Community Sponsorship and the Hospital Patient in Late Eighteenth-Century England

Voluntary hospitals provided an important new locus of care for the treatment of the sick poor in eighteenth-century England. Established in both London and the provinces, their numbers grew from one in 1720 to thirty-three in 1800. Financed by charity and sustained by ‘that most characteristic eighteenth-century device, the subscription’, voluntary hospitals were joint enterprises, in whose support the moderately wealthy could join forces with the rich and famous. ¹ Subscribers were central to these institutions. They governed and administered the charities through courts and committees, they elected the physicians and surgeons, and (of particular significance to the present discussion) in proportion to the value of their subscriptions, they had the right to nominate patients for admission.