Hairmyres Hospital - a former Tuberculosis Ward

Image: © Elliott Simpson Taken: Unknown

Having started life as the Lanarkshire Inebriate Reformatory (from 1904 to 1914), new buildings were added to form the Hairmyres Sanatorium and (TB) Colony - German POWs formed part of the construction team. It was opened in 1919. One famous patient was George Orwell who was admitted (under his real name of Eric Blair) in December 1947. His tuberculosis had been aggravated by his struggle to make his latest work, "The Last Man in Europe", his best book. He worked on the rough draft of this novel while at Hairmyres Hospital and finished it when he returned to Jura in July 1948. His publisher didn't like the title, so Orwell transposed the last two digits of the year of the work's completion and renamed in "1984". Orwell had been started on treatment with streptomycin, which he had obtained from a friend in America (where it had been discovered in 1944). Unfortunately he suffered side-effects and, although two other patients were successfully treated with his supply of this antibiotic, his treatment had to be stopped. Orwell died in January 1950.

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