Oxford Brookes University

Research Affiliate and Administrative Assistant, Department of History, Philosophy and Religion

About

I research and write on medicine and charity in modern Britain, with a special interest in the city of Bristol. In September 2011 I completed my PhD at Oxford Brookes University, where I am now a Research Affiliate in the Centre for Health, Medicine and Society: Past and Present. I am also a part-time Administrative Assistant for Professor Virginia Crossman, Director of the Centre for the History of Welfare, organising a series of workshops on transnational studies in European welfare history: http://www.vahs.org.uk/transnational/brookes/

Between February and April 2012 I am working as a part-time historical consultant to assist Professor Barry Doyle of the University of Huddersfield in preparing a funding bid for an international collaboration on 'transnational histories of relief'. Until July 2012 I will also be a part-time historical consultant for the Hilden Charitable Fund, researching the Fund's 50-year history and placing it in wider context: http://www.hildencharitablefund.org.uk/index.htm

I am a trustee of the Voluntary Action History Society, as well as being Chair of the VAHS New Researchers group and Editor of the weekly VAHS blog. I have worked with the VAHS on organising conferences and seminars, establishing a series of audio-podcasts, co-editing a book on the history of the British voluntary sector and setting up a network for transnational histories of voluntary action. For more details on the VAHS see http://www.vahs.org.uk


CHARITY AND CHANGE IN THE MIXED ECONOMY OF HEALTHCARE IN BRISTOL, 1918-1948 (PhD thesis, Oxford Brookes University, 2011)

My thesis focused on the city of Bristol to examine the British voluntary hospital system in its final decades. It located the voluntary hospitals in their final years – between the end of the First World War and the creation of the National Health Service – within an evolving mixed economy of healthcare and can therefore be understood as an investigation into the response of the voluntary sector to the rise of the welfare state.

Two areas of change were examined in particular. The first was the voluntary hospitals’ reaction to, and engagement with, the campaign for ‘co-ordination’. This was the ‘reformist’ agenda of the day and its advocates sought to bring about a centralised, technocratic organisation of public services. It went beyond the existing literature, however, in two ways. One was be by emphasising the local dimension of efforts to bring about the co-ordination of hospital policy, funding and administration. The other was the assertion that the voluntary sector was actively engaged in this movement – not only a subject of reform, but also an agent of change.

The other area of change considered was that of access and entitlement. Specifically, the issue of payment was investigated. This was a period that saw the abandonment of old philanthropic means of gaining admission in place of medical admission and a variety of payment schemes. These included the means-tested system of the Lady Almoner (later renamed the medical social worker), the pseudo-insurance hospital contributory schemes and the expansion of private wards operating on a commercial basis. My thesis put forward the argument that the existing literature has overstated such changes, emphasising instead the continuity of a system that remained fundamentally philanthropic. The scale of exemptions from and reductions to patient payments granted by the almoner as well the limitations of private provision was discussed in making this case.

Ultimately, my thesis argued, the voluntary hospital system was neither left behind by the reforms of the day nor reformed beyond recognition by the time of nationalisation in 1948.


CONTACT: gcgosling@brookes.ac.uk