Narryna the Convalescent Hostel 1946-53

The Mercury, 1 August 1946

Tuberculosis (TB), a bacterial lung disease, has stalked society for centuries. It was also known as ‘the Consumption’ as people wasted away to a lingering death. In the early 1800s it was responsible for almost one third of deaths in London. The Romantic poet John Keats (1794-1819) was the poster boy for refined TB and it appeared in operas like La Traviata (Verdi, 1856) and La bohème (Puccini, 1896). Fashion embraced the consumption as an ideal of feminine beauty – pale skin, rouged lips and cheeks and corsets creating wraith-like waists.

But TB, as Charles Dickens noted, was mainly an illness of the poor. It affected working people living closely in damp and cold tenements across the cities of Europe. The death rate was prodigious – close to 50% of those infected died. Of course, TB came to Australia in the cramped steerages of the immigrant ships.

Before the 1940s 10% of deaths from an infectious disease in Australia were from TB. Tasmania had the highest rate of TB infection in the country, no doubt as a result of being Australia’s smallest economy (with areas of actual poverty) and the climate which led people to cluster indoors over the colder months. No social distancing there! Even today there is a TB clinic at the Royal Hobart Hospital.

During World War II every person entering the armed forces was screened for TB using portable x-ray machines and bacteriological testing. This changed public health approaches. While there had been Tasmanian State-run clinics from 1939, the medical profession saw a need for a large-scale screening and treatment program and turned to charities to resource it. By the mid-1940s people with TB were isolated in sanatoriums in Hobart, Launceston and Perth. In Hobart the sanatorium was part of the St John’s Park hospital complex at New Town.

The Tasmanian health system did not provide for recuperation. Former patients, especially men, could find it hard to find employment if it were known that they had been discharged from the TB sanatorium owing to the social stigma around the disease. What was needed was a place to convalesce.

In 1946, Narryna, for two decades a guest house, was up for sale. Auctioneers, Freeman, Duff and Co. promoted it in The Mercury, 6 April 1946 as in

‘a central position only a few minutes walk to the centre of the City. The property must commend itself to anyone wanting a proposition for residential flats, guest house, hospital or private home.’

A week later the auction was cancelled. The Tasmanian Government had bought Narryna for £4,500 as a convalescent home for TB patients. It was operated under the control of the Tasmanian Sanatoria After-Care Association (the southern branch of the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis in Australia) and the Tasmanian Sanatorium Committee.

The Tasmanian Wattle League supported Narryna as part of the Tasmanian TB treatment campaign. Silver Wattle Day started in Tasmania in 1838, and it was the sale of wattle sprigs and badges each year on 1 September (together with other fundraising) that provided the major financial support - £2000 annually - for the running and maintenance of the Narryna Hostel. Other organisations contributed, including the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), a Masonic organisation that provided health cover for its members. The IOOF raised money to furnish two wards that accommodated two recovering patients in each room. These were officially opened in 1949. Private donors included a Mrs C. H. Richardson, who raised more than £200 through selling her woven textiles. Mr and Mrs C. H. Richardson later raised funds to furnish a further two wards.

The Mercury, 6 April 1946

In May 1947 the Narryna TB hostel accommodated 30 ‘inmates’. Narryna first accommodated male and female patients (with two thirds of TB cases in men) but by 1950-51 it became a men only hostel.

The Mercury, 31 August 1949.

The bedroom shown is now the far end of the large exhibition room.

By 1952 the Wattle League and the Tasmanian Sanatoria After-Care Association had raised more than £5000 to open a separate women’s TB hostel, purchasing a 12 room house, ‘Largo’ on 1 ½ acres of land in Park Street, North Hobart. The Mercury of 5 September 1952, reported that:

‘At the men's hostel at Narryna, the daily average of convalescents has been about 16, and there have been as many as 24 inmates at one time. At the present time, there are 18 inmates’.

Running costs for the Narryna Hostel in 1951 were £3200. The Tasmanian Sanatoria After-Care Association working in collaboration with the Tasmanian Chest Hospital (a voluntary body) had:

‘recently provided for the inmates of the hospital a library of 1,000 books and an electric sewing machine. It has given regular screenings of films fortnightly, provided Christmas functions, and arranged for visits by friendly societies. … All funds since the formation have been raised by public appeals and several large legacies … Dr Wunderley [of the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis in Australia] has publicly stated that Tasmania leads the field in this phase of tuberculosis treatment’.

In the early 1950s Government health policy emphasised decentralisation by providing in-home care and local clinics for recovering TB patients. This spelt the end of Narryna as a TB convalescent home. In 1953 there were 249 TB patients in Tasmania with 105 hospital inpatients and a further 144 receiving in-home care. Narryna stood empty. The Government began to look for another use of Narryna by advertising that part of the property was available to be used as an engineering factory.

The Mercury 22 December 1953

On 3 April 1954 ‘Vigilant’ wrote in The Mercury, saying that:

‘a last minute bid is to be made to save it [Narryna] from going under the auctioneer’s hammer … Residents of Battery Pt. consider that the building should be preserved in the same way as Entally in Northern Tasmania, and a deputation is being arranged to the responsible Minister in the hope that the Government will accede to this request. It would indeed be unfortunate if such a fine old home ended its days as a type of factory …’

The Mercury of 14 April 1954 reported that the Royal Hobart Hospital chest X-ray clinic was to be relocated to Narryna. The previous day’s edition of The Mercury reported that The Chief Secretary (Mr. White) had received a deputation consisting of representatives of the Tasmanian Historical Research Society, the Battery Pt. Progress Association and the Shiplovers’ Society requesting that Narryna ‘be preserved and converted to a museum’. This community lobbying prevailed and Narryna opened to the public as a museum on 30 November 1957 after a lengthy restoration program. 

The Mercury, 13th April 1954

Narryna’s path to historical museum was paved by a public health crisis. Its acquisition by the Tasmanian Government reflected the priority given to tuberculosis as a threat to the Tasmanian population at a time of post-World War II reconstruction. The Tasmanian Tuberculosis After-Care Sanatorium at Narryna offered the best care through fundraising. Community representation ensured that Narryna did not end its days as a factory. Instead it remains one of Australia’s best loved small museums. 

Do you have any photographs, documents, letters or stories relating to Narryna as a TB convalescent hostel? If you do, we would be thrilled to learn more. Please email us at: narryna@tmag.tas.gov.au

Author: Jon Sumby

Dr Sumby is a research associate at IMAS in International Fisheries. He volunteers his research skills to investigating the byways of Narryna's history. Currently he's the co-editor of the Haig Journals Transcription Project, which will be completed this year. In his free time he enjoys walking, talking with dogs, and chatting with people over a cuppa.