Birmingham-based health and wellbeing group BHSF, is celebrating 150 years of making a difference to the lives of working people across the West Midlands and beyond.
Founded in 1873 by the eminent surgeon, Joseph Sampson Gamgee, BHSF can trace it’s history back to The Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund, set up to help Birmingham hospitals and medical charities.
It was Gamgee and his later successors who galvanised the working people of Birmingham at the time and pioneered the concept of the Hospital Saturday – one day a year on which workers were encouraged to contribute overtime to a central Hospital Saturday Fund.
Those contributions directly supported workers access to health care before the advent of the National Health Service, and later provided access to our services such as convalescence. The company later developed into the provision of health insurance and has since grown to be a nationwide occupational health, mental health, and wellbeing services provider.