ABSTRACT

This chapter explains that the ways in which the authorities defined health problems and chose responses to them usually served to legitimize and maintain the existing political and socio-economic order in the cities. The burgeoning literature on women's voluntary efforts and the rise of the welfare states has shown that middle-class women, despite being at the margin of or entirely excluded from the official political process, had an important role in shaping health campaigns. While the Birmingham Infants' Health Society (BIHS) and other similar organizations working in close co-operation with the Birmingham Health Department shaped health policies in subtle ways, some other women's groups challenged the authorities' views more vigorously. By the time the first sanatorium was opened in Birmingham in 1909, local authorities, general practitioners and voluntary organizations had managed to assure hundreds of tubercular patients that sanatorium treatment was their best hope for regaining their health.