ABSTRACT
The Hospital had been founded in 1839, initially through the commitment of a lone clergyman who had propagated the idea and collected early funds. Landed benevolence helped it on its way—the land being given by Lord, Lady Sidmouth and £4,000 by the owner of a local stately residence, Richard Benyon de Beauvoir. The interest of the Association here is only that it existed, but that it was to be allowed to work in the long term as a way of relating the people of Reading to their Hospital. In 1896, after some deliberation, a significant change in the form of the day took place. In the same way that the decision to base meetings of the Reading Literary and Scientific Society in the University was a significant date in the social history of the town, so too the switch in emphasis from 1891-type parades, services to house-to-house collecting in 1896 was a change resonant of far wider changes in society.
