Lunch will be provided. Please let the CHM Coordinator know if you will be attending.

I will be presenting an overview of a chapter I am writing entitled 'Exclusion and the Voluntary Hospital in Eighteenth-Century London'. This chapter is to be included in an edited collection that I am editing with Dr Naomi Pullin, Negotiating Exclusion in the Early Modern England, 1550-1750 (Routledge, forthcoming 2020). The chapter focusses on the Westminster Infirmary: the world's first voluntary hospital. It explores how the activities of the hospital - from its foundation and institutional governance and administration, to staffing, practices of admittance and discharge, and daily ward activity – were shaped by eighteenth-century conceptions of who constituted societal ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and societal conditions of ‘normalcy’ and ‘abnormalcy’. It also considers how these categories were negotiated within and defined by the Westminster Infirmary.

To provide some context and give an indication of how exclusion is conceptualised and used as a category of analysis in this volume, I have attached a draft of the introduction that I have been writing with Naomi. I would welcome any comments on this. I also welcome the opportunity to field your ideas on my plan for the chapter in the session.

Negotiating Exclusions Draft Intro for WiP