There is a particular satisfaction in receiving recognition for work that is not really about you. ‘Yet’ recovers the story of the forgotten children of bovine tuberculosis. Hundreds of thousands of British children were hospitalised for months, sometimes years, in the era before effective treatment existed. When I learned the book had been awarded Runner-up of the Alan Ball Award for Best Hardcopy Publication 2025, my first thought was not about the award. It was about the children.
The Alan Ball Award is run by CILIP’s Local Studies Group and recognises outstanding contributions to local history publishing. This year’s field was strong. The judges described ‘Yet’ as ‘brilliantly written with excellent additional research, providing an important insight into the history of health services and attitudes to disability, as well as chronicling a remarkable personal journey.’ They also noted its contribution to the written history of Sheffield.
That matters. Because this is a history that very nearly wasn’t written at all.
The Forgotten Children of Bovine Tuberculosis
Before antibiotics, British children were admitted to hospital with bovine tuberculosis, a disease spread through unpasteurised milk that destroyed their bones and joints. They stayed for months, sometimes years, on wards that were cold by design. No toys, no books, no education. Parents were permitted one hour’s visit, once a month, on a Sunday.
Nurses were rotated deliberately to prevent children forming attachments. When a child stopped crying and went quiet, the institution called it settling down. James Robertson, who studied separated children alongside John Bowlby at the Tavistock Clinic and published his findings in 1952, knew otherwise. What the staff called ‘settled’, he recognised as profound psychological damage.
These children came home changed. Withdrawn and difficult to reach. Their families and the children did not understand why, and neither did the medicine of the time. The damage was invisible, and easy to dismiss.
One of those children was Harry Drabble, a Sheffield boy who contracted bovine tuberculosis aged two and a half in 1936 and spent much of his childhood immobilised in hospital. His story is the heart of ‘Yet’. But his story is also a window onto the forgotten children of a forgotten epidemic, whose emotional suffering was never counted, never recognised, and never compensated.
An award from CILIP’s Local Studies Group carries particular weight in this context. Libraries and local history collections are precisely where these stories belong: accessible, preserved, and available to the descendants of those children who may still be trying to make sense of a grandparent or great-uncle who never quite came back to them, not fully. The award, I hope, will help this book reach the people for whom it matters most.
Reader responses have already shown me that it does. One reader wrote that it was ‘one of those rare books that lingers long after you turn the final page.’ Another described it as ‘a vital reminder of the emotional needs of children, and of the ease with which these can be neglected.’ A retired GP who reviewed it for a medical history journal recalled a missed case of hip tuberculosis from his own training and reflected on what this history still has to teach us.
These children deserved better. The least we can do now is remember them. And perhaps, through books like this one, begin to understand what was done in the name of care.
What was bovine tuberculosis and why were so many children hospitalised?
Bovine tuberculosis was a disease transmitted through unpasteurised milk that attacked the bones and joints of young children. Before antibiotics and the pasteurisation of the milk supply, it was widespread in Britain. Children could spend years in orthopaedic hospitals, often in prolonged isolation, with lasting psychological consequences that were not understood at the time.
Read more about the book here.
‘Yet’: A Story of Triumph Over Childhood Separation, Trauma and Disability is available now at helenparkerdrabble.com.
