Annual report of the General Board of Control for Scotland : 1923.

Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Annual report of the General Board of Control for Scotland : 1923. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/408 (page 14)
    Our Board have always recognized, too, the value of Dr. Miller’s efforts on behalf of the nursing staff in general of mental hospitals, and are aware that much of his leisure was absorbed in volun¬ tary work during the past 20 years as Registrar of the Medico- Psychological Association. To succeed him, the Visiting Com¬ mittee have appointed Dr. Archibald T. W. Forrester (M.D., B.S. Bond., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.), who had for 13 years been Deputy Superintendent at Narborough (Leicester and Rutland) and who, besides general hospital experience, had been a member of the Winwick Mental Hospital medical staff. 4. The Staffordshire Asylums Act, 1922. This Act, which came into operation on the 1st of April 1923, follows the precedents of the Lancashire Act of 1891 and the West Riding of Yorkshire Act, 1912. The Act constitutes a Mental Hospitals Board for the County of Stafford, consisting of 29 representatives of the County and 27 representatives of the County Boroughs in the County, namely, Burton-on-Trent, Smethwick, Stoke-on-Trent, Walsall, West Bromwich, and Wolverhampton. To this Board the three Mental Hospitals in the County, namely, Stafford, Burntwood and Cheddleton, are transferred, together with all rights, powers, duties, obligations and liabilities of the County and County Borough Councils as the Local Authorities under the Lunacy Acts, 1890 and 1891, and the Asylums Officers’ Superannuation Act, 1909, and of the then existing Visiting Committee, subject to the provisions of the Act. The Board are to appoint out of their own body, for each of the Mental Hospitals, or, if they think fit, for any two or more of them, Visiting Committees of not less than seven members. The Minister of Health has power under the Act, on the application of the Councils, to constitute the Board a Local Authority for the purposes of the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913, and may transfer to the Board all or any of the powers which, the Councils respectively possess under or by virtue of the Mental Deficiency Act. 5. Isolation Hospitals. For some years past it has been the practice of this Board to press on Visiting Committees the necessity of providing small isolation hospitals for infectious cases, quite apart from the main building of the institution. It was intended that these hospitals, which were limited to three beds for each sex, should always be kept equipped and ready for immediate use, and that they should not ordinarily be occupied by patients or by staff, other