NHS at 75: Vintage photos document the birth of free healthcare in Britain
Oscar Holland
·3 min read
“Everyone — rich or poor, man, woman or child — can use it or any part of it,” read a leaflet introducing Britain’s public healthcare system in 1948. “There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no insurance qualifications. But it is not a ‘charity.’ You are all paying for it, mainly as taxpayers, and it will relieve your money worries in time of illness.”
Today, the National Health Service (NHS), which turns 75 on Wednesday, is the cornerstone of social welfare in the UK. Despite growing concerns about waiting times and staff pay, it interacts with patients an estimated 1.6 million times a day and remains one of the world’s largest employers.
But when the idea of free universal healthcare was first introduced in postwar Britain, it was a radical development in a country where treatment had been paid for by patients, charities or a national insurance system that only benefited those in employment.
Published ahead of this week’s anniversary, new book “The National Health Service” brings together over 100 photos from the service’s early decades. It shows formative programs such as the provision of birth control pills and nationwide immunization, as well as then-pioneering health technology.
“However clunky and crude the medical kit in some of these photographs seems,” wrote journalist Lucy Davies in the book’s introduction, “much of it was cutting edge for the time — and it saved lives.”
Scroll down to see more images from the book. “The National Health Service,” published by Hoxton Mini Press, is available now.
A patient with a chest specialist at a Bristol health center inspect a chest X-ray in July 1948, the month the NHS launched. - Popperfoto/Getty Images
Nurses cradle the first babies to be born under the new National Health Service on 5th July 1948. Had they been born a day earlier, they would have cost their families one shilling and sixpence, according to new book "The National Health Service." - PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Construction of new blocks at St Thomas' Hospital in London. - Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
Nurses lobby for better pay in 1969 as part of the nationwide "Raise the Roof" campaign. - Sydney O'Meara/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Britain's first heart transplant patient, Frederick West, pictured with nurses at the National Heart Hospital in London in 1968. He survived just 46 days after the procedure. - Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images
Britain's then-health minister Aneurin Bevan, who played a crucial role in the establishment of the NHS, reviews the public information campaign in 1948. - Popperfoto/Getty Images
A hospital domestic worker pictured in the 1980s. New book "The National Health Service" says that the health service's ancillary staff — including laundry workers, cleaners, caterers, porters and maintenance staff — have been "critical to the success of the NHS, yet historically among the worst paid people in the country." - Chris Porsz
A Nigerian nurse at Brook General Hospital, London, in 1958. The postwar decades saw the NHS recruit heavily from Commonwealth and Caribbean countries to meet a shortfall in nursing staff. - George W. Hales/Fox Photos/Getty Images
A dentist with his young patient at a health center surgery in Bristol shortly after the NHS was established in July 1948. - Popperfoto/Getty Images
Contraceptive pills are inspected at the pharmaceutical company British Drug Houses in 1965. - Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo
A new nurses' training school at Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, in 1969. - Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
A patient at London's Charing Cross Hospital watches TV with headphones in 1972. - Homer Sykes/Alamy Stock Photo
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