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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2022
In many communities, from the mid-Victorian era until well into the twentieth century, one Sunday every year was dedicated to the work of local hospitals and dispensaries. Originating in Birmingham and designated Hospital Sunday, it enabled congregations to remember their responsibilities towards the sick and it raised much-needed funds for what was essentially voluntary provision, prior to the establishment of the National Health Service. In so doing, they were demonstrating their commitment to philanthropy and (for many) the tenets of the social gospel. Hospital Sunday also symbolized an element of interdenominational cooperation, with most denominations participating, at a time when relations between the established church and the Free Churches on other issues could sometimes be fraught. Moreover, it facilitated the engagement of churches with charitable organizations, such as friendly societies. This article aims to explore the origins of Hospital Sunday, to analyse its key attributes, to assess its appeal and to highlight some of the issues which arose during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
1 ‘The Editor's Box: Hospital Sunday’, The Bystander, 17 June 1908, xii.
2 Examples include Education Sunday, Temperance Sunday, Mission Sunday, Industrial Sunday and a Sunday on which the Sunday School anniversary was celebrated.
3 In 1873, in reference to Australia, the Edinburgh Evening News commented: ‘Hospital Sunday has now become a colonial as well as a British institution’: ‘Hospital Sunday in Australia’, 18 November 1873, 2.
4 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Cardiff Times, 18 December 1869, 6.
5 McLeod, Hugh, Religion and Society in England, 1850–1914 (London, 1996), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Bebbington, David, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London, 1989), 211Google Scholar.
7 Brown, Callum, Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Harlow, 2006), 40–87Google Scholar.
8 Jeremy Morris, Religion and Urban Change: Croydon 1840–1914 (Woodbridge, 1992), 131.
9 Keir Waddington, ‘Bastard Benevolence: Centralisation, Voluntarism and the Sunday Fund 1873–1898’, London Journal 19 (1994), 151–67.
10 Kenneth Brown, A Social History of the Nonconformist Ministry in England and Wales 1800–1930 (Oxford, 1988), 205 (emphasis added).
11 See, for example, Steven Cherry, ‘Before the National Health Service: Financing the Voluntary Hospitals, 1900–1939’, Economic History Review 50 (1997), 305–26; idem, ‘Hospital Saturday, Workplace Collections and Issues in Late Nineteenth-Century Hospital Funding’, MH 44 (2000), 461–88.
12 Cherry, ‘Hospital Saturday’, 470.
13 David Nash, Christian Ideals in British Culture: Stories of Belief in the Twentieth Century (London, 2013), 30.
14 David Nash, ‘Reconnecting Religion with Social and Cultural History: Secularization's Failure as a Master Narrative’, Cultural and Social History 1 (2004), 302–25.
15 Jeffrey Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth 1870–1930 (Oxford, 1982), especially 265–76.
16 Frank Prochaska, Christianity and Social Service in Modern Britain: The Disinherited Spirit (Oxford, 2006), especially 1–27.
17 Ibid. 7.
18 ‘A Few Local Notes’, Birmingham Journal, 22 October 1859, 8.
19 Cherry, ‘Hospital Saturday’, 470.
20 ‘General Hospital’, Birmingham Journal, 22 October 1859, 4.
21 Quoted in Gerald Parsons, Religion in Victorian Britain, 1: Traditions (Manchester, 1988), 93.
22 ‘Letter to the Editor: Hospital Sunday’, The Times, 4 March 1873, 11.
23 ‘The General Hospital Sunday’, Birmingham Journal, 12 November 1859, 7.
24 ‘The Movement in Aid of the General Hospital’, Birmingham Journal, 17 December 1859, 6.
25 ‘A Few Local Notes’, Birmingham Journal, 19 November 1859, 8.
26 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Birmingham Journal, 21 October 1865, 6.
27 Waddington, ‘Bastard Benevolence’, 153.
28 ‘Bristol General Hospital’, Western Daily Press, 11 March 1862, 3.
29 ‘Cambridgeshire: Addenbrooke's Hospital’, Cambridge Chronicle, 31 December 1864, 7.
30 ‘Addenbrooke's Hospital’, Cambridge Independent Press, 4 July 1874, 8.
31 ‘Royal Albert Hospital’, Western Morning News, 15 November 1865, 4.
32 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Western Morning News, 12 November 1870, 2.
33 ‘Sermons for our Medical Charities’, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 23 January 1869, 6.
34 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 24 February 1870, 6.
35 ‘Hospital Sunday in Cardiff’, Western Mail, 28 April 1873, 3.
36 ‘Dublin Hospital Sunday Fund’, Irish Times, 14 November 1874, 7.
37 ‘Letter to the Editor: Hospital Sunday’, The Times, 13 March 1873, 10.
38 ‘Hospital Sunday in Dundee’, Edinburgh Evening News, 29 December 1873, 2.
39 ‘“Hospital Sunday” in Greenock’, Glasgow Evening News and Star, 1 May 1879, 4.
40 See ‘Editorial’, Glasgow Herald, 3 January 1893, 4; ‘Glasgow Hospital Sunday Fund’, 20 November 1894, 2.
41 ‘“Hospital Sunday”’, The Times, 27 January 1870, 3 quoting from an article in The Lancet.
42 ‘Proposed “Hospital Sunday”’, The Times, 22 November 1872, 5.
43 ‘Hospital Sunday for London’, The Tablet, 14 December 1872, 761.
44 ‘Hospital Sunday’, The Lancet, 6 June 1903, 1614–15.
45 ‘Hospital Sunday’, The Lancet, 11 June 1904, 1665–6.
46 ‘The Early History of the Hospital Sunday and Saturday Funds’, The Hospital, 1 September 1894, 451–2.
47 ‘Hospital Sunday for Cardiff’, Cardiff Times, 15 March 1873, 5.
48 Waddington, ‘Bastard Benevolence’, 153.
49 ‘Hospital Sunday’, British Medical Journal 1, no. 592 (4 May 1872), 480.
50 ‘Hospital Sunday’, The Lancet, 10 June 1893, 1406–7.
51 ‘Hospital Sunday at Southampton’, Hampshire Advertiser, 29 April 1874, 3.
52 ‘Hospital Sunday in Manchester and Salford’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 10 February 1890, 8.
53 ‘Hospital Sunday at Northampton’, Northampton Mercury, 13 July 1889, 10.
54 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Midland Daily Telegraph, 29 April 1895, 3.
55 ‘Hospital Sunday in Cardiff’, Western Mail, 28 April 1873, 3.
56 ‘Hospital Sunday at Southampton’.
57 See ‘Extra Supplement’, Musical Times and Singing Class Journal 36, no. 628 (1 June 1895), 1–8.
58 ‘Sermons for our Medical Charities’.
59 ‘“Hospital Sunday”’, The Times, 27 January 1870, 3.
60 Waddington, ‘Bastard Benevolence’, 154.
61 ‘Hook Hospital Sunday’, Hants and Berks Gazette, 6 July 1907, 8.
62 ‘Hospital Sunday’, British Medical Journal 1, no. 592 (4 May 1872), 480.
63 ‘Leeds General Infirmary’, Yorkshire Post, 8 December 1869, 3.
64 Ibid.
65 His formal title was ‘Chief Ranger of Court “Princess Alexandra”’.
66 ‘Alresford: Hospital Sunday’, Hampshire Chronicle, 9 August 1890, 5.
67 ‘Whitchurch: Hospital Sunday’, Hants and Berks Gazette, 11 September 1909, 6.
68 Ibid.
69 Ben Roberts, ‘Entertaining the Community: The Evolution of Civic Ritual and Public Celebration, 1860–1953’, UH 44 (2017), 444–63.
70 ‘General Intelligence: Unfair Clerical Proceedings’, Glasgow Evening Citizen, 24 October 1870, 3.
71 ‘The Charity Quarrel’, Liverpool Daily Courier, 22 October 1870, 6.
72 Waddington, ‘Bastard Benevolence’, 157.
73 Mangion, Carmen M., ‘“Tolerable Intolerance”: Protestantism, Sectarianism and Voluntary Hospitals in Late Nineteenth-Century London’, MH 62 (2018), 468–84Google ScholarPubMed, at 480–1.
74 ‘Letter to the Editor: University College Hospital and the Hospital Sunday Fund’, The Times, 3 August 1885, 4.
75 Mangion, ‘Tolerable Intolerance’, 483.
76 ‘Hospital Sunday at Southampton’.
77 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Daily News, 13 June 1910, 6
78 ‘Hospital Sunday in Leeds’, Yorkshire Post, 21 February 1910, 8.
79 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 2 February 1910, 6.
80 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 24 February 1870, 6.
81 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Portsmouth Evening News, 29 October 1900, 2.
82 Cox, English Churches, 93–5.
83 Mews, Stuart, ‘Religion, 1900–1939’, in Wrigley, Chris, ed., A Companion to Early Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2003), 470–84Google Scholar, at 471.
84 See, in this volume, Robert Piggott, ‘Hospital Sunday and the new National Health Service: An End to “The Voluntary Spirit” in England?’, 372–93.
85 ‘Hospital Sunday’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 24 February 1870, 6.