We have had an e-mail from Gaynor Fisher, who brings to light a fascinating piece of Bradford’s medical history.

Gaynor is asking if anyone remembers the days when the Leeds Road Hospital in Penny Oaks, off Leeds Road, was the Bradford Infectious Diseases Hospital?

We’ll let Gaynor take it away...

The lovely little girl in the picture (right) is my Auntie Margaret who caught diptheria in 1942 when she was two; it can’t have been long after the picture was taken that she became ill. My mum Jean, born in 1941, was nine months old at the time and her younger sister, Kathleen, was born in February 1943.

My mum and auntie recently asked if i’d like to try and find out where in Scholemoor cemetery little Margaret was buried.

Margaret was taken ill with diptheria in July of 1942 and was probably taken to the hospital at Leeds Road in a blue fever van. Sadly she did not recover and died there after a stay of 39 days on August 17, aged two years six months.

Though I’ve found researching Margaret quite sad, its also been a privilege and a good experience. To start off with I had no concrete details, not even her birth or death date, only that she had died of diptheria as a toddler, but I was able to uncover things little by little with pure determination, the help of tools like ancestry.com and good old-fashioned library books.

The cemetery records stated she was in the Bradford Fever Hospital at the time of her death. As I approached the site the old building loomed up suddenly and unexpectedly, it was quite surreal... what an imposing place: huge, quite austere, fascinating and impressive – it must have been so frightening for a young child taken there alone, especially at night.

I felt compelled to find out as much as I could about its life as a fever hospital, especially during July and August 1942. I’m sure the nurses there were as amazing as the others I have read about. Frustratingly, the only stories I could find were from nurses who were working in fever hospitals down south, though I have devoured these gratefully as they have at least given me some clue as to what Margaret’s last weeks of life may have been like.

During my research of other fever hospitals, I’ve learned that the children were not allowed toys that they could take away with them, and only comics and sweets could be left by family with staff, as they could be thrown away.

I’d like the public to come forward and share their stories with me. I suppose I am hoping that some of these will give us more cheerful news.

Did the children have happy times too, could they play? What were the Bradford fever nurses like, were the children given hugs and cuddles to make up for not being able to have contact with their parents?

Were any of your readers once employed there as nurses or hospital staff during or around the summer of 1942? Can they tell me what it was like to work there in the children’s diptheria ward? What did it look like inside? Does anyone remember treating Margaret?

I wonder how Margaret caught diptheria but my mum escaped it. Was it very crowded in the street, perhaps there were evacuees?

My mum tells me that they lived in a friendly neighbourhood with everyone pulling together. They lived at 29 Southfield Square, near the centre of Bradford, and remained for many years.

They were Julie and Robert (Bob) McChesney and Margaret, Jean and Kathleen. Does anyone remember them? Does anyone remember living in the square in 1942?

I would like to share memories of what life was like in Southfield Square during the Second World War.

Anyone who can help Gaynor with her research – and we apologise here because we had to cut down her fascinating memoir to fit it in – can contact us at the usual address.