Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid: The Consumption of Health and Welfare in Britain, c.1550û1950

This book focuses on the recipients of charity, rather than the donors or institutions. By doing so, it tackles searching questions of social control and cohesion, and the relationship between providers and recipients in a new and revealing manner. It is shown how these issues changed over the course of the nineteenth century, as the frontier between state and the voluntary sector shifted away from charity towards greater reliance on public finance, workers' contributions and mutual aid. In turn, these new sources of assistance enriched civil society, encouraging democratization, empowerment and social inclusion for previously marginalized members of the community. The history of the voluntary sector in British towns and cities has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Nevertheless, whilst there have been a number of valuable contributions looking at issues such as charity as a key welfare provider, charity and medicine, and charity and power in the community, there has been no book length exploration of the role and position of the recipient. The book opens with an introduction that locates medicine, charity and mutual aid within their broad historiographical and urban contexts. Twelve archive-based, inter-related chapters follow. Their main chronological focus is the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which witnessed such momentous changes in the attitudes to, and allocation of, charity and poor relief. However, individual chapters on the early modern period, the eighteenth century and the aftermath of the Second World War provide illuminating context and help ensure that the volume provides a systematic overview of the subject that will be of interest to social, urban, and medical historians. Contents: Introduction, Anne Borsay and Peter Shapely; 'Pressed down by want and afflicted with poverty, wounded and maimed in war or worn down with age?' Cathedral Almsmen in England 15381914, Ian Atherton, Eileen McGrath and Alannah Tomkins; From common rights to cold charity: enclosure and poor allotments in the 18th and 19th centuries, Sylvia Pinches; Kinship and welfare in early modern England: sometimes charity begins at home, Sheila Cooper; Deaf children and charitable education in Britain 17901944, Anne Borsay; Joseph Townend and the Manchester infirmary: a plebeian patient in the Industrial Revolution, Stuart Hogarth; Investigating the 'deserving' poor: charity and the voluntary hospitals in 19th-century Birmingham, Jonathan Reinarz; Choice and the children's hospital: Great Ormond Street Hospital patients and their families 18551900, Andrea Tanner; Mental health charity for the middling sort: Holloway sanatorium 18851900, Anne C. Shepherd; Urban tuberculosis patients and sanatorium treatment in the early 20th century, Flurin Condrau; The politics of voluntary health care in Middlesborough 190048, Barry Doyle; The co-operative men's guild, citizenship and the limits of mutual aid, Peter Shapely; Retelling the stories of clients of voluntary social work agencies in Britain after 1945, Pat Starkey; Index. About the Author: Anne Borsay is Professor in the School of Health Science, University of Wales Swansea, UK. Dr Peter Shapely is a lecturer at the School of History, University of Wales Bangor, UK.