The evidence taken before a committee of the House of Commons, respecting the Asylum at York / with observations and notes, and a letter to the Committee, &c. ... ; by Godfrey Higgins.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee appointed to consider of provisions being made for the better regulation of madhouses in England.
Date:
1816
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The evidence taken before a committee of the House of Commons, respecting the Asylum at York / with observations and notes, and a letter to the Committee, &c. ... ; by Godfrey Higgins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    82/82 (page 18)
    IS Appendix. no. xi. February, 1802. William Exilby has brought up Parkin's son, and never had any allowance for him.* The following is an extract from the letter of a man of rank to his solicitors, after the statute of lunacy had been superseded. I sav, I was most arbitrarily confined in the York medical inquisition, managed by , now no more, and the gang of Myrmidons, who are allowed to commit even murder with im- punity, as no proof can be had, except proof that would be con- sidered madness in any of the people under confinement, and who would not be heard in evidence against any doctor's keepers. Another thing is, that a coroner's inquest is seldom or ever called to inspect the bodies after they are fortunately released by death from the most shocking cruelty of doctors and their keepers, and the most dangerous tyranny ever invented by the devil, doctors, or men : so, before you again apply for a commission of lunacy against any individual, under the heaviest of all human afflictions, if you are not destitute of every humane feeling for the sufferings of your fellow creatures,—it behoves yoa to consider what the consequences are of obtaining such statutes, and the tyranny of such laws as those of lunacy. •* From this it should seem, as if the governors did not consider themselves bound to maintain the bastards of the patients, only those of the keepers. App. No. IV. THE fiND. W. Sheardown, Printer, High-street, Doncaster: \