ABSTRACT
The politics of hospital provision in early twentieth-century Britain acquired the hospital infrastructure which would form the institutional basis of the NHS. This chapter examines the development of the twenty or so hospitals operating in Leeds and Sheffield between the wars, paying attention to the growth of sites, buildings and bed numbers in the voluntary, poor law and municipal sector. The development of voluntary specialist hospitals was focused on patient groups and medical practitioners largely excluded from the general hospitals, particularly women, children and maternity cases. The extension of maternity beds and minor surgery attracted non-pauper patients while the 1929 local government act gave councils the opportunity to appropriate poor law infirmaries (PLIs) as general hospital. The outbreak of the Second World War both disrupted plans and created new configurations of services and facilities as central government became involved in directing hospital provision.
