jul 12, 1819 - Pauper Lunatics (England) Act
Description:
59 Geo. III, c. 127
«Under the 1808 Act (Wynn’s Act) passed under a Tory administration, patients were to be admitted as ‘dangerous to be at large’ under the 1744 Vagrancy Act, or under the various provisions of the Criminal Lunatics Act (37). This means that originally medical certification was still ‘a thing for the rich’. Pauper patients were not originally admitted on a medical basis.
An amending Act of 1815 required overseers to furnish returns of all lunatics and idiots in their parishes to the justices on requires whether admission to the county asylum was sought or not, with a medical certificate for each. The Small Act of 1819 dealt with certification. Until this date, certificates stating merely that ‘Mr – is a suitable Object for your Place’ or to quote a well-known example, that ‘Hey Broadway a Pot Carey’ thought that ‘A blister and bleeding and meddeson’ would be suitable for a gentleman who ‘would not agree to be done at home’, were quite common. The new prescribed form of certification was as follows:
I do hereby certify that by the direction of L.M. and N.O., Justices of the Peace for the County of H., I have personally examined C.D., and the said C.D., appears to me to be of insane mind» (Jones, 1993, p. 38).
«A brief Amendment Act in 1819 extended the powers of magistrates to summon any allegedly insane person for examination by him, with the assistance of a ’medical man’. If insane and
dangerous, the magistrate could send this person to the county asylum upon certification. The form of the pauper certificate was, for the first time, formalized in the statute:
I Do hereby certify, That by the Directions of L.M. and N.O. Esquires, Justices of the Peace for the County of H., I have personally examined C.D. and that the said C.D. appears to be of Insane Mind. Dated this Day of
A.B. (Physician, Surgeon or Apothecary, as the case may be) resident at R.
The certificate is interesting in many respects, not least in its explicit reference that the medical man is acting under the directions of the magistrates. Further, it did not inquire as to the reasons why the medical practitioner deemed the person to be ’lunatic, or insane, or a mischievous idiot’. […] Thus by 1819 many of the basic elements of the nineteenth-century asylum system had been put in place. Rate-aided county asylums were legally permitted and run by magistrates through a visiting committee; licenses for private homes were granted by the permission of the magistrates (with the exception of Middlesex); certification was the province of a licensed medical practitioner and was a prerequisite for admissions to all licensed homes, voluntary hospitals or county pauper asylums. Annual returns of admissions, deaths and discharges were sent to the magistrates, generating statistics on institutional confinement» (Wright, 1998, p. 273).
Added to timeline:
Mental Health Legislation (England and Wales)
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