Edwardian Age
It is perhaps worth reflecting for a moment on life at the beginning of the Edwardian age. In 1902 motoring and the domestic use of electricity were in their infancy. You could, however, get bottled drinks from a penny in the slot machine and Coca-Cola had been around for 16 years. First year infant mortality was 125 per 1,000 births. Infectious diseases were endemic, in 1901 diphtheria claimed over 800 lives and there were 1,743 cases of smallpox resulting in 257 deaths. That of course excludes the 12 per cent of cases that were initially misdiagnosed. Students of hospital administration will not be surprised to learn that the Local Government Board had just issued a new circular in a series on vaccination, administration and the prevention of smallpox.
X-rays had just been discovered, the electrocardiograph was soon to be invented and Landsteiner was just beginning to investigate blood grouping. One of the more unusual treatments available was use of static electricity. “When the machine is set in motion the patient becomes positively electrified, his hair stands up and a light surrounds him if the room is darkened…the general effect is refreshing.”Donations to the Northampton Infirmary The Hospital Week Fund included one of £1,000. A Mr Hartley gave an initial donation of £7,500 and a subsequent donation of £10,000 to the Liverpool Hospital for Consumptives to be built in the Delamere Forest. The London Hospital then cost £87,000 pa to run, it achieved an 86 per cent occupancy of its 790 beds and treated 12,723 in patients.
There were at this time two bodies associated with the administration of hospitals. The Hospitals Association (later to become the British Hospitals Association), which might loosely be described as the forerunner of the NHS Confederation, was founded by Sir Henry Burdett in 1884. Its journal The Hospital, more of which later, first appeared in 1886. Hospital administrators in London had their own exclusive body the Hospital Officers Club founded in 1885. Membership was limited to the chief administrative officers only and its activities were primarily of a social character.
The Hospital Officers Association
During 1902 a number of senior hospital officers clearly felt that there was a need for a more broadly based institution and the Hospital Officers Association was founded in March of that year. Quoting Thomas Ryan, the association’s president in 1907, to “Promote the social and professional wellbeing of hospital officers … membership of the association conferred the direct advantage of an educational character by enabling each worker to associate with his fellows in the consideration of hospital questions.”
The first presidential address given by Adrian Hope in November 1902 was reported at length in The Hospital.
Adrian Hope died in 1904. At the end of 1903 the association had 93 members and was meeting on a regular basis each month. It established a journal, The Hospital Gazette, in 1904 which has been published monthly without a break under various names since then. Early topics included the counting of out-patient attendances, abuse of the out-patient department by those who could afford to pay but contrived not to and a universal pension scheme for hospital officers. The association was initially London centred but began to draw members from the home counties and in due course further afield. In October 1906 Mr W G Carnt, a member and secretary of the Derby Royal Infirmary, was appointed Secretary of the Manchester Royal Infirmary. The Manchester group of the association was founded in January 1907.
An important part of the life of the association throughout this period were the Saturday afternoon visits (most people worked on Saturday morning) to hospitals such as that made to the new building at St Bartholomew’s Hospital described as “a palace of healing”. Mr Conrad Theis a past president and secretary of the Royal Free Hospital made a visit to hospitals in Paris and in 1910 he visited hospitals in the USA and Canada. The association was honoured in 1909 to be invited to assist the King’s Fund in the revision of the Index of Classification.
Incorporation
The next major step in the life of the association was its incorporation as a company limited by guarantee on 26 January 1910. In May of 1911 members from London travelled to Manchester to visit their colleagues. In the next year Richard Kershaw, the president, put forward a proposal to establish a Benevolent Fund. This was established in July 1913 and continues to support members in “necessitous circumstances” to this day.
Activity was reduced during the Great War and a number of members lost their lives in the service of King and country. The first annual church service was held at The National Hospital, Queens Square in October 1915. In the following year the company of Lionel H Lemon was appointed auditor, a role which it held until 1996. The Midlands Branch was formed later in the year. A special dinner was given at the Trocadero Restaurant in November for Clive Bridgeman MP who had successfully campaigned for a change to the Finance Act of that year which enabled hospitals to reclaim a rebate of alcohol duty used for medicinal purposes. The rebate was then expected to be in the order of £10,000 per annum. The author remembers signing off claims in the seventies and it is still claimed to this day.
Much temporary hospital building had been done during the war. Members paid a visit to one such hospital, the No 16 Canadian General (Ontario) Hospital at Orpington in May 1919. It was reported that “The pavilions are built of uralite panelling on wood studding which seem admirable for temporary structures but does not resist the onrush of a trolley very effectively.” Suffice it to say that they resisted the onrush of trolleys into the 1980s when the author found himself working in one of these pavilions. Later that year Mr J H Shaw, a founder member of the Manchester Branch and secretary of the Southport Infirmary, was elected president. The first non-London member to achieve this distinction Mr Shaw was for a number of years the representative of the Manchester Branch on the council of the parent Association.
