Commitment, detention, care and treatment of the insane : being a report of the fourth section of the International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893 / edited by G. Alder Blumer, A. B. Richardson.

  • Richardson A. B. (Alonzo B.)
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Commitment, detention, care and treatment of the insane : being a report of the fourth section of the International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893 / edited by G. Alder Blumer, A. B. Richardson. 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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    THE LUNACY ADMINISTRATION OF SCOTLAND 1857—1892. BY T. S. CLOUSTON, M. D., Physioian-Superlntendent, Royal Edinburgh Asylum, Morningside, Scotland ; Lecturer on Mental Diseases Edinburgh University. Before the year 1857 the insane in Scotland were supervised and legally protected by the sheriffs of each county, who visited the asylums within their jurisdiction and attended to all complaints of undue detention or improper treatment. The sheriff in Scot- land is a local judge with large powers, and he is always a trained lawyer and has a life tenure of office. At various times within the previous eighty-five years there had been erected in Scotland seven asylums, all with royal charters, hence called Royal Asylums, but all originating in local philanthropic efforts, and in no way sub- ject to I'oyal control or receiving government assistance. They were all situated near the larger towns of the kingdom and were all governed by local boards of management, who appointed the officers, visited the institutions and saw the patients. No local rates or assessments were or could be raised for their erection, but they all, after completion, took in a certain proportion of rate-paid or pauper patients paid for by their parishes, as well as private patients who were paid for by their relatives or out of their own means. In addition to these royal asylums there were many pri- vately owned asylums where both pauper and private patients were boarded. The poorhouses also had some insane and imbecile inmates of the more quiet sort, and scattered through many of the poorer and more outlying portions of the country were a large number of insane persons boarded with private families; often- times very small sums of money indeed being paid for their main- tenance, and no supervision being exercised over them at all. There was no central authority in the kingdom whose duty it was to exercise a general supervision over the insane or their guardians. After the passing of the English Lunacy Act of 1845, under Lord Shaftesbury's philanthropic initiative, more than one attempt was made to pass a similar act for Scotland, especially in 1848, but without success till 1857.