ABSTRACT
The medical charity sermons for the early Georgian Bath Infirmary were dominated by paternalism. At the moral centre of charity in early modern England was the concept of paternalism, which construed society as a hierarchical but organic whole held together by reciprocal responsibilities. Of medieval origin, paternalism was rooted in the relations between lord and vassal, and reinforced by the church and royal government. The Societies for the Reformation of Manners had begun their campaign against vice, debauchery and profaneness in the 1690s, and though the Anglican establishment was deserting them for charity schools and workhouses by the early eighteenth century, the conviction that wealth induced moral degeneration became more widespread. The florid use of guilt and anxiety to exhort church congregations to the paternalist obligations of the tributary relationship exposed the degree to which early Georgian Bath society was racked by the ‘embarrassment of riches’.
