4 Middle-class medicine It is well known that Englishmen are in the main opposed to any and every new system with which they are not familiar. Probably to this influence is due the fact, that, with a few exceptions, pay wards are as unknown in this country as the pay hospitals themselves. 1 Sir Henry Burdett
I am… a social leper, a race outcast from an outcast class . (Claude McKay, 1921) The road to London I’ve a longin’ in me dept’s of heart dat I can conquer not, ’Tis a wish dat I’ve have been havin’ from since I could form a t’o’t, ’Tis to sail athwart the ocean
The appearance of corpses in rubbish tips is not a recent phenomenon. In Argentina, tips have served not only as sites for the disposal of bodies but also as murder scenes. Many of these other bodies found in such places belong to individuals who have suffered violent deaths, which go on to become public issues, or else are ‘politicised deaths’. Focusing on two cases that have received differing degrees of social, political and media attention – Diego Duarte, a 15-year-old boy from a poor background who went waste-picking on an open dump and never came back, and Ángeles Rawson, a girl of 16 murdered in the middle-class neighbourhood of Colegiales, whose body was found in the same tip – this article deals with the social meanings of bodies that appear in landfills. In each case, there followed a series of events that placed a certain construction on the death – and, more importantly, the life – of the victim. Corpses, once recognised, become people, and through this process they are given new life. It is my contention that bodies in rubbish tips express – and configure – not only the limits of the social but also, in some cases, the limits of the human itself.
This book examines the payment systems operating in British hospitals before the National Health Service (NHS). An overview of the British situation is given, locating the hospitals within both the domestic social and political context, before taking a wider international view. The book sets up the city of Bristol as a case study to explore the operation and meaning of hospital payments on the ground. The foundation of Bristol's historic wealth, and consequent philanthropic dynamism, was trade. The historic prominence of philanthropic associations in Bristol was acknowledged in a Ministry of Health report on the city in the 1930s. The distinctions in payment served to reinforce the differential class relations at the core of philanthropy. The act of payment heightens and diminishes the significance of 1948 as a watershed in the history of British healthcare. The book places the hospitals firmly within the local networks of care, charity and public services, shaped by the economics and politics of a wealthy southern city. It reflects the distinction drawn between and separation of working-class and middle-class patients as a defining characteristic of the system that emerged over the early twentieth century. The rhetorical and political strategies adopted by advocates of private provision were based on the premise that middle-class patients needed to be brought in to a revised notion of the sick poor. The book examines why the voluntary sector and wider mixed economies of healthcare, welfare and public services should be so well developed in Bristol.
Le voyage en omnibus unit toutes les classes sociales sans distinction ni division. De tous les milieux parisiens où l’on se puisse rencontrer, la voiture d’omnibus est évidemment celle qui offre la plus parfaite image de démocratie et de fraternité courtoise. Ouvriers, boutiquiers, rentiers, savants, poètes, financiers, comédiens et comédiennes, domestiques et maîtres, musiciens et chanteurs, académiciens et ramasseurs de bouts de cigare s’y coudoient chaque jour quelques courts moments dans le plein air de l’impériale, l’étranglement de la plateforme
working-class communities many who would have been expected to pay something turned to mutual aid schemes to ensure doctors’ visits or hospital stays without a bill, while National Insurance made a similar arrangement compulsory for a growing number of workers in certain industries. Nor did the NHS open up greater provision. No new hospitals were built for more than a decade and the ‘appointed day’ did not herald the end of the dreaded waiting
, was included, horseracing was supreme, although football pools and greyhound racing were also important. It was racing, not cricket or soccer, which really sold newspapers across Britain. Widespread public interest in results, longer traditions, its year-round season and largest crowds, all support racing’s claims as Britain’s leading national sport. Yet Ross McKibbin’s critically well-received book on classes and cultures in England between 1918 and 1951 marginalised racing, arguing that: H Horseracing was a national sport only by a somewhat skewed definition of
the relationship between the economy and sport. Racing was not immune from wider social and economic changes. Rail strikes affected numbers attending meetings in the early 1920s and most especially during the General Strike. Death duties cut back some of the involvement of the landed classes, although such losses were constantly replaced by new money. In the areas of high unemployment, the troubles of the local economy were mirrored by indices such as the numbers of bookmakers, betting turnover, or crowd size at meetings. National economic difficulties impacted more
fellow’. 4 Meanwhile, the surgeon was ‘interested’ in George, who was ‘so obviously middle class. And he guessed he must have been pretty low’ for his doctor to have sent him there. As a poor patient of middle-class character, the surgeon knew ‘Anderson would get the same skill – if not the same nursing – for nothing.’ He explained the medical details ‘to the students who, recognising Anderson as one of their own class, felt slightly
wealthy southern city. The options, obligations and experiences of Charley are considered in chapter 3 and then those of George in chapter 4 ; with particular attention to how the hospital payment schemes they would have navigated were introduced in our case study city. Treating the two in separate chapters reflects the distinction drawn between and separation of working-class and middle-class patients as a defining characteristic of the system that emerged over the early