Polio's lasting legacy: 'They crossed roads to avoid us'

It may have been forgotten in the collective memory, but the effects of the polio epidemic in the 1940s and 1950s continue to be felt by survivors. We speak to three men about their memories of contracting the disease and the impact it has had on their lives 

Pat Ingoldsby who has post polio syndrome. Picture: Moya Nolan

It is more than seven decades ago, but some childhood memories remain vivid for Pat Ingoldsby.

The poet and presenter of much-loved RTÉ children’s programmes including Pat’s Hat and Pat’s Chat, contracted polio as an infant in 1942. Growing up in Malahide, Dublin, he wasn’t fully aware of what had happened to him, but the disease had a profound impact.

“I missed a lot of my primary schooling due to a combination of polio and asthma,” says the 79-year-old. 

“My left arm was totally paralysed, and my legs never worked very well. I spent a lot of my childhood at home on the sofa, my father carried me downstairs every morning. At lunchtime, I would hear the boys from the local primary school out on the village green, running around playing cowboys and chasing, all the things I couldn’t do.”

When the Covid pandemic hit, there were obvious comparisons to be drawn with the Spanish influenza pandemic in 1918, and the TB crisis in Ireland in the 1940s. What was mentioned less often was the devastating polio epidemic, which spanned the 1940s and 1950s, mainly affecting children. Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a virus that can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing paralysis.

Journalist Patrick Cockburn Picture: Martin Hunter

In his 2006 memoir The Broken Boy, which has recently been reissued with a chapter on Covid, journalist Patrick Cockburn recounts his experience of contracting polio at the age of six, while living in Youghal, Co Cork. His brother Andrew, who was three years older, also contracted the disease. Cockburn describes himself as “uniquely unlucky”— his parents Claud and Patricia, returned from England to their house in east Cork, despite the fact that Cork city was in the midst of a polio epidemic. At least 50,000 people got the virus during the outbreak — one of the last great outbreaks of polio in western Europe, ahead of the first doses of the Salk vaccine that arrived in Cork in 1957. Although the virus was eradicated in Ireland, it is still endemic in some parts of the world.

Cockburn was initially sent to St Finbarr’s, then a fever hospital, for treatment before being moved to the orthopaedic hospital in Gurranabraher. He says St Finbarr’s was regarded with terror by people in Cork.

They crossed the road outside to avoid walking close to its walls for fear of infection. 

"It was widely believed that the authorities were lying about the death rate and bodies were being smuggled out through a back door,” he writes.

It was an inordinately frightening experience for young children to be taken away and placed in isolation. Treatment often required being placed in an iron lung, a respirator which enclosed most of a person’s body.

“It was terrifying to be in the iron lung. One girl in St Finbarr’s was put into an iron lung and she compared it to being buried in a coffin,” Cockburn says.

He adds that while he found the doctors and nurses in St Finbarr’s to be kind, Gurranabraher was a different prospect.

“St Finbarr’s was pretty good, Gurranabraher was pretty bad. I think it was a lack of resources, basically. They had concentrated the best doctors and nurses in St Finbarr’s and they didn’t have much left. I stopped speaking for a bit….my parents thought I was dying. I probably was.

“They took me out. I wondered later had I maybe exaggerated how bad it was in Gurranabraher, but I got in touch with other people who were there and they all had equally negative feelings about the place as I did.”

As well as writing about his own experiences, Cockburn interviewed polio survivors and some of the doctors and nurses who treated them.

He asked his interviewees why the polio epidemic was forgotten about so quickly.

“The people who experienced it said everyone was so frightened that they didn’t want to think about it and then, when they had the vaccine, they didn’t have to think about it,” says Cockburn.

There are obvious resonances with the Covid pandemic and the natural inclination to put it behind us.

“I think so. Though I would say there was a greater fear during the polio epidemic because it affected children rather than older people. That added that extra bit of terror — parents saw lots of pictures of children in iron lungs, in wheelchairs or on crutches.”

Living with disabilities

Memories of the polio epidemic, and the physical and mental pain it inflicted, may have receded into the past but for many survivors, the effects have once again made themselves felt as they get older.

Polio Survivors Ireland is a charity which offers support to those still suffering the effects of the disease. It says as many as 7,000 polio survivors in Ireland are living with disabilities — their condition is known as post-polio syndrome.

Psychotherapist Terry O’Sullivan contracted polio when he was three or four years old, in the early 1950s. Now aged 71, the Dubliner was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome 20 years ago. 

Terry O'Sullivan, having contracted polio as a child is now battling post-polio syndrome. Picture: Moya Nolan

“I was working in a clinic here in Dublin. I had been having difficulty walking up stairs and one of the physiotherapists there noticed. She diagnosed me with post-polio syndrome.” O’Sullivan has grown progressively less mobile and had several falls in recent years.

“The post-polio syndrome has been as bad as the original diagnosis, when I lost the power of my legs as a child. I have a lot of pain, stiffness and peculiar things like losing the sensation of standing and walking on my feet. I am not one for complaining but I get angry about that. I know polio doesn’t have a soul, it is an infection but Christ, it keeps on giving, in an ironic way.”

He says he is determined to stay positive and is still working virtually. He praises his partner, former RTÉ newsreader and psychoanalyst Michael Murphy for his support.

“Michael is extraordinary and so kind, without him I would be really lost. One feels vulnerable. But I believe in working until the last day because it keeps one’s mind active.”

Like Ingoldsby, O’Sullivan missed out on much of the joy of physical activity as a child.

“I wasn’t allowed to play any sports or games or anything like that. The only thing we could do was swim, so I joined a swimming club which was for polio survivors. I loved that. That was the only outlet where I could enjoy the company of other people my own age.”

One particularly cruel moment stands out in his memory.

“It was in the era of the sugar lump [US doctor Dr Albert Sabin found that a weakened version of the live virus could be taken orally and it was given to children in a sugar lump]. I was taken out into the school yard and shown as an example of what would happen to you if you didn’t take the sugar lump. I didn’t really understand the implications of that until I was older.”

Determined to succeed

Similarly to Cockburn and Ingoldsby, O’Sullivan went on to carve out a successful career in his field. As Ingoldsby says, he has found people who survived polio to have a particular determination. He says his condition wasn’t discussed much by his parents, which he felt helped him.

“I don’t know whether they were insightful or whatever it was, it certainly helped me.... When I was trying to walk, my mother and father told me I was determined — polio people seem to be so bloody determined — I just kept dragging myself up at the sideboard, holding on to the handles and falling. My father refused to pick me up. My mother would say, ‘Paddy, would you go and give him a hand’ and he would say no. They just left me to it. They did me a favour.”

Ingoldsby says he went through life not mentioning he had polio.

Pat Ingoldsby who has post polio syndrome. Picture: Moya Nolan

“When I did the children’s television programmes, it involved a lot of lunatic, unpredictable careering around the studio, with crowds of kids. It was only years later when people showed me a couple of recordings, I could see the physical signs but no-one else noticed. That is one thing I imagine you would find we have in common — there are not many of us left but we were always determined not to miss out.”

Unfortunately, Ingoldsby is also suffering from the effects of post-polio syndrome, although he is quick to count his blessings and acknowledge the importance of simple pleasures.

“I have seemed to spend my life on the receiving end of a tsunami of support. I can’t praise the HSE highly enough, in my personal experience. I have to keep focusing on keeping my spirits up and avoiding the big heavy darkness that keeps trying to come down upon me, simply because most of my life was spent outside, interacting, having the craic.

But as long as I am either sitting in my comfy chair in my sitting room as I am now, or I manage to make it upstairs to my comfy bed, I’m OK. The most important thing to me is the availability of a bag of Hunky Dory’s cheese and onion. I don’t know how it is possible to be alive having eaten the amount of those that I have.”

WORDS TO THE VIRUS WHICH FOUND ME IN 1942 

How did you find me?

How in the name of God did you find me?

A tiny infant…down in the heart of old Malahide village…in the little house beside the coal yard.

Were you looking for me or what?

Jesus – I was only just born.

I knew nothing at all.

The name they put on you was bigger than me.

Infantile Paralysis.

That is what they called you.

You went around the place paralysing babies.

And you found me down there in that beautiful place beside the village green looking over to the island looking out to the sea.

You came into me and you made me cry.

What time did you come in?

What day was it because I don’t know?

What brought you down that way in 1942?

Which way did you come?

Was it down New Street past Bertie Boyle’s or did you come round from the Back Strand under the railway arch past Lesley Riley’s?

Was the tide full in?

I don’t know that either.

Why did you go past Annie Daniel’s house and come into ours?

There was me and Michael, Ma and Da.

Why did you come into me?

Did I make a sound as you were going past?

Was that the way it happened?

Was the wireless on?

What could you hear?

I think it was a cowardly thing that you did.

To take the life away from my arm and put hidden slow wasting in my legs was a cowardly thing indeed.

Fifty years on I am still finding the damage of you.

Fifty years on you find new tears in me.

Are you still alive?

Are you still doing your virus stuff?

Are you still alive or did something wipe you out?

I would like to know your name.

Mine is Pat.

I played soccer in spite of you and I was good.

— Pat Ingoldsby 

• For support and information, see polio.ie
• The Broken Boy, by Patrick Cockburn, is out now.
• In Dublin They Really Tell You Things by Pat Ingoldsby, Selected Poems 1986–2021, is available to purchase from the Museum of Literature, Ireland, see moli.ie