The archive of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund

This archive is not yet catalogued. The following is an interim description which may change before cataloguing is completed:

This archive consists of printed annual reports, minutes of various committees (General Committee, Case Committee, Committee of Management, War Emergency Fund Committee, Guild Sub Committee), admin files, material relating to Local Guilds, papers of the Devon and Exeter Benevolent Medical Society and papers of the Charles Bailey Society.

In the nineteenth century, beneficiaries of the RMBF tended to fall into three categories. First, elderly or frail doctors were supported as their ability to earn a living declined. Second, widows of medical men were provided with money to live independently (and so avoid the need to apply for other charities or, worse still, register for poor relief). Third, orphans of medical men were assisted, but this element of the charity had a surprising feature: the majority of the orphans were adult women, rather than children. The charity was recognising the limited opportunities for women in Victorian England. Unmarried daughters of doctors had few careers open to them, and none that allowed women to earn very much. If medical fathers failed to leave savings, a legacy or annuity for their womenfolk, these adult orphans could find themselves impoverished, in a world without a welfare state or a pension system. Widows and orphans formed by far the largest group of beneficiaries of the RMBF towards the end of the Victorian era. In the 1880s, 90 percent of grants were made in these categories.

The fund received its ‘Royal’ prefix in 1912 and employed staff from 1915; up to that point, it had been run entirely voluntarily. But the onset of war posed new problems and the Fund developed new ways to assist beleaguered practitioners. In 1915 a War Emergency Fund was set up to help medical families in temporary straits due to the war, and by the time of its closure in 1928 it had distributed over thirty-five thousand pounds. In the 1930s the Fund’s Centenary Appeal sought special donations ‘towards training the widows and orphan sons and daughters of medical practitioners to enable them to be self-supporting’. Then in 1940 the RMBF jointly administered a War Emergency Fund with the British Medical Association.

The RMBF now primarily receive requests from doctors themselves rather than their families, as the 21st century has seen a rise in medical student debt and increasing litigation.

(Source: RMBF website)