Feeble-minded in Ontario : eighth report for the year 1913.

  • MacMurchy, Helen, 1862-1953.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Feeble-minded in Ontario : eighth report for the year 1913. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Safe-Guards. Adequate provision is made under the Act for proper certification of mental defect by two medical examiners, one of whom must be the physician specially appointed for this purpose by the board of control or the local authority, and no mentally defective person (not being' an idiot or an imbecile) can be placed in any such institution without the medical certificates above mentioned, and an order from a judicial authority, a court of competent jurisdiction or from the secretary ■ of state. The Act does not interfere with any mentally defective person who is being adequately cared for and whose parents and guardians do not wish for a change. Adequate provision is also made for re-examination at the end of one year from the first order and at the end of each succeeding five years. A judicial authority for the purposes of the Act is a judge of county courts, police magistrate, or specially appointed justice under the Lunacy Act. The Government Grant. The Treasury Grant for the purposes of this Bill amounts to a total of £150,000. This sum is in addition to the maintenance of any institutions for mentally-defective criminals. The Lord Chancellor stated when the Bill was before the House that the apportionment of the Treasury Grant would be made according to the actual number of mental defectives cared for. Voluntary Associations. The voluntary associations, who had such a great part in securing this legis- lation now have an opportunity which they have not been slow to avail themselves of to reorganize and take up the new opportunities and duties which the Act presents to them. Compulsory modes of dealing with mental defectives do not apply to all such persons, and the powers of the local authorities do not provide for all defectives. The Act provides (Section 48) for grants to sucl; voluntary associations, and the Board of Control has already communicated with the National Association for the care of the Feeble-minded intimating that they would welcome the estab- lishment of some ceniral body representative of all voluntary workers in the field with which the hoard could communicate and confer. A meeting v/as therefore called for November loth, 1913, at the headquarters of the National Association for the Feeble-minded, Denison House, London, S.W., to which representatives of all such voluntary societies were invited. Steps were then taken to organize such a central association, Mr. Leslie Scott, K.C., M.P., having consented to act as chairman of the executive. The central council will consist of representatives of 'ill county and county borough associations. Mrs. Hume Pinsent, one of the Honorary Commissioners under the Act, who seconded the motion to form the association, said that the main difference in attitude between official and voluntary bodies was the tendency of the public local authority, when confronted witli fresh legislation, to study an Act with a view to ascertaining what was the minimum that it must do; whereas the attitude of a voluntary lx)dy was to search the provisions of a statute with a view to finding the maximum that it might do. 4’he harmonions co-operation of the Amluntary agencies t may in this work make good much that would . otherwise he left undone, either as falling without the duties of the public anthoritv, or as being beyond its reach in the first transitional ])eriod. It is in this spirit that the central association has 1 been constituted, and for snc'h pnr]>oses that it seems so eminently adapted.
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