The Pauper Hospital - Tan Tock Seng Hospital as a Benevolent Institute and a tool of the empire

Abstract

Drawing reference from the founding of hospitals in America, contextual sources argue that many charitable hospitals were initially institutions that were established to take care of the poor and sick in one’s community. The advent of a paying patient only emerged with the modernisation of hospitals in the twentieth century. Before that, most hospitals provided free healthcare to their patients, whereas the rich and middle class preferred to be treated in their homes. In reference to the above, this project demonstrates the history of Singapore’s Tan Tock Seng Hospital from its roots in the nineteenth century as a charitable hospital for the poor and sick up till decolonisation in the 1960s. Critically important, however, is the understanding that the trajectory of Western hospitals towards modernisation should not be taken as inevitable. If that was the case, all hospitals would be the same. The advent of the paying patient did not occur during Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s history during colonisation. This paper seeks to study the charitable hospital of Tan Tock Seng Hospital and situate it within the context of pauperism and colonialism in pre-independence Singapore. This thesis does not serve to refute the factuality of Tan Tock Seng Hospital as a charitable hospital. Instead, the thesis postulates that the hospital served as both a benevolent medical institute and a tool of the empire simultaneously.