Philanthropy and the Hospitals of London The King's Fund, 1897-1990 [Hardcover]

The King's Fund was the leading charitable institution for the support of the voluntary hospitals of London in the period before the creation of the National Health Service and today continues to seek to improve health care and management. Prochaska's readable and scholarly study, with a foreword by the Prince of Wales, the Fund's patron, places the King's Fund in the wider context of the history of philanthropy and social provision. He provides an illuminating analysis of the evolution of the relationship between the voluntary and public sectors.

Prochaska provides much more than a chronicle of one charitable organization....A readable and weighty-extended argument in defense of the voluntary charitable provision of medical care in Britain. --History: Reviews of New Books

A broad political and social history of hospital administration from late Victorian times through the 1980s....The book is well organized, prodigiously researched, written with humor and knowledge of hospital administration, and adequately indexed. --CHOICE

An extensive and useful bibliography. --The Historian

Prochaska has produced a stimulating account of developments in modern philanthropy. --Albion

Prochaska has provided a thorough and generally objective account of the fund's history...[A] sound contribution to our understanding of the function of organized philanthropy. --Journal of the History of Medicine

A valuable contribution to the social history of the hospital in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with special appeal to the social historian of health in Britain and to nurse historians concerned with public health, health and hospital administration, and the role of philanthropy in the provision of care. --Nursing History Review