Workhouse to Nursing Home: Residential Care of elderly people in England since 1840

Abstract

ABSTRACT Statistics of the movement of elderly people through institutions of care have attracted little attention from present-day researchers, and none at all from historians. The intention in this paper is to indicate some of the analyses which the historian can make, to explore the changes and continuities in the inmate populations of institutions over 120 years, and to speculate upon the reasons for the higher and lower incidences of residential care amongst the old in specific periods. The questions of interest here are how many and which groups amongst the old have been in care in different periods; how many people would ever find their way into institutions in old age: at what ages would they enter; for how long would they stay in care; would they die in care or leave for other reasons; what are the reasons for taking the elderly in to care; and what does all this tell us about the society in question.