found its way to the loo! So much on one occasion that it caused a blockage, which mystified the maintenance man. Once in the San, there was little one could do other than read. No radio, no TV, indeed there was only one TV set in the whole college then, owned by J A Chadwick, known as Mr Jack, a master in Junior House. Sandy Henderson (Headmaster) used to visit once a week and do the rounds, something I think we all appreciated. It could be a lonely place, but we managed to keep cheerful. There were usually one or more comedians among the inmates who would entertain us well into the night. MIKE BECKLEY (1956, Sutton, A840)
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Joe and Ma Hazell ran the sanatorium for 25 years. This photo was taken in 1949
ow it seems a lifetime ago, but then perhaps the summer of 1964 really does, as L. P. Hartley suggests, belong to a ‘foreign country’. It must have been one evening of that summer, when I had gone to Matron feeling unwell, or maybe I was sent, only to find myself within a very short period of time en route for the San. In those days there was something dreaded about it. A place of austerity peopled with unsmiling, visiting doctors and presided over by the San Matron who oversaw discipline and order amongst the iron bedsteads, the tin trolleys containing unknown medications, the starkly white, tiled walls, lavatorial in appearance, and the air of hospitalised hush. I was placed in isolation, in a small room, off the main ‘ward’ where I was only dimly aware of the comings and goings of any other patients.
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Encouraged to drink quantities of water, occasionally very diluted orange squash, I can remember very little beyond a daily visit from a doctor and the ministrations of Matron who, I recall, far from being the dragon we imagined, was, in fact, exceptionally kind. Of my illness, I know nothing. That my parents, who at no time showed any interest whatsoever in my education, came to visit one weekend now strikes me as of some significance. After some weeks I was clearly deemed well enough to sit my GCE O-levels, all of which I took in the San, the papers delivered by the subject masters who, I imagine, carried out the invigilation. Medical Centre it most certainly was not. That said, it belonged to a period and served its purpose. For that I am grateful. LANCE HATTATT (1966, School, A397)
