The defects of the lunacy law : a vindication of the decision of the Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, in the case of Nottidge versus Ripley / by T.T. Wingett.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The defects of the lunacy law : a vindication of the decision of the Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, in the case of Nottidge versus Ripley / by T.T. Wingett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Since the close of the last Session of Parliament, the Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, in a Court of Nisi Prius after Trinity Term, has made a striking and palpable exposure of the primitive and narrow-minded character of our common law, and the insufficiency of our statutes, relative to the affairs of lunacy and lunatics. And inasmuch as it is as probable as it is exigent that the subject will be legislated upon in the coming Session of Parliament, it becomes interesting and profitable at the present moment to inquire what is the actual state of the law—its spirit, limits, wisdom, and folly — touching this question. This may be done in a coup d'oeil of the now celebrated case of Miss Nottidge : in which the judge enunciated the legal maxim that dangerous lunacy alone indicates the criterion for confine- ment in a lunatic asylum; and the jury deter- mined that the clear and unequivocal religious monomania under which the lady suffered did not constitute legal unsoundness of mind. These,