Audlem and District History Society

RehabilitationSimon Carr using ChatGPTSimon Carr using ChatGPT

Thursday May 21st

The Shropshire Orthopaedic Scheme and the modernisation of healthcare in the UK, 1900-1948

The final meeting of the season is about a hospital and service that will be familiar to many of us, where we, or someone we know, has received treatment.
Our speaker is Simon Carr who has a Ph.D in the History of Medicine and works at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

By the mid-1930s, the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen, near Oswestry was at the centre of a pioneering and extensive network of preventative and after-care clinics radiating across eight counties. The Shropshire Orthopaedic Scheme became a highly influential example of modernity and progressiveness within healthcare, exerting significant influence upon the contemporary debate about what a nationalised health service could look like. The talk will track developments from Hunt’s founding of the Baschurch Convalescent Home in 1900 to its becoming a transformative, regionally integrated healthcare system.

Venue: Meetings take place in the Scout and Guide Hall in Cheshire Street and start at 7.30pm. Visitors are welcome and can pay £4 on the door.

Photo: the main photo shows rehabilitation of British soldiers from Normandy - the work of the Robert Jones and Dame Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry, Shropshire, 1944.