Voluntary Hospital of St Bartholomew

The Voluntary Hospital of St Bartholomew is an independent charity with origins in a 1546 indenture, dedicated to providing targeted relief to patients and staff at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London’s City. Its enduring mission, rooted in sustaining the poor and sick, focuses on alleviating financial hardships arising from illness or treatment, embodying values of compassion, historical stewardship, and swift, practical support where NHS resources fall short. As patron of the hospital’s church, Barts the Less, it maintains deep institutional ties, prioritizing individual welfare over broad health initiatives or research.

It funds direct personal aid for in-patients, out-patients, discharged patients facing ongoing disadvantage, and staff essential to care quality. Supported needs include travel costs, specialist clothing, mobility aids, childcare during hospital stays, wigs, and end-of-life expenses like funerals—recent examples feature shared mobility aid funding with The Rahere Association (with which it is merging for efficiency) and subsidies for chaplaincy roles amid staffing shifts.

Unsolicited applications from external charities or organizations are not accepted; grants are initiated solely by hospital staff, social workers, or intermediaries identifying acute needs, submitted to Secretary Elizabeth Clark for case-by-case review by sub-committees or the Board. There are no income/size rules, geographic limits beyond St Bartholomew’s, or fixed deadlines—decisions occur on a rolling basis via regular meetings.

Typical grants are modest, from a few hundred pounds up to £1,000 (e.g., for funerals), excluding project funding, core costs, capacity building, or activities outside this hospital community. Its hallmark is centuries-old, hyper-local embedding, dynamically modernizing via Charity Commission-guided reforms to maximize impact in Barts’ heart and cancer specialties.