Between Less Eligibility and the NHS
The Changing Place of Poor Law Hospitals in England and Wales, 1929-39
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12238393 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alysa Levene (Oxford Brookes University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 322-345 |
| Publication date | 2009-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Twentieth Century British History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0955-2359 • E-ISSN: 1477-4674 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/tcbh/hwp018 |
| PMID | 20027911 |
| OpenAlex | W2062408120 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
In 1929, the Local Government Act broke up the apparatus of the Poor Law Guardians and Unions, and transferred responsibility for the care of the poor to local councils. In theory, the period between the passing of the Act and the formation of the National Health Service witnessed a large-scale reclassification of the sick poor as patients rather than paupers. In reality, as this investigation of contemporary judgements of hospital quality and bed and staff numbers in English and Welsh county boroughs shows, the national picture was very varied at the local level. Local and sometimes regional traditions of care, finance and council priorities had a large influence on the ongoing development of a unified medical service which included the poor. In the best case scenario, hospitals were classified by patient type, and the principle of 'less eligibility' was discarded. Elsewhere, economic status continued to direct medical treatment, but in almost all cases, the chronic and elderly poor were more likely to remain in low-quality and unmodernized buildings than the acutely sick. The investigation highlights the disjuncture between the changed vision for the sick poor and its patchy enforcement on the ground
Business · Economic growth · Economics · Enforcement · Geography · Government (linguistics · Health care · Law enforcement · Local government · Political science · Poor law · Quality (philosophy · Service (business · Welsh · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Medicine · Law · Public Administration
She killed not from hate, but from love
Local Government Health Services in Interwar England
Healthcare and the community in modern Britain
Creating the Poor Law Legacy
Irish partition and poor law reform in interwar Northern Ireland
Health, wealth and party in inter-war London
Eggs, rags and whist drives
| Citations per year | 0.41 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2009 - 2021 (13) |
| Highly cited | No |