Report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society.

Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society. 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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    an authority which no man can despise, and stamp the pro- ceedings of this Society with an undoubted title to the respect, the support, and the sympathies of their fellow-countrymen. The Committee leave it to the honorable lord to reconcile his conduct with such an expression of his opinions; all that they can say, is that if Lord Ashley’s bill has terminated in so complete a failure, the fault does not rest with them, but is to be found in the hasty and illjudged conduct of those parties who forced that bill through Parliament, without a previous enquiry before a Committee of the House of Com- mons, which was earnestly petitioned for by this Society, corporately and by various members of it, and by other par- ties individually, and in spite of the representations and remonstrances of Mr. Thomas S. Duncombe, and other Members of Parliament, who were requested by this Com- mittee to advocate their opinions, and to expose the defects of the bill introduced by his Lordship; and they cannot help further observing that, although they have constantly renewed their petitions for such an enquiry, and have taken other steps to obtain a reform of that statute, they have never yet met with any support or any encouragement to any of their exertions in Parliament from the noble Lord, or from any of his Lordship’s colleagues at the Board of Commissioners in Lunacv. m The law still remains with nearly all ihe the odious defects belonging to it, which it possessed since his Lordship accepted the office of Commissioner, respecting the seizure and con- finement of private patients on Alleged Grounds of Insanity, with the exception of the clause, the insertion of which was obtained by Mr. Thomas S. Duncombe, at the instance of this Society, whereby the medical persons certifying any party to be insane, are required to state the grounds of their