Minutes of the Hospital Committee and predecessors

Minutes of Bethlem (Sub-) Committee from 1709 to 1930, the Bethlem Grand Committee from 1789 to 1802, Bethlem House Committee from 1930 to 1949, and Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital Committee from 1949 to 1976. The (Sub-) Committee was a weekly meeting of a fixed proportion of those hospital Governors that had been elected to the (Sub-) Committee, who were obliged to attend in rotation. Its business was the admission and discharge of patients, the auditing of monies and supplies, and other everyday affairs of the hospital. The Grand Committee, consisting of all those hospital Governors that had been elected to the (Sub-) Committee, was summoned only to approve contracts or transact business of exceptional significance. The name of the (Sub-) Committee was changed to the House Committee in 1930. A year after the advent of the National Health Service in July 1948, and the merger of Bethlem Royal Hospital with the Maudsley, most of the functions of the House Committee were taken over by the Joint Hospital's Hospital Committee (though some others became the responsibility of the Medical Committee).

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