Children in the London: Inpatient Care in a Voluntary General Hospital

Abstract

The presence of children in English voluntary hospitals during the eighteenth century has only recently come under academic scrutiny. This research examines the surviving admission records of the London Hospital, which consistently record inpatient ages, to illuminate the hospital stays of infant and child patients and examine the morbidity of children during the long eighteenth century. Traumatic cases were the most common category of admission. The proportion of trauma cases admitted to the London Hospital was higher than in provincial English child patient cohorts, potentially reflecting the differential risks faced by rural and urban children. In most cases of traumatic injury the inpatients stayed in hospital long enough for significant fracture healing to have occurred. Understanding the conditions surrounding children’s admission to hospital, their length of stay, the result of their stay, and which medical issues drove their parents or guardians to seek medical attention for them are critical to illuminating the morbidity of children during the long eighteenth century.

Intersectionality and trauma analysis in bioarchaeology

“…Hospital rules from 1762 state that “no woman big with child, no children under seven years of age (except in cases of compound fractures, amputations, or cutting for the stone) no persons disordered in their senses, or suspected to have Smallpox, Itch, or other infectious distempers, or who are judged to be in a consumptive, asthmatic, or dying condition” were to be admitted (London Hospital, 1762; qtd. in Hart, 1980, p. 448), though the presence of midwives and admitted children at the Royal London Hospital (Mant, 2018) suggests the rules were not always followed. Those who died under care and remained unclaimed by family or friends were buried at the hospital charity's expense; there is also evidence that some individuals were dissected and anatomized (Fowler & Powers, 2013; Howard, 1791).…”

Toward a bioarchaeology of urbanization: Demography, health, and behavior in cities in the past

“…Conversely,Collier and Primeau (2019) compare trauma in rural and urban cemeteries from medieval Denmark (1050-1536 CE), and find that individuals in the urban sample faced a higher relative risk of trauma and that the distribution of traumatic injuries across the body differed between the samples Mant's (2018). study of 19th-century admissions records to London Hospital (urban) compared to provincial records (rural) similarly reveals a greater proportion of admissions (of children) with traumatic injuries to London Hospital.…”