“Science is measurement” - Dr Len West

Dr Len West ( right) with Dr Hugh Richmond and a radiologist.


I am grateful to Rosie West, daughter of Australian doctor Len West, for providing information on her father, Len West, who played such a pivotal role in pioneering medical research at Sully.

He was at Sully from 1948 until his tragic early death in 1970 from lung cancer at 59 years of age.


Rosie says:
“Like so many doctors of that time he smoked."

She recalls going to Sully on Saturdays while her father attended to work. "I also went to the children's parties."

She remembers meeting Dr Foreman, the New Zealand medical superintendent and Dilwyn Thomas the surgeon.




Dr Bill Foreman (left) and Dr Len West walking in the grounds of Sully hospital ( circa 1960s).


This obituary appeared in the British Medical Journal on 15 August 1970.


“Dr.L.R. West, consultant chest physician, Sully hospital, Penarth, Glamorgan, died on 11 July at the age of 59.

Leonard Roy West, a South Australian from a medical family, was born on 20 May 1911.

He received his medical education at Adelaide University, graduating M.B., B.S in 1935.

After some jobs in Adelaide he came to London to work for his M.R.C.P, which he took in 1937.
He had house physician posts at he Brompton Hospital and King Edward V11 Sanatorium in Midhdurst before enlisting in the R.A.M.C in 1941.

During his military service he was in Gibraltar, and joined the 6th Airborne Division, which landed in France on D-Day. At the crossing of the Rhine he was mentioned in dispatches,

After demobilization he went back to Midhdurst and in 1947 was appointed chest physician to Sully hospital, to which he devoted the rest of his life.

He was a member of many learned societies including the Thoracic Society and the Cardiac Society, and he was elected F.R.C.P. in 1967.

Thirty years of living in Britain had no effects on the Australian characteristics of Len West. He was enterprising, competent and interested in science to an extraordinary degree.



Len West and Bill Foreman with the team of doctors at Sully hospital.


“Science is measurement” was his motto and he never fell short of it, whether it was in building the first tomography apparatus at Midhurst or making the equipment for and performing the first cardiac catheterization in Wales.
Constructing highly sophisticated electronic apparatus for clinical and research investigations were among the many activities t which he excelled, and undoubtedly it was he who laid the foundations of specialized cardio-thoracic work in Wales.
In addition he was a good teacher and lecturer as well as a sound clinician.

Len West will be well remembered by his many friends for his impish humour, for his bravery, which was exemplified during his long and painful illness, and for his outstanding ability as a chest physician, scientist m an engineer.

His memory will extend far outside the immediate area of his work through the many graduates from all pats of the world that he instructed.

He leaves a wife and a son and a daughter.”


This plaque was placed on the building where Dr West and others did experiments on sheep.

Nurse -Sully 1936- 1940

Rosemary West, daughter of the renowned Sully surgeon Len West, has supplied me with a wealth of information about Sully.


Here is a letter from a student nurse who worked there in 1936 and it was published in the South Wales Echo on April 28 2002.


Iris Deli of Tynewydd Rd, Barry wrote:
"Sully Hospital was a place of great hope for so many patients and their families.

Some of the happiest years of my life were spent there.


It was in 1936 age 18 that a lovely lady interviewed me for a position as a probationer nurse called Matron Gould, for whom I had the greatest respect.

After some initial training, I was assigned to a ward where the patients were all young girls in their teens who had come from Glan Ely hospital.

It must have been wonderful for them to come to such a lovely place.


Although most of them were terminal cases, there was always hope and they were the happiest girls I had ever met.

With the introduction of new drugs, many patients recovered.

I nursed a girl who had been in my class at in Gladstone Road School, and, until recently, was an active member of the WRVS.

We worked long hours with split shifts, during which we had to attend lectures and had little remuneration – 19 shillings (95) a month but we were happy and contended in the fact that we were to the best of our ability trying to make life a little it more comfortable for those more uncomfortable than ourselves.

During my three and a half years there, I made many friends with whom I am still in touch.”.

Steve Parker-staff (1983-1989)

Steve in the stocks during the annual Sully Hospital fete ( 1985).



Sully Hospital - Nurses Home


Steve Parker has fond memories of his time in Sully where he worked from 1983 to 1989 as a maintenance carpenter.

“ I was only 21 years of age when I started work there.

In 1994, I moved from my parents home and into the Nurses Home. My room was 131, on the first floor of the Nurses Home, next to the lift (East Wing) and opposite the communal toilets with a view of the kitchens.

It was very tiny.


My initial thoughts were:” what have I done!”

There was loud music coming along the corridor, all-coming from different rooms and thus different tunes.

After unpacking on my first evening I sat in my chair and left the door wide open.

I had a great view of the toilets. I just sat there and drank a few tins of beer.

After two hours there were sounds of laughter and a young girl appeared in the doorway dressed in her nightclothes.

She said:“oh you’re new.
Do you want to join us in the kitchen?
We’re having a séance.”

Well, I had never been to a séance before but I thought I would give it a try.

“ Well there were about six or so students all sat around a coffee table all in their night dresses and a couple of empty bottles of wine and me.

“We were unable to contact the dead but it did change my mind about staying.

Sian Phillips was the Warden. She lived on the first floor at the very end of the West wing. She left in 1986 and the new warden Gloria Rowe, was married and did not live in the nurses home.

Eventually the porters got fed up of letting locked out students back into their rooms, and I became unofficially the deputy warden as I had a set of master keys (part of my job).
Anyway, most of the time I was out with the students.



There were lot of parties in the nurse’s home and only a few ever got out of hand with the warden having to put a stop to it.

Another regular event was the ritual walk to the Sully Inn on a Thursday night for a few beers and to listen to a singer.

In the summer we had beach parties with a BBQ.

Most of the students did not take to the social club in the grounds because; it was a bit run down and was mostly frequented by employees of the hospital and locals.

The students preferred to go to the students union in Cardiff or into Cardiff itself.

Life in the nurses home was not all fun and at times it got very quiet especially in the summer holidays when there would only be about 6 of us in the home.


There were some doctors who were from overseas attending residential courses. Most of these doctors were from Africa or Asia.

I remember a Dr Ali, a nice chap from Africa who was trying to get the cooker to work and he asked me asked for assistance, he was trying to light the cooker using a lighter but could not understand why it was not lighting.

The cooker was electric.

Then there was the doctor from overseas boiling his underwear in a large saucepan.

He forgot about them.
The fire alarm went off, which it did from time to time, and we ignored it.
Suddenly there was smoke in the corridors and we found what remained of his clothes glowering and smouldering in the pan.

As usual the fire brigade turned up with half a dozen fire fighters crammed in the kitchen. We never did find out which doctor did it they


Whilst I was staying at the nurses’ home I did my bit for charity.
I did two parachute jumps to raise money for a new special bed, and I took part in a charity football match played at BP social club Sully, where all the hospital staff dressed up as nurses, including myself.



I think I gave a few people a bit of a shock for I rode through Sully on my motorbike in a size 12 staff nurses uniform, well endowed of course, complete with fishnets stockings.

My rent was only £8.40 a week! The students paid more than I did.

The students were allocated their rooms by occupation that is to say that the Occupational and Physiotherapists were allocated the first and second floors whilst the dental hygienists and Ophthalmologists were given the third floor. In my last year there ambulance cadets also stayed at the nurses home. As well as myself there also were several other members of Sully hospital employees who also lived in the nurses home.


Christmas at Sully was mixed for me, the atmosphere in the hospital itself was great with parties going on here and there some even had small quantities of alcohol, and of course the staff Christmas dinner was a fine meal.


However, the nurse’s home was once again quiet, although I worked in between Christmas and the New Year more often than not.

It was December 6th 1988, when I was asked to assist a nurse who had finished her shift and was unable to start her scooter.

I tried everything that I could think of but it was not having any of it. I told the nurse that I could not fix it.

Just as I was putting away my tools a voice from above said, “Steve do you want to come to a party?”
“I am still in my working clothes,” I said.

“Come as you are.”

To this day I’m not sure who invited me but when I walked into the first floor West kitchen a party was trying to get going, mostly girls and just a few lads.

I was chatted up by this short blond student, seven and a half years later we were married, and still are.

My wife said that there was not much competition and so she made a move first before anyone else did.”



Steve got married at Craig-y-nos Castle in 1995 and now lives five miles from it.

Sully hospital- editing

Finally, the research is almost complete and I have started editing the book. It will have two sections: my own account of my time there and another part based on this blog.

Once this is complete I will explore the turbulent waters of e-publishing. Here the publishing world is changing so fast that a month is a long time.
Not only are there numerous e-book formats available but new electronic reading devices are coming on the market all the time.
Think I will stay with my trusty ipad which at two years of age is already looking incredibly dated.

Which route to go down?...

Joyce Jones (nee Cole ) Sully 1951-53

( Caption – from left to right)
Betty from Swansea,Naomi Llewellyn Seven Sisters, Neath.
Cynthia Klase, Pontllanfraith, who was married to an American.
Ella, who died at Sully and the other patients were not told what happened.
Joyce Cole, from Tredegar now living in Sussex and Jennifer.

I received an email from Liz Owens to tell me that her mother Joyce Jones had been a patient in Sully for two years in 1950.


She suggests I give her Mum a call.


“How did you find out about my Sully blog?” I ask.


“Well, we have got a new laptop,” replied 83-year-old Joyce.

“ And I googled Tredegar- that’s where I come from – and after that I tried Sully.
And up popped your blog.”

Joyce has never revisited Sully or seen its transformation into up market flats so I tell her about it new status and she shares with me some of her memories of Sully when it was a state-of-the-art TB hospital.


Inside Sully

“Every bed had a sea view. It was an amazing building,” said Joyce who was taken ill just before her twenty-first birthday.

Medical treatment
During her two years there she had two partial lobotomies, (removal of a lobe from each lung.)

I tell her of the beautiful grounds which I got to walk for the first time when I revisited it last year even though I spent six months there as a teenager.
Joyce, it turned out, had never been outside either.
“ Most of the time I was too ill. The first 18 months were spent in bed.”

She had streptomycin and PAS, the life saving drug, which was still relatively new. The first trial of the drug took place in 1948 in the UK and Sully was one of the hospitals chosen for the study.
“ I vomited my heart out every other day- always at night. I can still recall the taste of PAS.”

Staff

She has fond memories of the staff in Sully in particular a young German nurse called Gerda who later visited her at her home in Tredegar.


Remembers after she had her second operation coming around in post op to find a wreath on her chest.
“ I thought I had died.”

A young nurse happened to be carrying a wreath when she heard ward Sister Cole call out to her and she was in such a hurry to answer that she dropped the wreath on the nearest bed she was passing.

“The poor nurse got an awful row from sister and I felt sorry for her.”

I must admit though it did give a fright. I thought I had died and passed over to the other side.’”

Christmas
Each Christmas the wards would select a representative to go into Cardiff to do their Christmas shopping.

“Well, I was asked to do it one year just before I left and I was so thrilled. But Sister stopped me. She said I was not fit enough. I was so disappointed.”


“On Christmas Day the surgeon Mr. Dillwyn Thomas carved the turkey. We had a great time.”

Segregation
“Yes I remember how men and women were kept segregated. I never heard of them mixing except once when we had some famous cricketers come in to talk to us and we were all allowed to mix in the recreation room. That is the only time I recall.”


“ But then you did not even mix with women from other wards.”

(Strict segregation between wards was part of the national policy at the time for treating TB patients for fear of cross- infection.)

Sugar and chips
Joyce recalls the incident when one patient, fed up with not getting “seconds” of chips because the staff kept them for themselves got hold of a packet of sugar and sneaked into the kitchen after the trolley had finished its rounds of the wards, and poured sugar on them.

They got their “seconds” after that.

Sully food
“ The food was not awfully good though there was plenty of it. I used to get an uncle to bring in a flask full of bacon, sausages and tinned tomatoes and I would share it out with the others in the ward afterwards.


Death of Ella
Joyce remembers Ella from Ammanford who shared her four-bedded ward.
“She never came back from her operation. Her name was never mentioned though you know she couldn’t have got well and gone home in such a short time.

“ A few of us asked what happened to her we were put off.”

Visiting
Visiting was allowed every weekend. On Saturdays Joyce’s parents would take the bus from Tredegar and on Sundays, Pryce, her boyfriend made the weekly journey to Sully. He wrote to her everyday throughout her two years there, except on Sundays.


Once during very bad snow he left the house in Tredegar at 9 o'clock in the morning to get the bus, but it broke down in the snow and didn’t get into Sully until the bell was ringing for visitors to leave.
He asked for special permission to pop up to the ward to say “Hello” to Joyce.

But permission was refused. He did not get home until after 10 o'clock that night.



Marriage
Joyce and Pryce did marry after she came out of Sully and five years later their daughter Elizabeth was born.
“I remember being told not to breast-feed her”.

They enjoyed 52 years of happy marriage until his death a few years ago.

Life today
Joyce’s health is not so good these days, for she suffers from severe rheumatoid arthritis.

But her laptop offers her a window to the outside world and to memories of a world long past.


Contact
If you were in Sully in the early 1950s and would like to share your memories with Joyce she would love to hear from you.

You can contact Joyce on email through her daughter, Elizabeth Liz Owen

Chips with sugar

Just when you think all interest in Sully has petered out – even the Facebook group is about to be archived through lack of interest- up pops an email from the daughter of an ex-patient.


Liz Owens says:”
My mother (Joyce Jones, nee Cole) and I have just been looking at the Sully blog, and were very interest.

Mum was a patient there from 1951 to 1953; she had two operations for TB, which were done by Dilwyn Thomas. She was in Dyfed Ward, where every bed had a view of the sea, in fact every patient in the hospital did.
The staff were wonderful, and especially Gerda who was German and went to visit mum's family in Tredegar one weekend.
After 1953, no more treatment was necessary and mum is now 83; after 60 years, she is always grateful to the wonderful staff at Sully.”


Another email follows with a Sully story:

"Mum tells a tale that none of the patients were ever offered second helpings if there were chips on the menu - the staff used to eat them instead. The patients got fed up with this, and one of them sneaked out to the kitchen and covered the leftover chips with sugar. The staff of course could not complain."

Well, I have interviewed Joyce and she has some interesting stories to tell. As soon as I get her photos I will put it up on this blog.

Originally from Tredegar Joyce now lives in Sussex with her daughter.

Warren Lewis- childhood photos from Sully hospital

Warren Lewis has sent me some photos of his time in Sully hospital.

He belongs to both the Sully Facebook and the Tetralogy group.

Says Warren:

" I was in Sully in 1971, when I was 7 years old.

I was born with Fallots Tetralogy in 1964. I then had the operation in 1971 in Sully.

I was on Morgannwg ward and I still have a present the nurses gave me when I was there.

The present was a poster of Donald Duck and all the staff had signed it."


Thank you Warren for sharing these memories with us.

Howard Richards -child patient

I got a phone call this afternoon from Howard Richards who had a heart operation as a ten year old in Sully hospital.

He says:" My mother kept saying that there was something wrong me and eventually a surgeon confirmed it. I had a heart murmur."
He was to become one of the first children ever to be operated on using the new heart-lung machine.

I have asked Howard to write his own account of his memories which he says are still "very vivid".



Now in his early 60's and recently retired he still has his hospital appointment book and he would over to make contact with the surgeon who saved his life. His parents were told that he would be dead by the time he was 13 or 14 and if he did have the operation then there was only a slender chance that he would survive.


What a dreadful decision for his parents to be faced with! Well, they took the chance and Howard survived and went on to lead a very healthy life.

Now he would like to say a big "thank you" to that surgeon who saved his life.

Seagulls in the wards at Sully

Steve Dorkings tells the story:

"My father was a patient at Sully in the early 60's.

I was about 9 years old and rarely allowed in to visit him (over 13's only). Despite serious illness over many months he still recounts happy times as a patient, including coaxing the seagulls into the ward from the balcony, much to sisters annoyance!"

Steve Dorkings -retired biomedical scientist - Sully

Just when I think I am going to give up on trying to put together the Sully story something happens to encourage me to persevere.
Like this email I received from a former scientist who trained at Sully.

Let Steven tell it in his own words:
" I started my career as a Junior Medical Laboratory Technician in Pathology, training to diagnose disease by laboratory methods at Sully Hospital. (The profession is now known as Biomedical Scientists a branch of the many little recognised Healthcare Scientists).

The Pathology department was then quite small unlike the modern automated laboratories of today.

I was there from 1968 to c.1972. I was taught everything from collecting blood on the wards for Haematology to diagnosing TB from sputum examination. There were several trainees, pathology then just on the verge of great breakthroughs, nothing was automated, and made very good friends.

I met and married my wife there, she was a junior nurse who later went onto be involved in ECG. It was a great place to work with the staff all knowing each other by first names from the coal boiler stoker “Ginger” to the hospital superintendant Dr “Bill” Foreman. I was there when heart valve replacement and perfusion was being pioneered. On call for Biochemistry I had to monitor the Na, K and blood gasses of such patients from table to ITU, sometimes on the hour every hour all afternoon and night. In Haematology we had to perform prothrombin and clotting times and cross match blood. In those days X matching 20 pints of blood for a open heart patient through wasnt a bad day!


Despite individual patient sad fortunes it was a great place to work and the staff had a terrific camaraderie and genuinely cared for the patients. Sully put me on a career which I pursued across Wales, Scotland and England contributing to many pathology laboratories in the NHS. I have just retired after 42 years as a biomedical scientist specialising in medical microbiology and can honestly say the years spent at Sully were the best years of my career and equipped me with a passion for my subject, the NHS, its staff and most importantly, the patient. I learnt much more than just the science. Thank you Sully Hospital.
Steve Dorkings CSi, FIBMS, Cert.NHS Man."


And thank you Steve for sharing your story with us.

Before the advent of high tech laboratories guiea pigs were used. If they were lived you knew you were cured.

Jenny Hicks - ex patient

Just when I thought I would have to abandon this project through lack of ex patients coming forward I get a phone call this morning from Jenny Hicks.

She has had a long association with Sully starting with having her lung out as a 12 year old in 1962. She suffers from non cystic fibrosis and a rare skin disease called Steven-johnson syndrome.

The latter condition was brought on as a six year old when she had a severe reaction to antibiotics.

Despite over 50 years of ill health and daily pain she is remarkably cheerful, yet another example of the power of the human spirit often in the face of great adversity.

Her memories of Sully are vivid and fond.
" I still dream of the place."
Jenny has agreed to do a full scale interview which I hope to do later this week.

She lives in Cowbridge. " The doctors told me I would never work or have children. I defied them. I did both."

She is a survivor and I look forward to hearing more of her story."

Facebook- Sully

We have a discussion group on Facebook and so far a few ex patients have turned up. Mostly though it is ex staff and relatives of ex staff including one retired nurse who is now living in one of the Sully apartments!

What is noticeable though is that everyone speaks very highly of the days when it was a hospital, very much at the cutting edge of medicine with pioneering work in the treatment and management of TB then of heart surgery.