How the Victorians and how they sought to define and deal with negligent medical care in the wake of the poor law is the subject of a new book.
Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain is written by Dr Kim Price from the Centre for Medical Humanities and explores the hundreds of charges of neglect against doctors who were contracted to the 'new' poor law after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. As well as its historical perspective, the book provides some insights into the welfare system today.
The book uses extensive new archival material with a particular focus on the official inquiries into neglect conducted by poor law inspectors. It concludes by drawing parallels between modern negligence in Britain’s NHS and the ways of dealing with negligence under the poor law.
Price says, “This book brings forward new research and demonstrates that charges of neglect against poor law doctors occurred with surprising regularity and that pauper complaints were not ignored. The crisis of care, described in this book, could also be described as a crisis of managing aggrieved patients (and public opinion) under the new poor law.
“Although the modern Welfare State in Britain is clearly not the same as the poor law that came before it, twenty-first century cuts to national welfare provision in Britain seem to have some basic antecedents in the late-Victorian period.”
Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain