Next Talk is on 31st March 2025 - Bathford Parish Hall at 8:00pm."Bathford before the NHS" presented by John Daniels, author. - The NHS, with its many limitations, aims in theory to provide healthcare from cradle to grave and probably in Bathford with our local providers we do better than most. However, what happened before the NHS when government was effectively absent from the scene? In this talk, John Daniels who has researched the topic will tell us of the Bath Hospital Box scheme which was a voluntary subscription scheme in which Bathford, one of over 80 local wards in Bath, West Wilts and North Somerset, set up a local committee to collect quarterly contributions from home collecting boxes. Initially established to rescue the Royal United Hospital from debt and closure (under the chairmanship of Frank Pine, the grandfather of John), the scheme expanded to cover a wide range of benefits including dentistry and spectacles. |
