Sheriff's Warrants

Sheriff's warrants for Crichton Royal Institution and Southern Counties Asylum are housed together. Certification papers, 1839-1857, are loose and housed in folders. They comprise manuscript and printed petitions to the Sheriff, reports by medical practitioners and Sheriff's warrants for both private and rate-aided patients. The style of the printed form alters with a slightly different form appearing from 1850, to be signed by the Inspector of the Poor for the admission of rate-aided patients into Southern Counties Asylum. Many of these early papers have not survived, for example there are only two for 1842 and five for 1848. In some cases these early papers are not complete and may only have a petition to the Sheriff with no medical certificates. Details are given of the patient name, parish, duration of illness, and in some cases the rate of board is shown. From 1858 certification forms were standardised and produced by the General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland, these Sheriff's warrants are housed in bound volumes and comprise, Petition to the Sheriff to grant Order for the Reception of a Patient, Medical Certificates No. I and No. II, Certificate of Emergency and Order to be Granted by the Sheriff for the Transmission and Reception of the Lunatic. Information provided includes patient name, age, sex, marital status, religion, place of residence, place where found and examined, duration of illness, whether first attack, age on first attack, when and where previously under examination and treatment, duration of existing attack, supposed cause of illness, whether the patient was subject to epilepsy, suicidal, or dangerous to others, parish or union under which lunatic is chargeable, name and place of abode of nearest known relative and degree of relationship (if known), name of Petitioner, whether any member of family known to be or have been insane, and a description of the patient's condition on examination is recorded in the medical certificates. There can be several different types of admission forms in these volumes including transfer forms from one hospital to another and forms for the admission of criminal patients and soldiers. Additional documentation can also be found bound into the volumes and includes letters from Parish and County Councils relating to the maintenance of patients, letters from Doctors and forms for patients being released on probation or trial. Loose material found in volumes is listed in the volume description and stored in separate folders, with the pages from which the items have been taken being marked 'Enc' to indicate there is additional material. This loose material includes extracts from Parish and County Council minutes and Sanctions by the General Board of Lunacy for Liberation of a Patient on Trial. They arranged chronologically by date of admission. It should be noted that the date the papers have been signed can sometimes be a few days before the date of admission or in some cases, if signed in late December the patient may not be admitted until January the following year. In addition dates of loose material can be many years after the date of the volume in which they were found. There is no certainty that a Sheriff's warrant has survived for every patient admitted.

1838-1936

4 linear metres (69 volumes and 19 folders)

When the hospital opened in 1839 the required documentation for admission was an order by a local Sheriff, certificates completed by two medical professionals attesting to the need for treatment, and a petition from a third party such as a friend or relative of the patient. This method of admission remained after the 1857 Lunacy (Scotland) Act was passed and the General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland introduced standard admission forms. Both fee paying and rate-aided patients were admitted in the same way, by means of certification.

Registers of Lunatics and General Register, DGH1/5/2; Case Books, DGH1/5/21

Enquiries for reproduction for commercial purposes should be directed to the Archivist, Dumfries and Galloway Archives and Local Studies

The papers are available at Dumfries and Galloway Archives subject to conditions of UK Data Protection Act 1998, Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and NHS Records Management Code of Practice 2012. Subject to these restrictions, this material is being digitised by the University of Glasgow as part of a Wellcome Trust funded project. Material that is digitised will be accessed freely online through the Wellcome Library catalogue.

Further deposits expected from NHS Dumfries and Galloway.