Twenty-second annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1859.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1860]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-second annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1859. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/52 (page 24)
    4 of all the established County asylums. The 21 asylums may be classed thus. Present size of asylums, undergoing, or to undergo enlargement- l 4 5 6 5 asylum containing 159 patients. from 267 to 297. from 303 to 333. from 401 to 505. from 723 to 1295. n >7 7* >7 7> • 7 77 It may be held that, except the first, there is not one of these asylums but is already as large as can consist with the best management, while all those receiving more than 300 patients may be deemed to have exceeded the limit of highest efficiency. Wherever the work to be done exceeds the direct capacity of one head, and the personal supervision of one pair of eyes, then the consistent and harmonious idea of a perfect management cannot be so well executed. The division of labour may serve indefinitely in a field of operations where human feelings have no concern; but in a community of insane persons, there can seldom, if ever, be more than one director to exercise beneficially the authority, and to have the experience and mental adaptation necessary to conduct every thing ivell At the suggestion of the House Committee, we have ex¬ tracted the published opinion of the Commissioners on this point, from their report to the Lord Chancellor in 1844, repeated in 1857, and confirmed by Lord Shaftesbury’s re¬ port before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1859.* * Extracts from the Commissioners’ Report to the Lord Chancellor. 1844. u From the best opinions which we have been able to collect, and from the result of our own observations and experience, we think it is desirable that no asylum for curable lunatics, should contain more than 250 patients, and that 200 is perhaps as large a number, as can be managed with the most benefit to themselves and the public, in one establishment.”—p. 23, 1844.