Hospitals throughout the nineteenth century remained the one of the main channels for the Victorians’ voluntary zeal, but from the 1850s onwards tensions emerged as charity became ill-suited to meeting all the hospitals’ financial needs. An historiographical survey shows that metropolitan hospitals have been seen as an institution funded and administered through philanthropy, but these views are insufficient. By looking at seven hospitals in London between 1850 and 1898 a different view is suggested. Hospital governors were adept at manipulating philanthropic interests through their innovative fundraising tactics, playing on a wide range of motivations for benevolent action. Administrators used feelings from guilt to gratitude to promote support, suggesting that philanthropy and contributions cannot be constrained by any simple approach. Using the hospitals’ financial records, charitable contributions are placed in the overall context of funding in an institution that drew its income from a wide variety of sources. Over time these sources of funding changed their relative relation to one another in a process of financial diversification. Expenditure, expansion, the financial demands of different hospitals, local charitable resources, competition for funds, and popular perceptions of individual institutions all created pressures on finances that made diversification desirable. Financial diversification, however, took place in a context where the hospitals’ voluntary ethic was not affected. Hospitals experienced administrative expansions as they adopted more medical functions, but management remained on voluntary lines and administrators continued to be drawn from London’s wealthy business and social elite. Within this changing managerial structure doctors competed for authority and asserted their influence through a series of internal conflicts which often stressed the importance of medical science. A comparative investigation of the Whitechapel Union shows that a similar process of change occurred. Financial and administrative diversification was therefore more the consequence of institutional healthcare rather than a development limited to the voluntary hospitals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:307202 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Waddington, Keir |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10053583/ |
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