iNEWS: When the NHS was born in 1948, it replaced an ad-hoc, distressingly unequal, system

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Christine Hallett, professor of nursing history at Manchester University, said: “A lot of people were scared to go to hospital. This was the era before antibiotics and a lot of middle and upper class people paid to be cared for at home.

“It was one way that hospitals made money. Newly trained nurses would be classified as probationers and then sent out as private nurses with the hospital collecting the fee.”