Welsh Journals

'WITHOUT ANY DISTINCTION OF SECT, OR CREED, OR POLITICS'?: CHARITY AND HOSPITAL PROVISION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ABERYSTWYTH.* Too often in the past histories of hospitals have amounted to little more than chronological accounts of institutional developments. They have examined the circumstances in which hospitals were founded, the fund- raising and organisational efforts that went into the erection of hospitals and the development and extension of the services provided by the hospitals to the communities they served. l This is insufficient and neglects some of the more fascinating and insightful aspects of the history of hospitals in modern British and Welsh history. If we alter the focus to consider hospitals in their social context we can gain a better understanding of the provision of medical services, on the one hand, and the nature of the communities that provided them on the other. This study examines the issues that arose over the management of the hospital in Aberystwyth in the second half of the nineteenth century and, in particular, the struggles for control of medical charity waged between Anglicans and Nonconformists in the years between the 1870s and the First World War. This account of hospital management is carried out against the wider background of voluntary philanthropy in late nineteenth-century Aberystwyth where similar and related political battles occurred. The control of local institutions was one among a number of issues related to the increasingly politicised nature of Welsh Nonconformity in the second half of the nineteenth century and, in particular, the determination of Nonconformists to supplant Anglicans in the administration of local institutions and local authorities. This in turn raised questions about the appropriateness of strife and conflict in the charitable sphere. I Hospitals in the nineteenth century were, for the most part, provid- ed through voluntary effort. They were largely funded through the volun- tary donations and contributions of wealthy benefactors, bequests left in wills, collections in churches and chapels, workplace contribution schemes, and other fund-raising activities. Such voluntary hospitals were primarily intended for the sick poor who could not afford to pay a doctor's fees on their meagre incomes. In return for financial support, subscribers gained the right to recommend patients for treatment but also gained a voice in the management of the hospitals. Hospital committees and other such voluntary societies and associational organisations have been described as 'subscriber democracies' since subscribers gained representation on management com- mittees and played a part in the administration of institutions.2 i