Stephenson, Craig David (1993) The voluntary maternity hospital : a social history of provincial institutions with special reference to maternal mortality, 1860-1930. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

From an historical perspective, the maternity
hospital has borne criticism in two major respects.
Firstly it has been argued that the voluntary maternity
hospital played a negligible, even harmful role in
delivering women in childbirth and therefore cannot be
regarded as having a positive influence on maternal
mortality. Secondly, but not unrelated, is the widely
held assumption that the maternity hospital was little
more than an instrument of male medicalisation
responsible for subordinating midwives and their patients
to medical authority.
Drawing evidence from hospital records (Board
minutes, registers and annual reports) relating to
Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham and
Newcastle, the thesis challenges both points of view.
Using Manchester as a principal case study, it has been
found that the city's two maternity hospitals, conducting
both ward and home confinements, played a far more
demographically significant role than previous estimates
have allowed. By adopting those factors considered
crucial determinants of low maternal mortality, 'free',
'accessible' care of 'a high standard', administered by a
'careful midwife' and a 'skilled doctor', the hospital's
potential to influence local maternal mortality rates was
formidable.
The Manchester material is again used in the
medicalisation debates, but much more relevant to this
discussion are the findings at the Liverpool Maternity
Hospital. Managed by the Ladies Committee, practices at
the hospital refute the opinion that, women managing
women's affairs, was to the greater good of their gender
simply because they shared 'the same biological
experience of femaleness...'. Class interest also
accounted for the women's involvement and the way they
exercised their influence. The Liverpool material also
provides, along with material from other provincial
maternity hospitals, a detailed explanation of the
medicalisation process so far as it effected maternity
hospitals. It is only from the 1920s that the
medicalisation of the institutions begin to have a
detrimental effect on the confinement of women, but as
the conclusions indicate, there was more to the maternity
hospital by this date than forceps and sutures.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain R Medicine > RG Gynecology and obstetrics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Women's hospitals -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century, Women's hospitals -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Mothers -- Mortality -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century, Mothers -- Mortality -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Voluntary hospitals -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century, Voluntary hospitals -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century
Official Date:	January 1993
Dates:	Date Event January 1993 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Social History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Lane, Joan
Extent:	2 v. (xvii, 557 leaves)
Language:	eng

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