Collapsing girls riddle

9:26am Thursday 28th February 2008

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TURN the clock back 43 years and the story of how a mystery illness struck 94 pupils of a Blackburn school made front page headlines.

The drama unfolded in 1965 at St Hilda's C of E School for Girls and a fleet of ambulances ferried the girls to Park Lee hospital.

There, special wards had to be opened and mattresses laid out on the floor. While some pupils were discharged the same day, 24 were admitted, in some cases for a week and were visited by the school head Miss Ruth Ellam.

Every available district nurse and ambulanceman was diverted to the school, as scores of girls collapsed within minutes of each other and at one time there were seven ambulances lined up in the playground.

Four days later the illness struck again with 49 children involved and the authorities sealed off the school.

Firemen wearing breathing apparatus were called in to scrub and fumigate every inch of the premises with antisceptic spray and even the drains were flushed.

Doctors and laboratory technicians carried out tests to trace the origin of the illness and one factor they considered was that some girls had also collapsed earlier in the week awaiting the arrival of Princess Margaret to Blackburn Cathedral for a ceremony to re-hallow the nave.

She was delayed by fog in London, while in sun-drenched Blackburn, there were 140 casualties among the waiting crowds and the cathedral grounds resembled a casualty clearing station as St John Ambulancemen treated them.

Youngsters from St Peter, St Hilda's and the Cathedral School were in the throng which finally caught a glimpse of the Princess when she turned up - 88 minutes late.

After a detailed probe, however, Dr John Ardley, Blackburn's Medical Officer of Health said the illness was a result of toxic inhalation.

Poisonous materials -smoke from a nearby wood preserving works, fumes from a foundry and those of the school's own boiler, combined to make the pupils ill.