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Charity and Health Care in the British National Health Service
27th March 2025, 4:30pm
European Social Science History Conference, University of Leiden
In 1946, the Minister of Health for England and Wales, Aneurin Bevan, famously declared that it was ‘repugnant’ for hospitals to have to rely on the ‘caprice of private charity’ for their core funding. This was one of the main justifications for the decision to nationalise the so-called ‘voluntary’ hospitals. However, despite this, charity and voluntary provision continued to play important parts in the provision of health services after the NHS was created. This paper examines voluntary support for the wider health services, within and beyond hospitals.
Research undertaken with Professor Bernard Harris and Dr Rosie Cresswell.
Full conference abstract is available here.
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Past event: 100 Broken Windows: Responding to the Workhouse in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales
12th March 2025, 6:00pm
Global Tees Event, Chapelgarth
Window breaking was a very common occurrence in the draconian and punitive nineteenth-century workhouse in England and Wales. Not only were window panes readily available and easy to break, they could be smashed loudly, drawing attention to the breaker. Using archival evidence, this short talk will examine why inmates resorted to breaking windows in workhouses. It argues that window breaking created a significant spectacle, enabling inmates to have some individual attention and acknowledgement in a welfare system that sought to remove it.
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Past Event: Smashing Windows: The Spectacle of Resistance in the New Poor Law workhouse
4th March 2025, 5:00pm
Workhouse Lives Seminar, Nottingham Trent University
We know from various records that window breaking was very common in workhouses. Not only were window panes readily available and easy to break, they could be smashed loudly, drawing attention to the breaker. In this talk, Samantha explores window breaking and how it formed a spectacle used by inmates to gain recognition in a system that sought to remove it.
Free online event, available to book here
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Past Event: The Work and Rebellions of Workhouse Chaplains
4th November 2024, 6:15pm
City of Lincoln Branch of The Historical Association
Samantha will deliver a talk about workhouse chaplains during the early years of the New Poor Law for the Lincoln City Branch of The Historical Association. Find out what chaplains did, how they did it, and how they sometimes came into conflict with inmates and fellow workhouse staff.
Details on the City of Lincoln Historical Association website
Venue: University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool Campus
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Past Event: Workhouse Chaplains and Clergy in the Early Years of the New Poor Law
2nd November 2023, 7:00pm
Sheffield Branch of the The Historical Association
The Pam Carlson Memorial Lecture
Lecture Theatre, Grayson Building, Birkdale School, Sheffield
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Past Event: Seeing and Believing: Clergy and the Needs of the Poor under the New Poor Law in England
18th November 2022
Max Planck Institute of Legal History and Legal Theory
Invited Guest Speaker
Annual Conference
Berlin
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Past Event: Establishing a Gilbert’s Act Workhouse: The work of a land agent in rural Leicestershire
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Past Event: “Deaf to the voice of humanity”: Scandal and the suffering of the rural poor in the final decades of the old poor laws
13th September 2019
Paper delivered at Rural History 2019, a biennial conference of the European Rural History Organisation (EURHO).
in the session The Healthy Countryside? Perceptions, experiences and representations of health, healthcare, and illness, 1750-2019
Paris