What was health and social care like in the early 1900s?

Answer 1

Similar, but different from the current situation.

In this answer I am presuming a question on the United Kingdom. This is only a basic answer and requires further expansion.

To a large extent it was non-existant (in reference to state provision) or self-generated.

The situation whereby the state 'interferred' with social conditions dates back to the 1840's with laws such as the 1848 Public Health Act, requiring local government to provide suitable sewerage, etc. Between 1866 and 1875 further acts added the requirement to demolish or rennovate the worst slum areas and perform building inspection.

Healthcare however was gained by three methods:

* Privately self organised. Only for those who had an income of sufficient standing.

* Poor Societies: Often attached to Trades Unions, for a membership fee of typically 10-12d (240d in £1) per week, basic health provision (normally just a doctors appointment - medicines not covered) and also included injury/widowing pensions and unemployment assistance, usually just for a few weeks so as to 'tide you over'. (Weekly wage was approximately £2, widows pensions 8 shillings or 84d and unemployment assistance 6 shillings or 72d.)

* The Workhouse: The oldest of all, dating back to the middle ages, and originally run by the church. Later, by Act of Parliament, taken over by Local Authorities (Date Unknown). This was only for the very poorest and destitute and conditions were more akin to a labour camp. Inmates would work at jobs no-one else would touch due to physical or mental refusal, and for just enough pay to survive. In many there was no pay at all, just a bunk and food. As an example, in 1898 the Nottingham Workhouse daily ration consisted of (recorded by an inmate - his words in quotations):

• Breakfast: 1 cup of porridge (cold)
• Lunch: 1 cold potato, boiled in jackets and with mud still attached, 1/4 ounce of beef or lamb, "of condemable quality - being no more than grissle and fat and possibly considering the taste, rotten."
• Evening meal: Cold suet. "in which the lumps were visible and requiring so much salt to make it palettable as to make the victim sick by this garnish itself." 1/2 ounce of "wooden and solid, stale" bread.

Entry into the workhouse was technically voluntary but from 1840, vagrants and pedlars considered a nuissance could be confined there by the justices. Those who had also commited a crime such as assualt, property damage etc. were sent to the county goal.

In the 1890s and first decade of 1900, local hospitals - which had been fee-paying for many centuries - began operating 'differential payments' - lower fees for those of poor means. This was often spurned on by local philanthropists such as Sir George White of Bristol (and owner of the local tramway company), who as a condition for bailing out the Bristol Royal Infirmary from the debts racked up by corrupt board members, insisted on such a policy.

In terms of government acts, the greatest step (barring the 1947 NHS) was in 1908 when the government began making the first Old Age Pension provisions, the first payments being made in April 1909. In the words of Winston Churchill:....[this] will remove the fear of workhouse deprivation from our venerated senior citizens.

Having confined itself to sewer and water inspections, this was the first time government began active - 'positive' - interventions. It was in fact blocked by the House of Lords, so radical was it, which in 'The Great Constitutional Crisis' led to the Lords being forced to abdicate much of it's powers, to create the current system. (Details are at the foot of this document).

In 1912, the Lords now having been 'demoted', the first unemployment benefits began through the new 'National Insurance' system which was also designed so as to track OAP payments. In 1913 this was extended to include doctor's appointments and basic medicines. The NHS would not follow until 1947 however. This was done by 'vouchers' to pay for private medication.

Further developments continued after the Great War. During this, 8,000 new houses were built by the Ministry of Munitions to accommodate munitions workers. These houses, by working class standards were of very high quality with gas cookers and fires, running water, flushing toilets, up to 4 bedrooms and gardens. In 1919 they were taken over by local authorities and became the first council houses (a British phrase referring to social housing - as they were run by local councils.) Many new tenants - both male and female - were seen crying when they were shown to their new houses.

To understand, the following link will give you a picture of previous standards of housing in Steep Street in Bristol. The picture is rather large so you may wish to save it off. Paste the following to you web browser:

http://www.geocities.com/paul_j_hurley@btinternet.com/education_items/images/

lastscan.jpg

then click on "file" and "save as". Open with a system such a MS Paint. Document is a scan of a personal copy of an item held by The Bristol Evening Post. Photo taken by J. Hill-Morgan of Tydalls Park, Bristol, 1917.

1923 saw a Housing Act requiring local authorities to provide further houses to allow slums to be cleared (the original 8,000 ex-munitions houses were oversubscribed by 280,000 families.) In 1929, the new Labour Government increased this provision and provided greatly expanded funding. Sadly, the Wall St. Stock Market Collapsed 4 days after it received Royal assent and the plan was shelved until 1945.

The last workhouse in the UK, in Glasgow, was closed in 1923.

I forgot the Constitutional crisis!

Oficially, in 1908/09, the House of Lords was senoir to the Commons able to block any bill and enforce legislation without Commons approval, but by an 'agreement' 200 years earlier, the Lords accepted that it would not interfere with financial bills, such as the OAP bill, and would 'co-operate' with the Commons. When they broke both of these provisions in 1909 by blocking the pensions bill, the Prime Minister, Asquith approached King Edward VII with a plan.

The King, sympathetic to the bill, and also the commons, agreed to support new measures. If the Lords did not accept both the Bill and an extra one removing, officially, many of their powers then the King would create 800 new Lords - all of them froma list devised by Asquith and chosen to be supportive of the government. They would outnumber all the other Lords and so automatically agree to all of these provisions - AND MORE!. Lords backed down late in 1910.

Edits: the web address for the picture seems not not like being typed properly. That web address including the 'lastscan.jpg' should all be on 1 line