In England, why are some high schools called hospitals?

Question

I noticed that in the UK some high schools are called hospitals. For example, Grey Coat Hospital, Christ's Hospital and Queen Elizabeth's Hospital. Does hospital sometimes mean school?

Answer 1

These schools are ancient, some quite nearly predating even the modern sense of the word "hospital" as a place for the sick or injured which Etymonline says formed in the 1540s. Instead, it's an earlier connotation of the word "hospital", which also described:

• Places for weary travelers (a "hospice" in the old sense of that word)
• Almshouses
• Retirement homes for sailors

In other words, "hospitals" were all charitably run places which provided a refuge (or hospitality) for some needy group. In the case of the schools, it was a place for youth to be, run by a charitable organization, where they could get an education. Some schools, like the Royal Hospital School, were formed not just for youth, but orphaned youth.

According to the Lincoln Christ's Hospital School website:

Dr Mary Lucas informs us that one of the definitions of 'hospital' in the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘a charitable institution for the education…of the young’. The name has long since disappeared as a general term for a school, but survives in ‘proper’ names such as Christ’s Hospital School, a prestigious public school founded in London in the 16th century and now relocated in Horsham. Education was originally religious in intent and execution, and many schools and colleges, like churches, were given Saints’ or God's names (e.g. Trinity, All Souls, Christ’s).

(Note: a public school in the British sense.)

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I have never heard of a school in the United States with such a name, perhaps because schools here aren't old enough. There are "university hospitals" but these are entirely different beast: teaching hospitals. Not to be confused with hospital schools which are places for sick children to be taught while they are treated.

Answer 2

The clue is in the Latin word from which 'hospital' is derived: hospitium. The Latin hospes means guest and in the Roman world refers to a place that receives guests on travel: a sort hotel or guest house. In the middle ages, when the language of the Christian religion was Latin it came to be charitable housing or provision, sometimes for the old, sometimes for the sick, and sometimes for the education of the poor. The 'hospital' schools were at least originally boarding schools, as Christ's Hospital, for example, still is. As it happens, my own father went to school there. This was in part a charitable matter: his father was a merchant sea officer at the time and was deemed to meet the then school's criteria by being the eldest of a family of five. At the time, the school taught not only academic subjects but practical engineering, wood and ironwork, and had its own farm. Since then, these more charitable aspects have been pared back and the charitable aspect has faded, not entirely but to a substantial degree in the face of competition for examination results and of rising costs. But it was in part because of that school that my father became a civil engineer. In earlier centuries, hospital schools might be more likely to recruit its graduates into a religious life (church or monastery) or into administrative roles.

Note that we also have the word 'hospitality', which refers to the world of food, alcohol and the hotel (the French for which retains the 's', as in hostel, in the circumflex accent of hôtel). Care for the sick, old and poor was an important use of hospitia.