Glasgow’s Royal Hospital in for Sick Children: ‘nationalisation’ and protecting voluntary largesse

Scottish voluntary hospitals were founded, supported and expanded by philanthropy and charity across the 19th century and through the first half of the 20th century. Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children (RHSC) opened in 1883 and, during the following decades, it attracted and built up reserves received from thousands of small donations annually, but supplemented by special events and substantive gifts and legacies. By the time of the formulation and creation of the National Health Service (NHS), the RHSC possessed a significant portfolio of assets. Notable were monetary reserves, stocks and shares, and property bequeathed by elderly supporters who had died without close kin to inherit their wealth. Proposals for full incorporation of charitable ‘royal’ hospitals into the NHS caused particular alarm for the RHSC, which feared that its assets and reserves accrued from charitable subscribers would be seized and placed in a central ‘pot’ beyond the hospital’s reach. This article explains the development of the RHSC from its founding and the growth of its financial base, the potential loss of which, on absorption by the NHS, spurred alarm to its Board of Management. The article narrates how the Board of Management, under the NHS, reacted to the uncertainty surrounding its pre-NHS assets during the first two decades of the Service.