The County Asylums Act 1808 formed mental health law in England and Wales from 1808 to 1845. However, no legislation has ever combined the entirety of Lunacy Law. Search results will include any instance of the name you search for, whether that person was the petitioner, the supposed lunatic or anyone else. Like the Lunacy Act, there had been several drafts of this act passed before 1845 and several afterward as well. Please note, some of the early admission registers are available online – please see above. The first asylum owing to the County Asylums Act opened at Northampton in 1811. The records held by The National Archives relate mainly to the administration of the institutions, though some of these records may include the names of inmates. Lunacy Act 1890 A UK Parliamentary Act which repealed the Lunacy Act 1845 and County Asylums Act 1845, introducing “reception orders” authorising mandatory detention of a person in (mental health) asylums made by a special judge, which lasted one year; the orders were readily renewed at regular intervals by submitting medical reports to the Lunacy Commission. While pauper lunatics were dealt with locally, the ‘care’ of idiots and lunatics who owned significant amounts of property was administered by the Crown, which also took charge of their property and possessions. The Lunacy Act established the Lunacy Commission and the County Asylums Act set forth most of the provisions as to what was to be monitored within the asylums and helped establish the public network of the county asylums. The first recorded Lunatic Asylum in Europe was the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, it has been a part of London since 1247 when it was built as a priory. Discovery is a catalogue of archival records across the UK and beyond, from which you can search 32 million records.
A union card index to all patients admitted (possibly from as early as 1774) was destroyed in 1961: apparently it covered over 2.5 million names. Use the search box below to search record series C 211 for commissions and inquisitions of lunacy.
The institutions were called asylums and they gave refuge where mental illness could receive proper treatment. Child Admissions to the Devon County Asylum, 1845–1914", Adair, Forsythe, and Melling, 1997, pp.373, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, List of asylums commissioned in England and Wales, Irish Lunatic Asylums for the Poor Act 1817, Mental Deficiency and Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1913, Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency, Mental Health Review Tribunal (England and Wales), Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, Measures of the National Assembly for Wales, Acts of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lunacy_Act_1845&oldid=894248534, Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom concerning England and Wales, History of mental health in the United Kingdom, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 26 April 2019, at 16:04. [2] The Lunacy Commission was made up of eleven Metropolitan Commissioners. See section 9 for court records regarding lunatics and idiots. Within their jurisdiction; but by the 1842 Inquiry Act section 16 commissioners could release patients from county houses, and, by the 1845 Lunacy Act section 77, from hospitals. Some bonds given by committees from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries are in J 117. "Law and Lunacy in Psychiatry's 'Golden Age'", Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.

Until the 19th century the custody of ‘idiots’ and ‘lunatics’, as well as the ownership of their land and property, fell to the Crown.

Many of these records are not searchable, other than by date, in our online catalogue – to make any progress with this area of research you will need to visit us at our building in Kew where you can use paper indexes and view the original records themselves.

A very few patient records survive in MH 85, MH 86 and MH 51/27-77. Search, by date, MH 94 for admission registers of asylums and psychiatric hospitals. v3.0, before 1540 are with the inquisitions post mortem in, Pleadings for Edward I-James I are well-listed, in, Pleadings for Elizabeth I to Victoria are in, Some exhibits from cases relating to lunatics are in. An Act to repeal the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts 1890 to 1930, and the Mental Deficiency Acts, 1913 to 1938, and to make fresh provision with respect to the treatment and care of mentally disordered persons and with respect to their property and affairs; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid. Search the Hospital Records Database by name or place of the hospital, or using keywords such as ‘lunatic asylum’, ‘insane’, ‘pauper lunatic’ and ‘mental’. These include Bethlem Hospital registers 1823-1843 and registers from county and metropolitan lunatic asylums 1800-1839 (HO 20). The following Chancery records are concerned with attempts to establish whether or not a person was of sound mind for the purposes of administering or disposing of their property are recorded. Search our catalogue, in record series HO 8 (1862-1875), HO 20 (1820-1843), HO 144 (1869-1941) and HO 145 (1882-1921) for records of criminals who were confined at Broadmoor and Bethlem (Bethlehem) asylums after being certified at court, or after imprisonment, as being insane. The registers give name and sex, name of the institution, and dates of admission, discharge or death. Many records of asylums, prisons and houses of correction are kept in local archives and especially those of the patients and inmates. Committees were made up of those to whose care the lunatic or their estate was committed – possibly the next of kin. The Chancery Masters’ reports and exhibits can be informative, although there is no guarantee of finding anything. The 1890 Lunacy Act gave asylums a wider role, and wealthier patients began to be admitted. Notably, the Asylums Act established public mental asylums in Britain.

13, No. He then had to examine the accounts of the committees. The lunacy Acts most important provision was a change in the status of mentally ill people to patients. The institutions were called asylums and they gave refuge where mental illness could receive proper treatment. Insane children were more common than is commonly appreciated. Search the criminal lunacy warrant and entry books by name at Ancestry.co.uk (£). Gibson and Youngs, Poor Law Union Records 4: Gazetteer of England and Wales (The Family History Partnership, 1993), Jones, Kathleen, Law and conscience, 1744-1845: the social history of the care of the insane (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955), Lappin, James Harold, Central Government and the supervision of the treatment of lunatics 1800-1913: a guide to sources in the Public Record Office (thesis, available in The National Archives library and the Wellcome Trust), Llywelyn Parry-Jones, William, The trade in lunacy: a study of private madhouses in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth century (Routledge, 1972), For quick pointersTuesday to Saturday [3], List of asylums commissioned in England and Wales, "WILLIAMS WYNN, Charles Watkin (1775-1850), of Langedwyn, Denb", Irish Lunatic Asylums for the Poor Act 1817, Mental Deficiency and Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1913, Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency, Mental Health Review Tribunal (England and Wales), Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, Measures of the National Assembly for Wales, Acts of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=County_Asylums_Act_1808&oldid=907574283, Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom concerning England and Wales, History of mental health in the United Kingdom, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 23 July 2019, at 20:30. Private ‘madhouses’ were licensed by the justices of the peace, and were examined by several series of government commissioners. The other five members of the commission were all honorary members that simply had to attend board meetings. Because of this, some children were admitted under the guise that they were in urgent need of help and constituted a serious danger to themselves and others.[7]. However, most patient files have been destro… [3]. We also hold some records relating to the administration of the estates of people deemed incapable of managing their own affairs (see section 9). [2], The Act is also known as Mr. Wynn's Act, after Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn, a Welsh member of parliament for Montgomeryshire, who promoted the act.

The six members of the commission that were full-time and salaried were made up of three members of the legal system and three members of the medical community. By 1827 however only nine county asylums had opened and many patients were still in gaol as prisoners and criminals.

Vol. The confusion arose because the Act gave no age limits on patients in the asylums.

Please note, this is a search across all names that appear in each catalogue description. It also focused on "single lunatics" who were not connected with any prisons or workhouse but needed psychiatric care. Prior to the Lunacy Act lunacy legislation in England was enshrined in the county asylums act of 1808, which established institutions for poor and for criminally-insane, mentally ill people. Chancery records: determining lunacy and administering the property of lunatics and idiots, 10. Records of private and county lunatic asylums are generally held locally, though there are some records here. (1842 Inquiry Act ss 5+16; 1845 Lunacy Act section 78) Reduced to 14 days by the 1832 Madhouse Act section 41, and 7 days by the 1845 Lunacy Act section 80. Records of the county asylums are likely to be kept locally. However, such land and possessions were not generally held directly in Crown hands, but granted to ‘committees’ for the term of the lunacy or idiocy.

Both of these versions were actually repealed by the 1853 County Asylums Act. The Lord Chancellor had to establish whether or not a person was of sound mind. If the person was deemed not to be of sound mind, the Chancellor committed the custody of the lunatic and his estate to suitable people (called ‘committees’). Search our catalogue, in record series HO 8, by name of asylum and year for quarterly returns of criminal lunatic asylums. The records provide: Not all of the records in MH 12 have been digitised – see the MH 12 series description. [6], Some of the inspections conducted by the Lunacy Commission involved inspecting workhouses where the Commission would often find mentally unhealthy children and press for them to be removed. The Lunacy Commissioners might also be involved, fearing that the money of an asylum inmate was being misappropriated. Both of these acts were the basis for Lunacy Law in England until 1890 when both of them were repealed by the Lunacy Act of 1890. There are also returns of insane prisoners in prisons and houses of correction, submitted in March 1858, in MH 51/90-207. These are records that were maintained by the Lunacy Commission and Board of Control (MH 94/1-47). This is a guide to records of lunatic asylums, their inmates and other records relating to mental health, primarily from the 19th century, held at The National Archives. The musters of sea-going hospital ships can be found with the other musters in ADM 36 and ADM 37.


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