Great Ormond Street Hospital first expired at the end of 1987 in the UK, 50 years after Barrie's death, the UK government's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 granted the hospital a perpetual right to collect royalties for public performances, commercial publication, or other communications to the public of the work but this does not constitute a true copyright. When copyright term itself was subsequently extended to the author's life plus 70 years by a European Union directive in 1996 standardising terms throughout the EU, GOSH revived its copyright of "Peter Pan" which then expired in 2007. The terms of the Copyright, Designs
Platt Report 1959 children's hospitals, which included a large number of prestigious hospitals, e.g. Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital. These were independent institutions funded by voluntary donations, and from research, were shown to be designed for the "deserving poor" largely reflecting Victorian values. Children could only be admitted, if they were sponsored by a letter of recommendation, from a hospital affiliate. The "undeserving poor" were sent to workhouse infirmaries, whilst middle class children were generally cared for, and indeed operated on, at home. These hospitals set their own rules and had their