This chapter concerns the various categories of people associated with the Town Hospital. These people will be considered not from a statistical point of view but in terms of their individual personalities, their relationships with one another, their contribution to the institution and their interaction with wider society. The first section will look at the Hospital's administrators and staff. Following that, the focus will move to inmates, examining the various discrete groups in turn. Children will be discussed first, proceeding to adult women and men, and then the elderly. Strangers, always accorded a distinct status, will be considered last.

Administrators and staff

Administrators

In the period from its foundation to the Second World War, the Town Hospital was variously administered by a Board of Directors (1743–1852); by the House Committee of the St Peter Port Poor Law Board (1853–1925); by the Executive Committee of the St Peter Port Poor Law Board (1925–37); and, lastly, by the Hospital Board of the States’ Public Assistance Authority (1938–70). With these bodies rested responsibility for day-to-day decisions concerning the Hospital and its inmates. Membership of the original Board of Directors varied from twenty-one in 1743 to more than forty in the 1840s. Members of the post-1853 House Committee numbered just seven, those of the post-1925 Executive Committee numbered eight, and members of the post-1938 Hospital Board numbered sixteen. Seats on these bodies were subject to a property qualification, in that they could be held only by ratepayers. All Board and Committee members served gratis.

For the majority of pre-1853 Directors, duties were not onerous. The greatest burdens were borne by the Treasurer and, from 1813, the Vice-Treasurer. From the beginning, the Hospital was provided with a well-appointed boardroom in which Directors met once a week. Board meetings were the principal call upon Directors’ time, although few Directors attended all of the meetings, which by the 1780s had been reduced to one a month. In addition, Directors might occasionally be required to perform tours of inspection at the Hospital or to visit the outdoor poor. Such duties were, however, sporadic. They were usually instituted in a drive to cut expenditure or improve discipline, and lapsed after the initial urgency had passed. The smaller Committees to whom management was entrusted after 1853 were expected to be more proactive.