Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain

Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain
Author: Kim Price
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2015-02-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1441147861

Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain is the first detailed exploration of the hundreds of charges of neglect against doctors who were contracted to the 'new' poor law after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The author moves beyond the hyperbole of Victorian public 'scandal' to use medical negligence as a prism through which to view hidden aspects of poor law doctors and their patients. This provides a uniquely grounded perspective, from the day-to-day experience of medical practice – for both doctor and patient – to the context of the medico-political, socio-legal and cultural processes that underpinned the social construction of negligence at this time. The result is a clearly enunciated description of what negligence meant to the Victorians and how they sought to define and deal with negligent care, moving the topic from the sidelines of English welfare history to the centre-stage role it played in Victorian society. Thematically and chronologically arranged in two parts, the book uses extensive new archival material with a particular focus on the official inquiries into neglect conducted by poor law inspectors. It offers a fresh perspective on the poor laws that has repercussions for wider histories of welfare, medicine and legal medicine.

Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain

Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain
Author: Kim Price (Historian)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2015
Genre: Physicians
ISBN: 9781474210812

"Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain is the first detailed exploration of the hundreds of charges of neglect against doctors who were contracted to the 'new' poor law after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The author moves beyond the hyperbole of Victorian public 'scandal' to use medical negligence as a prism through which to view hidden aspects of poor law doctors and their patients. This provides a uniquely grounded perspective, from the day-to-day experience of medical practice - for both doctor and patient - to the context of the medico-political, socio-legal and cultural processes that underpinned the social construction of negligence at this time. The result is a clearly enunciated description of what negligence meant to the Victorians and how they sought to define and deal with negligent care, moving the topic from the sidelines of English welfare history to the centre-stage role it played in Victorian society. Thematically and chronologically arranged in two parts, the book uses extensive new archival material with a particular focus on the official inquiries into neglect conducted by poor law inspectors. It offers a fresh perspective on the poor laws that has repercussions for wider histories of welfare, medicine and legal medicine."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England

Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England
Author: Peter Jones
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2020-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030478394

This book represents the first attempt to identify and describe a workhouse reform ‘movement’ in mid- to late-nineteenth-century England, beyond the obvious candidates of the Workhouse Visiting Society and the voices of popular critics such as Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale. It is a subject on which the existing workhouse literature is largely silent, and this book therefore fills a considerable gap in our understanding of contemporary attitudes towards institutional welfare. Although many scholars have touched on the more obvious strands of workhouse criticism noted above, few have gone beyond these to explore the possibility that a concerted ‘movement’ existed that sought to place pressure on those with responsibility for workhouse administration, and to influence the trajectory of workhouse policy.

The Evolution of the British Welfare State

The Evolution of the British Welfare State
Author: Derek Fraser
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2017-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137605898

An established introductory textbook that provides students with a full overview of British social policy and social ideas since the late 18th century. Derek Fraser's authoritative account is the essential starting point for anyone learning about how and why Britain created the first Welfare State, and its development into the 21st century. This is an ideal core text for dedicated modules on the history of British social policy or the British welfare state - or a supplementary text for broader modules on modern British history or British political history - which may be offered at all levels of an undergraduate history, politics or sociology degree. In addition it is a crucial resource for students who may be studying the history of the British welfare state for the first time as part of a taught postgraduate degree in British history, politics or social policy. New to this Edition: - Revised and updated throughout in light of the latest research and historiographical debates - Brings the story right up to the present day, now including discussion of the Coalition and Theresa May's early Prime Ministership - Features a new overview conclusion, identifying key issues in modern British social history

Complaints, Controversies and Grievances in Medicine

Complaints, Controversies and Grievances in Medicine
Author: Jonathan Reinarz
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2014-12-17
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1317637623

Recent studies into the experiences and failures of health care services, along with the rapid development of patient advocacy, consumerism and pressure groups have led historians and social scientists to engage with the issue of the medical complaint. As expressions of dissatisfaction, disquiet and failings in service provision, past complaining is a vital antidote to progressive histories of health care. This book explores what has happened historically when medicine generated complaints. This multidisciplinary collection comprises contributions from leading international scholars and uses new research to develop a sophisticated understanding of the development of medicine and the role of complaints and complaining in this story. It addresses how each aspect of the medical complaint – between sciences, professions, practitioners and sectors; within politics, ethics and regulatory bodies; from interested parties and patients – has manifested in modern medicine, and how it has been defined, dealt with and resolved. A critical and interdisciplinary humanities and social science perspective grounded in historical case studies of medicine and bioethics, this volume provides the first major and comprehensive historical, comparative and policy-based examination of the area. It will be of interest to historians, sociologists, legal specialists and ethicists interested in medicine, as well as those involved in healthcare policy, practice and management.

Medical misadventure in an age of professionalisation, 1780–1890

Medical misadventure in an age of professionalisation, 1780–1890
Author: Alannah Tomkins
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2017-07-21
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1526116103

This book looks at medical professionalisation from a new perspective, one of failure rather than success. It questions the existing picture of broad and rising medical prosperity across the nineteenth century to consider the men who did not keep up with professionalising trends. It unpicks the life stories of men who could not make ends meet or who could not sustain a professional persona of disinterested expertise, either because they could not overcome public accusations of misconduct or because they struggled privately with stress. In doing so it uncovers the trials of the medical marketplace and the pressures of medical masculinity. All professionalising groups risked falling short of rising expectations, but for doctors these expectations were inflected in some occupationally specific ways.

Family Life in Britain, 1650–1910

Family Life in Britain, 1650–1910
Author: Carol Beardmore
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2019-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030048551

This book explores the ways that families were formed and re-formed, and held together and fractured, in Britain from the sixteenth to twentieth century. The chapters build upon the argument, developed in the 1990s and 2000s, that the nuclear family form, the bedrock of understandings of the structure and function of family and kinship units, provides a wholly inadequate lens through which to view the British family. Instead the volume's contributors point to families and households with porous boundaries, an endless capacity to reconstitute themselves, and an essential fluidity to both the form of families, and the family and kinship relationships that stood in the background. This book offers a re-reading, and reconsideration of the existing pillars of family history in Britain. It examines areas such as: Scottish kinship patterns, work patterns of kin in Post Office families, stepfamily relations, the role of family in managing lunatic patients, and the fluidity associated with a range of professional families in the nineteenth century. Chapter 8 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, Volume 2

Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, Volume 2
Author: Finkelstein David Finkelstein
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 872
Release: 2020-01-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474424902

A thorough account of newspaper and periodical press history in Britain and Ireland from 1800-1900Provides a comprehensive history of the British and Irish Press from 1800-1900, reflected upon in 60 substantive chapters and focused case studiesSets out to capture the cross-regional and transnational dimension of press history in nineteenth-century Britain and IrelandOffers unique and important reassessments of nineteenth-century British and Irish press and periodical media within social, cultural, technological, economic and historical contextsThis is a unique collection of essays examining nineteenth-century British and Irish newspaper and periodical history during a key period of change and development. It covers an important point of expansion in periodical and press history across the four nations of Great Britain (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), concentrating on cross-border and transnational comparisons and contrasts in nineteenth-century print communication. Designed to provide readers with a clear understanding of the current state of research in the field, in addition to an extensive introduction, it includes forty newly commissioned chapters and case studies exploring a full range of press activity and press genres during this intense period of change. Along with keystone chapters on the economics of the press and periodicals, production processes, readership and distribution networks, and legal frameworks under which the press operated, the book examines a wide range of areas from religious, literary, political and medical press genres to analyses of overseas and migr press and emerging developments in children's and women's press.

In Their Own Write

In Their Own Write
Author: Steven King
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2022-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0228015367

Few subjects in European welfare history attract as much attention as the nineteenth-century English and Welsh New Poor Law. Its founding statute was considered the single most important piece of social legislation ever enacted, and at the same time, the coming of its institutions – from penny-pinching Boards of Guardians to the dreaded workhouse – has generally been viewed as a catastrophe for ordinary working people. Until now it has been impossible to know how the poor themselves felt about the New Poor Law and its measures, how they negotiated its terms, and how their interactions with the local and national state shifted and changed across the nineteenth century. In Their Own Write exposes this hidden history. Based on an unparalleled collection of first-hand testimony – pauper letters and witness statements interwoven with letters to newspapers and correspondence from poor law officials and advocates – the book reveals lives marked by hardship, deprivation, bureaucratic intransigence, parsimonious officialdom, and sometimes institutional cruelty, while also challenging the dominant view that the poor were powerless and lacked agency in these interactions. The testimonies collected in these pages clearly demonstrate that both the poor and their advocates were adept at navigating the new bureaucracy, holding local and national officials to account, and influencing the outcomes of relief negotiations for themselves and their communities. Fascinating and compelling, the stories presented in In Their Own Write amount to nothing less than a new history of welfare from below.

Patient voices in Britain, 1840–1948

Patient voices in Britain, 1840–1948
Author: Anne Hanley
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526154870

Historians have long engaged with Roy Porter’s call for histories that incorporate patients’ voices and experiences. But despite concerted methodological efforts, there has simply not been the degree and breadth of innovation that Porter envisaged. Patients’ voices still often remain obscured. This has resulted in part from assumptions about the limitations of archives, many of which are formed of institutional records written from the perspective of health professionals. Patient voices in Britain repositions patient experiences at the centre of healthcare history, using new types of sources and reading familiar sources in new ways. Focusing on military medicine, Poor Law medicine, disability, psychiatry and sexual health, this collection encourages historians to tackle the ethical challenges of using archival material and to think more carefully about how their work might speak to persistent health inequalities and challenges in health-service delivery.