ABSTRACT
The extensive discussions of the transformation in hospital funding have not been accompanied by similar attention to the substantial growth in expenditure which drove the need for new sources of finance. The ministry of health surveyor noted that the corporation's claim to spend a fifth of the outlay of Leeds on maternity and child welfare owed much to the fact that as far as possible all the costs of confinements in institutions are recovered through the public assistance committee. Voluntary hospitals, as a product of nineteenth-century subscriber democracy, produced extensive reports of the finances and activities of the institution to demonstrate their public accountability. Moreover, across the cities and sectors the pattern and form of fund raising owed much to local social, economic and political cultures and health needs. With the 1929 local government act the ministry of health became supportive of some authorities, including Leeds, urging them to undertake improvements to their new facilities.
