Individuación, constitución y objetividad

The motivations behind philanthropy were expressed through the contributor’s voluntary gift. Governors invested time and effort in fundraising and a large part of the hospitals’ administration, as illustrated in Chapter 5, was geared to finance. Sole responsibility rested with the governors and doctors assumed a marginal role in the hospitals’ financial affairs. Income from charity dominated their concerns and it was to philanthropy that they turned to first to solve their hospital’s economic problems.

Benevolence took many forms, but donations, subscriptions and legacies in the form of a cash gift were the traditional ways to contribute. Donations could fluctuate wildly from year-to-year and legacies were unpredictable, providing a form of ‘windfall’ philanthropy that could not be relied on. Subscriptions, however, were without the same uncertainties. Subscriptions were small annual contributions, usually one guinea, and though in theory any amount could be contributed few gave more than five guineas. Colonel Makins, speaking at the Royal Chest Hospital’s 1884 annual dinner, estimated that hospitals lost 8-10% of their subscribers annually through death.^'' Although this could take a heavy toll on income, the number of subscribers still tended to increase. Every effort was made to collect them, but as one philanthropist noted, ‘the constant struggle of getting annual subscriptions is the one bit of weariness in hospital work’.^^^ To ease this workload charitable organisations generally employed a paid collector who took a commission on the total raised. After 1896 collectors could use a printed directory.

The Charitable Ten Thousand, to locate potential subscribers and they frequently crossed

each other’s paths in the pursuit of f u n d s . C a s e s of fraud were occasionally reported and Labouchere’s Truth made a speciality of exposing charity swindles, but collectors had a monetary interest in ensuring that subscriptions were collected promptly and not allowed to lapse. At the German Hospital the collector, Mr Ostermoor, was required to visit the

The importance of these different charitable components are discussed in Chapter 3 were they are put in the context of the hospitals’ structure of income.

Charity Record & Philanthropic News, 4 (1884), 83.

Charity Record & Philanthropic News, 17 (1897), 142.

‘mercantile and manufacturing towns’, but few were expected to travel outside London and many carried out their work in the hospitals’ immediate l o c a l i t y G o v e r n o r s were keen to build up a large body of subscribers and they attached considerable importance to them, but their fundraising efforts went far beyond this. Voluntary organisations, as Morris notes, rarely existed on subscriptions a l o n e . H o s p i t a l s perhaps more than any other type of benevolent society, tried to attract philanthropy through a variety of channels.

The benevolent often found it easier to make a donation than the long-term commitment that subscribing entailed. To encourage donations hospital governors awarded life or honorary governorships and subscribers’ privileges. At the Hospital for Sick Children, life governorships were given for any donation over £31 10s, and between 1850 and 1890 1,115 were granted. No contribution was seen as too small and amounts varied considerably. Some like Baron de Hirsch, a Jewish financier and a member of the Malborough House set, were major benefactors. In 1893 he gave £28,000 he had won on the ‘turf’ to the London hospitals; the Hospital for Sick Children alone received £1,200.^^^ Others gave what they could afford and, unlike subscriptions, there was no set amount. All donations were acknowledged with enthusiasm, from the £7 7s received by the London from the workmen employed at Tebbutt & Company, to the £10,000 given by Sir John Blundell Maple in 1896 to help rebuild University College Hospital."* Major donations of this kind were invariably used to fund building and provided the financial foundation of several institutions, mostly outside London."^ Large contributions of this kind were, however, rare and when they were received they were acknowledged with a greater show of publicity.

GH Archive, Hospital Committee, A/2/2.

Morris, Class, Sect and Party, 298.

GOS Archive, List of Life Governors, GOS/6/1/1.

Hospital, 21 January 1893, 266.

"* LH Archive, House Committee, A/5/29; UCH Archive, General Committee, A 1/2/8.

See J.R.B.Taylor, Hospital and Asylum Architecture in England 1840-1914: Buildings

Donations were not limited to money. Hospitals did receive contributions of land and stock, such as James Bentley’s gift of £1,000 in 3% consols to St.Bartholomew’s in 1857, but donations of this sort were infrequent. Donations of land created administrative problems and gifts of this kind were either invested, or more regularly sold in times of hardship. Other types of non-monetary gifts were more frequent. The Hospital for Sick Children was particularly fortunate and received a large number of gifts, especially of toys and children’s clothes. For example, in 1852 Charles West donated both his library and a hot-air bath; the following year Mr Jeggs gave a collection of toys and Mrs Latham some flannel dressing gowns. All hospitals regularly received gifts of flowers and paintings. Many were given for reasons similar to those expressed by Lord Kirkaldie in his present of flowers to Guy’s in 1875, ‘for the decoration of the Hospital Wards’. The royal household donated food, especially pheasants, and old linen, presumably for bandages, and doctors gave books and medical equipment to the hospitals where they had trained or worked. However, not all gifts were useful. The value to patients of a selection of tickets for the Princess, Globe and Shaftesbury Theatres given to the Royal Chest Hospital in 1896 must be doubted, though presumably the hospital’s governors ensured that they were not wasted. The Hospital in 1892 tells of a lady who gave ‘several favoured institutions’ a ‘whole shopful of harmoniums’, but rightly believed that many hospitals ‘prefer[red] the simplicity of cash gifts’. G o v e r n o r s wholeheartedly agreed. Non-monetary donations were an important factor in making hospitals a more pleasing environment, but governors attached greater importance to contributions of a more conventional nature.

Legacies were the most unpredictable source of charitable income, as shown by the amounts left to St.Bartholomew’s:

SBH Archive, Legacies Register, Hb/5/3.

GOS Archive, Committee of Management, GOS/1/2/3-4.

Guy’s Archive, Court Minutes, A3/10.

RCH Archive, House Committee, A4/5.

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Figure 2.1: St.Bartholomew’s Legacies Received 1850-1898.