The Voluntary Hospitals Database project
Location and future operation of the database
Publications drawing on the project
The idea of creating a database of the surviving statistics of British and Irish voluntary hospitals was proposed by John Mohan and Martin Powell. Based respectively in the Geography and Social Policy departments of the University of Portsmouth, they wanted to conduct a spatial and temporal analysis of the voluntary hospitals between the 1890s and 1940s. The key questions were: first, how did patterns of provision and utilisation differ by area, and how did these change over time? Second, how did the distribution of charitable financing vary by place, and what were the trends in income and expenditure? Funding was raised from the Leverhulme Trust, and the team was joined by Anstey Aizlewood as clerical assistant and Martin Gorsky as research fellow. Shane Murnion provided computing support and Paul Ell arranged the scanning of printed material. The database was constructed in ORACLE at the University of Portsmouth between 1996 and 1999.
The final phase of the project involved the preparation of the database for web access, and linkage to the Hospitals Record Database of the National Archives/Wellcome Trust. This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust, under its Research Resources in Medical History scheme, in a grant held at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine by Gorsky and Mohan in 2008-2009. At LSHTM Rachel Herring was the Research Fellow and Chris Grundy provided GIS support. The web design and implementation was undertaken by Geodata at the University of Southampton. Christine Glew at the National Archives facilitated the linkage exercise.
The database contains statistical material drawn from two main sources: Burdett’s Hospitals and Charities: The Year Book of Philanthropy and Hospital Annual, published between 1892 and 1930; and its successor, The Hospitals Yearbook, produced by the Central Bureau of Hospital Information and ‘issued under the auspices of the Joint Council of the Order of St John and the British Red Cross Society and the British Hospitals Association’. Henry Burdett, who initiated these yearbooks, was a philanthropist and champion of the voluntary hospital movement. His aim was to produce an almanac of medical charities both for benevolent donors and for the trustees and administrators of hospitals seeking information about the organisation and costs of similar institutions. After Burdett’s death there were some gaps between 1921 and 1928, before continuous records resumed again with The Hospitals Yearbook. To fill these gaps we drew on the Order of St John’s Third - Ninth Annual Report on the Voluntary Hospitals in Great Britain (excluding London) and the King Edward's Hospital Fund for London, Statistical Summary. Despite some omissions (because not all institutions reported figures in every year although by and large the principal institutions did so consistently) these yearbooks contain a uniform and systematic record of finance, beds, patients and staff in about 1,300 individual institutions. Finally, for a small number of the large, older hospitals we were able to add data from an early survey undertaken in 1863 by Bristowe and Holmes (Report by Dr John Syer Bristowe and Mr Timothy Holmes on the Hospitals of the United Kingdom, British Parliamentary Papers 1864 xxviii Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1863: Appendix 15) The originals of these various sources are available in several libraries, principally the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the LSE, and also Cambridge University Library; copies of some editions of Burdett’s Hospitals and Charities were kindly loaned to us by the Institute of Health Service Management.
The data in Burdett’s Hospitals and Charities are presented in two formats. Every hospital had a main listing with some basic detail of location, foundation date, governors, staff, beds, patients and total income and expenditure. To see an example, click here. In addition, statistics on the larger hospitals, particularly those with medical schools and the major urban general and special institutions, were presented in more detailed tables. These were broken down into three types, showing: a. beds and patients; b. income sources; c. different categories of expenditure. For examples click here. Explanations of the different headings in the tables were included in the yearbook, though there were some minor modifications to these over time. For examples, click here.
The tables in the Hospitals Yearbook have a slightly different format. The smaller hospitals are covered in a lengthy table recording only limited variables (beds, patients, total income and expenditure). For an example, click here. The larger ones again have more detailed breakdowns, showing for instance the different sources of income drawn from voluntary sources like charity, from patient fees and from public sector payments. For an example, click here.Note however that there is a difference between the reporting of the London hospitals and those elsewhere, which is shown in the example page. In London a single total is given for ‘Voluntary Gifts’ (ie. income from charity and receipts from some centralised funds), while in the rest of the hospitals this is broken down into subsidiary sources, such as subscriptions, donations and so on. In London these are further broken down in a way which differentiates collective charitable funds operating only in London (such as the Hospital Saturday Fund) from other charitable giving.
Location and future operation of the database
The database and website is hosted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, under the supervision of the Head of Library and Archives Services. There are currently no plans to add further details to the database.
Publications drawing on the project
The project team has published a series of research articles which draw largely or partially on the database:
M.
Gorsky, J. Mohan and M. Powell, ‘British voluntary hospitals
1871-1938: the geography of provision and utilisation’ Journal
of Historical Geography
25, 1999, 463-82
http://southampton.library.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/hg/1999/00000025/00000004/art00162
Abstract
M.Gorsky, S.Murnion & J.Mohan, ‘The Portsmouth voluntary hospitals database: using PERL to achieve automatic linkage of scanned text files to an existing database’, History and Computing, 11, 3, 1999, 195-212
M.Gorsky
& J.Mohan,
Don't look back ? Voluntary and charitable finance of hospitals in
Britain, past and present,
London, Office of Health Economics, 2001
http://www.accaglobal.com/pubs/members/publications/sector_booklets/healthcare_sector/vcf_hosps.pdf
Abstract
M.
Gorsky and J. Mohan, 'London’s voluntary hospitals in the inter-war
period: growth, transformation or crisis?', Nonprofit
and Voluntary Sector Quarterly,
30, 2001, 247–75
http://nvs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/30/2/247
Abstract
DOI: 10.1177/0899764001302005
M.Gorsky,
J.Mohan & M.Powell, ‘The Financial Health of Voluntary
Hospitals in Interwar Britain’, Economic
History Review,
lv, 3, 2002, 533-557
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118906069/abstract
Abstract
DOI: 10.1111/1468-0289.00231
M. Gorsky, M. Powell and J. Mohan, 'British voluntary hospitals and the public sphere', in S. Sturdy (ed.), Medicine, health and the public sphere in Britain, 1600–2000, London, Routledge, 2002 Abstract
J. Mohan, 'Voluntarism, municipalism and welfare: the geography of hospital utilization in England in the 1930s', Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, 28(1), 55-74. 2003
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-5661.00077
Abstract
J.
Mohan, ‘The caprice of charity: regional variations in finances of
British voluntary hospitals, c. 1891–1944’, in M. Gorsky and S.
Sheard (eds), Financing
medicine: the British experience,
London, Routledge,
2006
http://www.routledge-ny.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?curTab=CONTENT&id=&parent_id=&sku=&isbn=0415350255&pc=
Abstract
M.Gorsky
& J.Mohan with T.Willis
Mutualism and health care:
British hospital contributory schemes in the twentieth-century,
Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2006
http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/catalogue/book.asp?id=1057
