ABSTRACT
In the bigger picture, this study bridges the gap between those which emphasise the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and those whose focus is the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines six hospitals within a single large city, and explores issues of competition, the relationship between hospitals and the local economy, as well as the relationship of institutions to a specific urban philanthropic milieu. This also permits a demonstration of some differences between the experience of the provincial city – Birmingham – and that of London, which Waddington, Prochaska and Rivett have examined.3 It looks back to an era of subscriber dominance, discussed in Chapter 2 by Bronwyn Croxon, and forward to the shift to mass funding dealt with by Steve Cherry and John Mohan in Chapters 4 and 5. This shift was in part a process of democratisation, and in part a transition from lay individuals and the church as the key donors, to one in which businesses and the leisure industry play a greater role. In the process charity became more scientific but, paradoxically, this humanised relations between the institution and patients.
