Health: Democracy, Diversity, Dispersal

In the years that followed the war, the hospital environment of Great Britain was transformed quantitatively, socially and spatially as more and a greater range of people were able to secure treatment in increasingly diverse clinical and institutional settings. This claim contrasts with the common public perception, perpetuated after the Second World War, of pre-National Health Service health care being dominated by charity, the poor law, patient payment and limited access. Though each of these elements certainly existed and affected different groups at different times, nevertheless by 1938 Britain had one of the broadest and deepest health systems in the world and probably the best and most extensive hospital service. Although historians have taken a keen interest in this hospital system, especially issues of finance, management and control, spatial and architectural histories have drawn less attention while the growth of outpatient departments, dispensaries, cottage hospitals and the municipal sector have all lagged behind assessment of urban general institutions....