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.

  • International Congress of Charities, Correction, and Philanthropy (1893 : Chicago, Ill.)
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.

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    further action has been taken by the London County Council to make the necessary permanent provision for the insane poor beyond advertising for an estate as a site for another asylum. The additions to Cane Hill are now available, but we believe the Claybury Asylum will require at least another year for its comple- tion. These two extensions will provide for 2,800 patients, but there will^ be still left boarded out a sufficient number to fill another asylum of considerable capacity, while there can be little hope of any diminution of the annual increment of insane paupers for whom provision must be made.” I have written elsewhere on several occasions during the last twenty years pointing out that, account for it how we may, as time progresses, the stream of insanity broadens and deepens continually. The great central fact stares us in the face, it can- not be hidden, no effort of obscurantism can conceal it. The fig- ures given from official records indisputably prove it. The omin- ous word “increase” is written large upon every page of the annual reports for the last forty years, and it is surprising how the commis- sioners apparently fail to see the significance of their own figures or of the emphatic language they themselves have used. Through the favour of the “State Commissioners in Lunacy” New York, T have just received a copy of their third annual report, being for the year 1891, from which I gather that the same tendency to increase exists in America as with us. In Chapter 3 (p.209) it is stated that “ in appropriations for the insane the State has never kept pace with the actual increase of its insane population.” On p. 381, Chapter 29, it appears that the number of registered in- sane in the State on October 1st, 1891, was 16,648, a net increase over the preceding year of 642. 1 merely glance at this fact in pass- ing, not having the means of ascertaining the circumstances elsewhere or whether the increase is general throughout the other States of America. But to return to my illustration. From what small be- ginnings the system has developed, during this century, into its pres- ent great yjroportions may be gathered from the fact that a return presented to Parliament in 1807 put the number of the insane then in England at 2,248, (Report of Commissioners, 1846). The Re- port proceeds: “The numbers became gradually better known, partly owing to individual inquiries, until the year 1827, when the ascertained number of pauper lunatics exceeded 9,000; whilst on the 1st day of January, 1847, the number returned was 18,814.” This relates to England only.