The Sun.
London, England, 1851-09-26 00:00:00

duc us to place the slightest trust in any measure
fo r the amendment in the laws relating to lunacy in
th framing of which himself or his colleagues of the
L unacy Board shall have any share. We cannot but
re member that, whilst the only good and efficient
portion of the present law was introduced into it by
M r. THOMAS DUNCOMBE, in 1845, in spite of the
sti .enuous opposition of the Noble Earl (then Lord
As; LEY), all the bad portions of it are exclusively the
Noi )le Lord's own handiwork. In the year 1845
Sir JAMES GRAHAM, then the Home Secretary, re-
cell Led the Parliamentary support of the Noble Lord ;
ane t the Right Hon. Baronet imagined, it would
see: m, that, like "the wizard MICHAEL SCOTT," he
wa a bound to find perpetual employment for the mis-
chievous and meddlesome activity of his supporter;
se cordingly, in order probably to divert the attention
of the Noble Lord from the factory measure, a
Lu nacy Bill was suggested to him, and the present
law is the consequence. " The principal feature," as
the' late Lord CASTLEREAGU would hare said, "on
which the measure hinges" is the appointment of a
Board of Commissioners to license and to inspect
all the lunatic asylums in England ; the chairman of
that has been, from its first appointment, the Noble
Lord himself. He has been its chief director and
manager, he has attached his signature to all its reports,
and he is consequently responsible for the manner in
which it has performed its duties. We have from
time to time directed the attention of the public to
the manner in which those duties have been
neglected ; we have frequently denounced that Board
as "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." The facts
brought forward in various courts of justice by the
Alleged Lunatics Friend Society have proved to de-
monstration the continued existence of the worst
abuses in the very best managed private lunatic
asylums, yet still, year after year, the Commissioners
of Lunacy have inserted, in their reports the stereo-
typed statement, that " the abuses which formerly
existed in private lunatic asylums no longer take
place in those under their superintendence," and to
these reports we invariably find appended the signa-
ture of the Noble Lord. Time after time we have
indignantly denied the truth of this assertion; in in-
stance after instance has the Alleged Lunatics' Friend
Society proved its absolute falsehood ; and from a
quarter from which we least of all expected to re-
ceive such a confirmation of our views, we have
at length a distinct admission that the Alleged
Lunatics Friend Society have been all along right,
and that the Noble Lord and the Commissioners have
been all along wrong. In the debate in the House of
Commons on the Bill introduced, by Mr. LACY for
placing religious houses under the surveillance of the
civil authority, the Noble Earl (then Lord ASHLEY)
is reported to have said; on the 15th May, 1851—
" If this Bill is framed on the principle of the Lunacy
Act, I do not hesitate to say noticing can be more
defective. The inspection of private asylums is not
only imperfect, but is performed most unwillingly."
Leaving to the Earl of SHAFTESBURY to justify as
best he may the statements of the Chairman of the
Lunacy Board with the assertion of the Noble Lord
the Member for Bath, we respectfully submit to Sir
GEORGE GREY that the author of those conflicting
statements, the legislator who on his own confession
stands convicted of having framed a law " than which
nothing can be more defective," is not exactly the
person to whom should be entrusted the task of pre-
paring a measure for the amendment of the laws for
the regulation of lunatic asylums, and to the LORD
CHANCELLOR that it is his duty to lose no time in re-
lieving from the further discharge of their duties
gentlemen who, according to the statement of their
own chairman, perform those duties not only imper-
fectly, but most unwillingly. To the imperfect man-
ner in which those duties are performed the very
valuable report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend
Society for the year 1851 furnishes abundant evi-
dence. From that report it appears that "various
applications have been made to the com-
mittee by persons who have been confined as
lunatics on the most frivolous grounds, as set forth in
the medical certificates, such as having adopted the
Vegetarian system"—what says Mr. BROTUERTON
to this ?--," religious delusions " (not specified)—this,
we presume, was before the delivery by Lord ASHLEY
of his celebrated Lydian speech—" aversion to family
or friends, excessive drinking, propensity to indulge
in the grossest slanders, a total disregard of truth, and
other similar reasons." And the Committee also
find that, "in some cases, where the original certifi-
cates have been informal or insufficient, the Com-
missioners in Lunacy have allowed them to be
amended after the party has been placed in confine-
ment, although the Act requires that the medical certi-
ficate shall be signed and dated the same day on which
the patient shall have been examined by the medical
man, and before the party can be legally confined."
Indeed the Commissioners seem to imagine that their
principal duty is to screen delinquent proprietors and
medical officers of private lunatic asylums from the
consequences of their misdeeds, and to aid, assist,
and connive at their violations of the laws ; for in
their last half-yearly report to the LORD CHAN-
CELLOR, the Commissioners of Lunacy have omitted
the names of the medical gentlemen and others who
are proprietors of asylums, thus adding to the diffi-
culties of discovering the place of confinement of any
patient, and rendering it impossible to detect whether
or not any of the Commissioners in Lunacy, or the
medical men signing the certificate of any patient, are
or are not connected with the proprietors of the asy-
lums, and consequently rendered by the law incom-
petent to act, and when their attention was drawn to
the omission their only excuse was that it bad been
done for abridgement and convenience in printing
their report. The entry by Mr. BRANSBY PURNELL
(the excellent chairman of the Gloucester Quarter
Sessions) and his colleagues, the visiting justices of
Gloucestershire, in the visitors' journal at the asylum
of HENRY HAWES Fox, M.D., at Northwood, which
is published as an appendix to the report of the
Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society, abundantly proves
how imperfectly the Commissioners in Lunacy must
have performed their duty of inspection. This report
which is dated 17th June, 1851, and is signed WIL-
LIAM FRU?, EDWARD SAMPSON, PURNELL B. Pura-
Eau., and GILBERT LYON, M.D., commences as
follows :--

" The visitors have felt it to be their duty to inqu:re
into the caw.° for the extraordinary entries which they
found in the books of this asylum, made by Dr. Henry
Hawes Fox, and which were there unexplained; the first
on their visit on the 7th of January last, of the discharge
of four of his patients on the previous day; the others
on their next visit on the
.24th of February last, of the
re•admissiou of such four patients on the Bth of January,
after an absence of only one day ; of the admission,
under a now order and certificates, of a patient on the
10th of January last, who was then, and had been for
many years previously, a patient in the house, and who
had not been discharged from it, and of the discharge of
another patient on tho 10th of February last, and of his
admission on the 22d of the same month, no cause being
entered for such charge and admission. At this last
visit, Dr. H. H. Fox, having verbally assigned
as the reason for these discharges and re-ad-
missions, that he had been advised to have these
effected, the visitors requested him to produce the
orders and certificates in these cases. This he declined,

acting, as he said, upon the same advice, and though the
law was shown and explained to him, he persisted in his
refusal. The visitcrs told him that they had no wish, if
he produced them, to animadvert upon mere inaccura-
cies, but that they could overlook nothing untrue, no-
thing fabricated, nothing interpolated by him or by
others of his establishment to make what was not legal,
legal; and that ho must take the consequences of their
non-production. He stated that all the orders and cer-
tificates had been carefully examined, and he assured
the visitors that be had legal advice that all these
papers were correct, so as to ba received and passed by
any court of law; still that there were some trivial in-

accuracies and informalities, such as tho t s not tailed
and the i-s not dotted, which prevented their being in
exact accordance with the requirements of the Act of
Parliament.' But he still refused to produce them, and
aslcei for five days' delay to obtain fresh advice."
The result of that fresh advice was that the Doctor
thought it best to produce the documents, and the

result of such production was to show that "by his
acts (we quote the words of the, magistrates) Dr.
H. H. Fox has rendered himself ammable to prose-

cutions for misdemeanours especially created by the
Act to the number of above 280." Among other
things, it appears that Mrs. lIAwEE, the nr.tror, of
the asylum, was in the habit of signing the name of
Dr. For to various documents, and of transmitting

I copies of such documpnts to the authorities ; that
of patients illegally received by Dr. H. H. Fox upon
the authority of one certificate only, without due
cause assigned for the same by the person making the
order, there are fifty-four. Altogether of patients
illegally received there are ono hundred and fire. A
wife has been admitted into the asylum upon the
order of her husband, and upon the authority of one
cottificato only, And thos cartificat© aigrAtd by bet