The hospital at the center of the dispute in Anthony Trollope's The Warden is Hiram's Hospital. It is a fictional almshouse in Barchester, supported by a medieval charitable bequest to the Diocese of Barchester. The institution houses twelve poor men, known as bedesmen, and provides its warden with a substantial income.
The novel's central conflict begins when the reform-minded young surgeon John Bold argues that the hospital's funds should benefit the bedesmen more directly. The warden, Septimus Harding, is personally kind and conscientious, but his comfortable income appears excessive when compared with the money available to the residents. Newspapers and church officials turn the dispute into a public controversy.
Harding eventually decides that he cannot in good conscience retain the office on its existing terms and resigns. Trollope published The Warden in 1855 as the first novel in his Chronicles of Barsetshire series; it was followed by Barchester Towers. The fictional controversy appears to have been inspired partly by investigations into the finances of the real Hospital of St Cross in Winchester.