The reports of the County Lunatic Asylums at Lancaster, Rainhill, & Prestwich : presented to the Court of Adjourned Annual Session held on the 7th of January 1857 with the accounts of the receipts and payments of the respective treasurers of the said asylums.

  • Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The reports of the County Lunatic Asylums at Lancaster, Rainhill, & Prestwich : presented to the Court of Adjourned Annual Session held on the 7th of January 1857 with the accounts of the receipts and payments of the respective treasurers of the said asylums. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The discharges during the year have been 41, viz., 17 men and 24 women : of these 12 have been discharged at the request and upon the undertaking of relations, and 19 upon the application of Guardians of Workhouses. With respect to this latter class of discharges, your Committee thinks it right to make known the grounds upon which it usually acts in granting the removal of an idiotic and imbecile patient from the Asylum to a Workhouse. In every such case, where the Medical officers can give the assurance that the patient sought to be discharged is harmless, and not likely, if kept in the Asylum, to be benefitted by any remedial treatment 3 and if, upon enquiry of the Guardians applying, or from any other person competent to give the information, your Committee finds that there is a separate ward in the Workhouse in which the patient can be kept, such discharges are readily granted. Your Committee, in acting upon these considerations and in exercising this discretion, has been accused (so it has been reported) of claiming a right to interfere beyond the limits of the Asylum. Your Committee has no such right, and disclaims all such intention. But your Committee will not forbear from expressing a hope that the Guardians, and especially 1 is this appeal made to the ex-officio Guardians and Medical officers of these Workhouses, that they will see that these patients > so transferred are really kept apart, and free from the taunts and provocations they are so apt to meet with from the ordinary inmates of a Workhouse 3 and that they receive such treatment and accommodation as their helpless and afflicted condition so* justly requires.