A Middlesex University resource provided by Andrew Roberts
Recommended web address http://studymore.org.uk/01.htm
may I introduce you?

THE LUNACY COMMISSION,
A STUDY OF ITS ORIGIN, EMERGENCE AND CHARACTER

 mental health and learning disability


home page to all of Andrew Roberts' web site
I started researching this book in the early 1970s. Hand wrote it in the early 1980s. Typed it when my university lent me a computer in the early 1990s. In spring 2001 I began moving the whole onto the web [It was hypertext before I knew what that is] and completing it at the same time. After thirty one years, I finished it. England's Poor Law Commissioners and the Trade in Pauper Lunacy 1834-1847 runs alongside The Lunacy Commission like a dark shadow

This is the contents page, but you can also use links from the Mental Health History Timeline to get into the book.

When you see the book picture, clicking it will take you to the book, when you see the egg-timer, clicking it will take you to the timeline.

mental health timeline

Lunacy Commission Book

Each chapter is divided into sections that are numbered so that:
2.5.1 refers to chapter 2, section 5, sub-section 1, and
3.4.1. TA 2 refers to the 2nd table in 3.4.1.
These section numbers can be used to reference any part of the book from this page. The sections index on the right can be used to move quickly to a section.
Click here for referencing advice

Chapter one is the introduction

Read this when you want to see what the thesis is about as a whole - Otherwise start where you want to. If your interest is the development of the commissions, the summary of commissions may be particularly useful. This will not only show you how they developed from 1774 to 1845, but takes the development forward to the present day.

Then a chapter is devoted to each commission:

In each chapter, summaries of relevant legislation are referenced so that: 4S refers to the legal summary in chapter 4.
Clicking on a lion usually takes you to a legal summary

chapter 2: The Physician Commission
1774-1828
 		The lion will take you to a legal summary

chapter 3: The Metropolitan Commission

1828-1842
 The lion will take you to a legal summary

chapter 4: The Inquiry Commission

1842-1845
 The lion will take you to a legal summary
chapter 5: The Lunacy Commission
1845
 		The lion will take you to a legal summary
As the thesis is concerned with the establishment of the Lunacy Commission, the time frame of the main chapters is 1774 to the years immediately after 1845. The biographies and bibliographies that follow are not restricted to this period. These and the mental health history timeline can be used to locate the thesis in a broader context. Mental health history words is the glossary and conceptual index.

Chapter 6 is a Directory of Commissioners, with biographies
The directory covers all commissioners from 1774-1912. There are biographies for all commissioners from 1828 to 1912. The charts locate commissioners from 1774 to 1960.

Chapter seven

includes a

England (and Wales) at the start of the 19th century was a country governed locally by magistrates who met in Parliament to discuss their common affairs. England at the end of the 19th century was a centralised nation with a subordinate system of local government. In one area, at least - the government of lunacy - the change from local to national government was sudden, unexpected and unplanned. From 1774 to 1842 the organisation of mental health was parochial. In 1845 the nation found itself with a national Lunacy Commission and a national lunacy policy. This is a study of how it happened.

Sections index

1, 1.2, 1.2.1, 1.2.1.TA, 1.2.2, 1.2.3,

2, 2.1,
2S,
2.2, 2.3, 2.3.1, 2.3.2,
2.4, 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.5.2, 2.5.2.1, 2.5.2.2, 2.5.3,
2.6,

3, 3.1, 3.1.1, 3.1.2, 3.1.3, 3.2,

3S,

3.3, 3.3.1, 3.3.2, 3.3.3, 3.3.4, 3.3.5, 3.3.6, 3.3.7,
3.4, 3.4.1, 3.4.2, 3.4.4, 3.4.5, 3.4.6,
3.5,

3.6, 3.6.2, 3.6.2.TA, 3.8, 3.8.TA1, 3.8.TA2, 3.8.TA3, 3.9, 3.9.1, 3.9.2, 3.9.3, 3.9.4, 3.9.5, 3.10, 3.10.2, 3.10.3, 3.11, 3.11.2, 3.11.3, 3.11.4, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14,

4, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.3.1, 4.3.2, 4.3.3, 4.3.4, 4.3.5, 4.4, 4.4.2, 4.4.3,

4S

4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.2, 4.7.3, 4.8, 4.8.1, 4.8.2, 4.8.3, 4.8.4, 4.8.5, 4.8.6, 4.8.7, 4.8.8, 4.8.9, 4.8.10, 4.8.11, 4.9, 4.9.1, 4.9.2, 4.9.3, 4.9.4, 4.9.4.TA.1, 4.9.4.TA.2, 4.9.4.TA.3, 4.9.5, 4.9.6, 4.9.7, 4.9.8, 4.9.9, 4.9.10, 4.9.X, 4.9.Y, 4.10, 4.11.1, 4.11.2, 4.11.3, 4.12, 4.13.TA,

5, 5.1.1, 5.1.2, 5.1.3,

5S,

5.2, 5.2.5, 5.2.5, 5.2.5, 5.2.5, 5.2.5,
5.3, 5.3.2, 5.3.3a, 5.3.3b, 5.3.3c, 5.3.3d, 5.3.3e, 5.3.3f, 5.3.3g, 5.3.3h, 5.3.3i,
5.3.4,



1: INTRODUCTION

1.2 The Commissions
1.2.1 Common functions
Table of licensing authorities for madhouses
1.2.2 The London area
Map of London area
1.2.3 SUMMARY OF COMMISSIONS

 

2: THE PHYSICIAN COMMISSION

2.1 ACT ESTABLISHING AND GOVERNING
mental health timeline 1774
I have put the analysis of the Act first, but if you are just reading, you may want to start with the
1763 Committee

It is all inter-linked, so wherever you start will lead you somewhere else. A bit like life really.

2S SUMMARY OF THE 1774 MADHOUSES ACT
2S.1 Preamble and requirement that madhouses be licensed
2S.2 Provisions for the London area

2S.2.1 The organisation of the Commission
    Commissioners
    Commissioners' meetings
    Treasurer and Secretary
    Meeting minutes

2S.2.2 London licensing
    Licensing meeting
    Licenses

2S.2.3 London visiting
    Visits
    Forfeitures of licence
2S.2.4 London visiting minutes

2S.2.5 Admission notices
2S.2.6 (Medical) certificates
2S.2.7 Registers
Search

2S.2.8 Finances

2S.3 Provisions for the Counties
    County visitors
    The Clerk of the Peace (County Clerk)
    County visits
    County minutes
    Differences between County and London minutes

2S.4 Recognizance
2S.5 Westminster Court orders
2S.6 Access to the courts
2S.7 Enforcement of the Act

2S.8 Miscellaneous

mental health timeline 1763 mental health timeline 1774
2.2 1763 SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON MADHOUSES

2.3 Madhouses bills
2.3.1 Bills before 1774
2.3.2 The 1774 madhouse bill

2.4 Relation of Physician Commission to courts

Helping the courts to stop madhouses confining the sane
 
  2.5 PHYSICIAN COMMISSION ORGANISATION

2.5.1 The Royal College of Physicians

2.5.2 The Physician Commissioners
2.5.2.1 Commissioners' activities
2.5.2.2 Selection of Commissioners

Table Commissioners elected 1774-1777

2.5.3 The officers:

2.6 PHYSICIAN COMMISSION TABLES

2.6.1 Introduction
2.6.1b Method of identifying the commissioners
2.6.1c Analysis incomplete (Annual changes only)
2.6.1d Senior and junior commissioners

TA1 Officers of the Physician Commission
TA2 Table showing system of appointment
TA3 Table of individual commissioners with biographical notes

This table of individual commissioners is in chronological order of their first appointment. All commissioners are indexed alphabetically in the Directory of Lunacy Commissioners

mental health timeline 1828

3: THE METROPOLITAN COMMISSION
mental health timeline 1828
3.1  Relevant Acts, Bills, committees etc

3.1.1  Name, 1828 and 1832 Madhouse Acts, scope of chapter

3.1.2  Committees, Bills and Hanwell 1827-1828

3.1.3  Previous committees and Bills (1813-1819)

3.2  1774 and 1828 Madhouse Acts compared

Magistrates and overseers and a place for the pauper lunatics
 

3S SUMMARY OF THE 1828 AND 1832 MADHOUSE ACTS:
with Amendment Acts, the 1828 County Asylums Act where it inter-relates, and later Acts with respect to the Commission's London functions

mental health timeline 1828
3.3 THE METROPOLITAN COMMISSION UNDER THE 1828 MADHOUSE ACT

3.3.1 Predominantly honorary or medical?
3.3.2 Magistrates
3.3.3 The Home Secretary's discretion

3.3.4 The actual appointments
Table: The 1828 Metropolitan Commissioners
3.3.5 Middlesex magistrates
3.3.6 Members of Parliament
3.3.7 Physicians

3.4 Honorary and professional roles

3.4.1 Meeting attendance
Table 1: signatures to the report 1829-1844
Table 2: numbers of honorary, medical and legal commissioners 1774-1845

3.4.2 Visiting
Table 1: quarterly distribution of visits
Table 2: metropolitan commissioners' meeting and visits 1829-1831

3.4.4 Special roles: government, home office and chairman
3.4.5 The commission and the House of Commons

3.4.6 Changing commissioners




Describes the London body for regulating private madhouses (licensed houses) under the 1828 Madhouses Act
mental health timeline 1832
3.5 THE 1832 MADHOUSE ACT Private mutilations by Peers unintentionally place the Commission in the hands of a reforming Lord Chancellor
mental health timeline 1832
3.6 THE METROPOLITAN COMMISSION UNDER THE 1832 MADHOUSE ACT

3.6.2 Barristers after 1832
TA Professional commissioners fees 1836-1841

3.9 Claims for the Commission's effectiveness
3.9.1 The Commission's evaluation
3.9.2 Bethnal Green as evidence of the commission's effectiveness
3.9.3 London houses improving
3.9.4 Colonel Sykes outlines the commission's functions
3.9.5 Sykes and Ashley describe the County Visitors
3.10 Reasons for effectiveness
3.10.2 Excess costs
3.10.3 Hampshire and the Commission compared

3.11 Limitations of effectiveness




Describes the London body for regulating private madhouses (licensed houses) under the 1832 Madhouses Act

Describes the licensed houses of London and compares madhouse regulation elsewhere in England

mental health timeline 1835
Sykes, Ashley and the London Statistical Society

3.11.3 An unnatural death rate

3.11.4 The commission's evaluation reconsidered. Hoxton and Peckham.

3.12 Central records and national interests

3.13 Hereford Lunatic Asylum

3.14 The hole and corner Metropolitan Commission

In the late 1830s there was a great interest in a new science: statistics.

Applied to the survival rates of paupers in London mad houses, the science appeared to reveal serious problems.

 
mental health timeline 1841 mental health timeline 1842

4: THE LUNACY INQUIRY COMMISSION

4.1 Act establishing the inquiry
4.1.2 Thomas Wakley and The Lancet
4.2 1841 Madhouse Continuation Act
4.3 1842 Licensed Lunatic Asylums Bill
4.3.1 A bill to inspect county houses
4.3.2 A proposed Barrister Commission
4.3.3 Ignoring the medical treatment
4.3.4 Thomas Wakley and the medical campaign against
4.3.5 Government defeat
4.4 Lunacy Inquiry Bill
4.4.2 Moral management and non restraint
4.4.3 Ashley and Hanwell 		How backbench criticism turned the routine renewal of a licensing Act into a far-reaching enquiry into the condition of lunatics throughout England and Wales.
 
  4S Main provisions of the 1842 Inquiry Act

4S.1 Alterations to the Commission
4S.1.1 Date of appointment altered
4S.1.2 Number of professional commissioners increased
4S.2 Conduct of the Inquiry
4S.2.1 Visits to county houses
4S.2.2 Visits to county asylums
4S.2.3 Visits to hospitals
4S.2.4 Time of visits
4S.2.5 Subjects of inquiry
4S.2.6 Reporting
4S.2.7 Payment of commissioners and other financial matters


4.5 THE NATIONAL LUNACY INQUIRY AND ITS CIRCUMSTANCES

4.5.1 Decisions

4.5.2 Commission membership

Scientists join the commission
4.6 THE INQUIRY'S HISTORIC CONTEXT
4.6.1 The national circumstances preceding publication of the 1844 Report

4.6.2 Insane assaults

McNaughton

4.7 McNaughton's trial and the consequences for psychiatry

4.7.2 McNaughton and the 1845 Lunacy and County Asylums Acts

4.7.3 McNaughton, the Lancet and the development of psychiatry

How an unsuccessful attempt to kill an unpopular prime minister reformed the science of psychiatry and persuaded parliament to establish a network of lunatic asylums throughout the country.
4.8 THE 1834 POOR LAW ACT AND LUNATICS mental health timeline 1834

4.8.2 All lunatics or just dangerous ones?
4.8.3 Specialist accommodation
4.8.4 Less eligibility
4.8.5 Poor Law asylums
4.8.6 Peel, Graham and the Poor Law Commission
4.8.7 Controlling the Poor Law Commission
4.8.8 Poor Law Commission directions spring 1842
4.8.9 1842 Poor Law Continuation and Amendment Act
4.8.10 Statistical Returns
4.8.11 The economy of cure: July 1843

Government takes control
4.9 THE 1844 REPORT mental health timeline 1844

4.9.1 Contents of the Report
4.9.2 Writing the Report
4.9.3 Pauper lunatics the central theme 4.9.5 The need for county asylums
4.9.6 County asylums and the curability of insanity
4.9.7 Pauper houses
4.9.8 Hampshire
4.9.9 The powers of the visiting commissioners 1842-1845
4.9.10 Workhouses
Welsh lunatics on outdoor relief

4.9.Y: Ashley: large numbers of absolutely dangerous lunatics

 
 
Centralised government comes like a thief in the night 1845: Ashley's Lunacy Bills

4.10 Lord Ashley's July 1844 speech

4.11.1 Ashley's 1845 Bills
4.11.2 A great economy
4.11.3 Perceval and Duncombe's opposition

4.12 Like a thief in the night

 
Institutions with pauper lunatics in 1844 (4.13.TA) and Asylums Index
mental health timeline 1845

5: THE LUNACY COMMISSION

5.1.1 1845 Lunacy and associated Acts
5.1.2 Summary of principal functions
5.1.3 The first Lunacy Commissioners and Secretary

5S SUMMARY OF 1845 LUNACY AND COUNTY ASYLUMS ACTS

5S.1 MAIN PROVISIONS  
5S.1.1. The Commission 5S.2 Detail
5S.1.2 Licensing madhouses  
5S.1.6 Disposal of pauper lunatics 5S.3 Detail
5S.1.7 Provision of asylum accommodation 5S.4 Detail
5S.1.8 Central regulation of county asylum provision and management  
5S.1.9 Powers of the Commission  

5S.5 Documentary information to departments of central government

5S.6 Single lunatics and the Private Committee

5.2 THE LONDON COMMISSION AS A GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT

5.2.0 Lunacy Commission Meetings and New Functions ,
Table: Sequence of commission's acquisition of powers and responsibilities
Scope and authority of Lunacy Commission greater than described

5.2.2 County asylum plans and rules,
5.2.3 Pauper lunatics,

5.2.4 Ministerial responsibility:
Who the Lunacy Commission was responsible to and
how it fitted in with the other parts of central government.

5.2.5 Roles of honorary and professional commissioners,
Table one: Commissioners meeting attendance and chairmanship, August 1845 to December 1848
Table two: Number of meetings at which there were four, three, two, one and no honorary commisioners present
Table three: Honorary commissioners meeting attendance in the off season.
Table four: Meetings attended by no, one and more commissioners in the off season.
Table five: Known visits to asylums

5.3 GROWTH AND CHANGE IN THE COMMISSION 1774-1849

Concluding Summary From commission of physicians to clerk's commission
and from clerk's commission to government department

Table: Offices of the commission 1774-1877
1828 - 1833 - 1843 - 1854 - neighbours - 1863 novel - 1877 hints - Other people's offices -

5.3.3 1828 THE METROPOLITAN COMMISSION
5.3.3a The London Clerk's office
5.3.3b Robert Browne and the St Marylebone Office
5.3.3c Appointment and salary
5.3.3d Clerk's finances

5.3.3e The 1828 Commission was rooted in London's local government

5.3.3f 1832: Barrister commissioners
5.3.3g Edward Dubois
5.3.3h The Clerk's assistant
5.3.3i Pressure for more space

1842: The period of the change from a London area to a national commission
5.3.4b Expenditure
Table Growth in the commission's expenditure 1829-1871
5.3.4c Clerk's commission to Government commission
5.3.4d The Masters family
5.3.4e Barlow: Inquiry clerk?
5.3.4f The commissioners and Inquiry administration
5.3.4g Visiting
5.3.4h Meetings
Table The curve of meeting numbers 1842-1848

5.3.5 1845: THE LUNACY COMMISSION
5.3.5a Meetings from 1845
5.3.5b Clerical staff from 1845

5.4 CHANCERY VISITORS

    mental health timeline 1290   mental health timeline 1377   mental health timeline 1518   mental health timeline 1601   mental health timeline 1654   mental health timeline 1714 mental health timeline 1774   mental health timeline 1800   mental health timeline 1815   mental health timeline 1828   mental health timeline 1832   mental health timeline 1842   mental health timeline 1845   mental health timeline 1912   mental health timeline 1948   mental health timeline 1959   mental health timeline 1971   mental health timeline 1981
When I began this research I was an undergraduate student at Middlesex Polytechnic (now University), on placement at North London Polytechnic (now University). I continued it as an (unsuccessful) postgraduate at Sheffield University's Centre for Criminological and Socio-Legal Studies. I have since returned to Middlesex to work.

Credit for different kinds of help with the book goes to Frank Pearce, Jock Young, Ian Taylor, David McClean, Mary Jones and her household at 3 Havelock Street, Barbara Holland, Peter Sneddon and his family, Tony Ward, Edmund Penning-Rowsell, Geoff Dench, Edwin Roberts and Norma Lacey (amongst others). Valerie Argent worked with me on parts, and shared all the traumas, and a studentship from the Social Science Research Council enabled me to carry out the bulk of the initial research.

The only measure of the size of the book that I have made is that the pencil draft has four hundred pages.

I missed my aim of having the whole book online, with all links working, by August 2003. But on 25.7.2004 I finished entering everything on the web that was written on paper, and on 13.8.2004 I finished writing the parts that I had marked as still needing doing. The book is now complete as I planned it - Except that, because it is on the web, links should take you from one point to another, rather than a cross-reference telling you were to turn the pages to. Most links are operational, but I need to work through the book to get them all working. The book also has untidy parts that need tidying up, weak parts that need strengthening, parts where I have issues I want to develop further... But in that sense the book will probably only be finished when I am.

When the history of the Lunacy Commission is written by a lunatic, you may not expect it to make sense. You can, however, complain to the author using the communication form below.

Middlesex University, London, England Mission to put students first University of North London

Sheffield University

Andrew Roberts likes to hear from users:
To contact him, please use the Communication Form

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© Andrew Roberts 1981-

Why 1981? Well, in the spring of 1981 I was writing up a thesis in pencil in a large lever-arch file. Tony Ward and his dog Edward Ward came to stay and bought me a large quantity of india rubbers to do the kind of detailed editing that we now do on computers. Tony's technological input was a major contribution to the completion of the pencil thesis. My tutors at Sheffield had not seen this pencil thesis. They had seen a typed thesis which, although they thought was almost finished, I never finished. (I call that my 1979 thesis). Instead, I had decided to start again on a completely different plan (not the way to succeed!) based on doing a systematic empirical analysis of law, practice, parliament and biography. My summer of writing up and rubbing out was advancing to a conclusion when our life collapsed into insanity (literally). Putting aside the thesis was a major bereavement, but I needed my family much more. For a decade, the pencil thesis sat in its lever-arch file, aching to get out and be read. (I am skipping over the problem that I had converted it into a system of abbreviation codes). Now it is out and people are reading it. (Thank you)