Lunacy Act 1845

The Lunacy Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict., c. 100) was a UK Act of Parliament that, along with the County Asylums Act 1845, was the basis of mental health law in England and Wales from 1845 to 1890. It changed the treatment of mentally ill people from that of prisoners to that of patients.

Background

Prior to the passage of this act, Lunacy legislation of England had been dictated by the County Asylums Act of 1808. This act stated that there were to be institutions established for the poor and the criminally insane mental health patients. Establishing asylums would give a form of refuge where they could receive proper treatment. After the passage of the County Asylums Act of 1808, the first institution opened its doors in 1811. Still by 1827, there were only nine county institutions that existed, and many patients were being held in jails and treated as prisoners and criminals instead of like mentally ill patients. Due to this shortcoming, the Lunacy Commission (also known as the Commissioners of Lunacy) was created to focus on Lunacy Legislation. [Unsworth, Clive."Law and Lunacy in Psychiatry's 'Golden Age'", Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. Vol. 13, No. 4. (Winter, 1993), pp. 482.] The Act was championed by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.

Shaftesbury was the head of the Commission from its founding in 1845 until his death in 1885. [Unsworth, 1993, pp. 482.] The Lunacy Commission was made up of eleven Metropolitan Commissioners. The Commission was monumental as it was not only a full-time commission, but it was also salaried for six of its members. The six members of the commission that were full-time and salaried were made of up three members of the legal system and three members of the medical community. The other five members of the commission were all honorary members that simply had to attend board meetings. The duty of the Commission was to establish and carry out the provisions of the Act. [Wright, David: "Mental Health Timeline", 1999]

Provisions

The Act established the Commissioners in Lunacy to inspect plans for asylums on behalf of the Home Secretary (s.3). The Act required asylums, other than Bethlem Hospital, to be registered with the Commission, to have written regulations and to have a resident physician (s.42). Under the Act, patients lost their right of access to the courts to challenge their detention. Detention could only be reviewed by the commissioners or county visitors.

The Commission had many roles in carrying out the act. The established a network of public county institutions. In doing so, they were able to monitor the conditions in the asylums and the treatment that was being given to the patients. They made a point to reach out to patients that were in workhouses and prisons, and get them in the proper institutions where they could be treated. They also focused on getting "single lunatics", lunatics who were not connected with any prisons or workhouse but needed to received psychiatric care. The ones that they could not remove from the prisons and the workhouses were still monitored, making sure the commission kept an eye on their treatment and their mental condition. [Wright, 1999]

1845 County Asylums Act

The Lunacy Act of 1845 was passed through Parliament simultaneously with the 1845 County Asylums Act. The two acts were dependent on each other. 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. Like the Lunacy Act, there had been several drafts of this act passed before 1845 and several afterward as well. The most notable of these were the 1808, and the 1853 County Asylum Acts. The Lunacy Act itself was amended several times after its conception. There was a new version written in both 1846 and 1847. Both of these versions were actually repealed by the 1853 County Asylums Act. [Wright, 1999]

The importance of these two acts together is that they consolidated Lunacy Law in England. However, they did not and nor has any legislation ever combined the entirety of Lunacy Law together. 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. [ [http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/5S.htm The Lunacy Commission] ]

Children and the Lunacy Act of 1845

When the Lunacy Act was passed in 1845, there were many questions raised about what to do with the children that were not in good mental health. Insane children were more common than most people know. The confusion on what to do with them was because the Act gave no age limits on who was to be admitted into the asylums. [Adair, Forsythe, and Melling: "'A Proper Lunatic for Two Years': Pauper Lunatic Children in Victorian and Edwardian England. Child Admissions to the Devon County Asylum, 1845-1914", Journal of Social History, Vol. 31, No. 2. (Winter, 1997), pp. 371]

Part of the inspections that took place and were conducted by the Lunacy Commission involved inspecting workhouses for patients that could be removed from the workhouses and placed in institutions. The Commission would often find mentally unhealthy children and push for them to be removed from the workhouses. However, many of the institutions were hesitant to take in the children seeing as they believed they served a threat in the way their institution was to be run. Because of this, many children were admitted, under the guise that they were in desperate need of help and served a serious danger to themselves and others. [Adair, Forsythe, and Melling, 1997, pp.373]

The asylums of the day, while typically filled with poor lunatics or criminally insane persons, were meant to asylums in the true sense of the word. They were to be a place were those who were paupers or mentally could go and find solace and safety and get away from the harsh work conditions of the workhouses. Many of these children were only looking for just that, somewhere to go and find safety. Therefore, admitting them under such false pretenses, that they are a serious danger to themselves and others was causing them receive improper treatment. [Adair, Forsythe, and Melling, 1997]

Notes

External links

*Web pages by Andrew Roberts at Middlesex University:
** [http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/Law.htm#1845 Table of Statutes on Mental Health]
** [http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/5S.htm The Lunacy Commission]