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History

G218 CHILD HEALTH CARE: NORTHAMPTON GENERAL INFIRMARY, 1744
A. Williams.Centre for the History of Medicine, Birmingham University, Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

Summary: The 1744 Northampton General Infirmary hospital admission records give a flavour of eighteenth century child health care.

We tend to think the commencement of hospitalised children’s services within the United Kingdom sprung from the foundation of Great Ormond Street (1852) and other children’s hospitals from the mid nineteenth century onwards.

However this is not the case. For more than a century before the opening of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, children in England were treated and even admitted in Voluntary Hospitals inspite of rules prohibiting such care. The earliest English eighteenth century records, that contain the patient’s age, are held in Northampton. Reviewing records from the Northampton General Infirmary (from 1903 the Northampton General Hospital) for the period 1744–45 gives a flavour of hospital child health care in an era before the formal recognition . . . [Full text of this article]