Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act for the better Care and Maintenance of Lunaticks, being Paupers or Criminals in England. |
---|---|
Citation | 48 Geo. 3. c. 96 |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 23 June 1808 |
The County Asylums Act 1808 (48 Geo. 3. c. 96) formed mental health law in England and Wales from 1808 to 1845. Notably, the Asylums Act established public mental asylums in Britain that could be operated by the county government. [1] It permitted, but did not compel, justices of the peace to provide establishments for the care of pauper lunatics, so that they could be removed from workhouses and prisons. [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. [3]
Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn PC was a British politician of the early- to mid-19th century. He held office in both Tory and Whig administrations and was Father of the House of Commons between 1847 and 1850.
Montgomeryshire was a constituency in Wales represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament.
Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 3rd Baronet was a Welsh politician and landowner who sat in the British House of Commons from 1716 to 1749, when he died in office. A member of the Tory party, he was also a prominent Jacobite sympathiser. He helped engineer the downfall of Prime Minister Robert Walpole in 1742 and engaged in negotiations with the exiled Stuarts prior to the Jacobite rising of 1745 but did not participate in the rebellion himself. Watkin died in a hunting accident in 1749.
The Lunacy Act 1845 or the Lunatics Act 1845 and the County Asylums Act 1845 formed mental health law in England and Wales from 1845 to 1890. The Lunacy Act's most important provision was a change in the status of mentally ill people to patients.
St Bernard's Hospital, also known as Hanwell Insane Asylum and the Hanwell Pauper and Lunatic Asylum, was an asylum built for the pauper insane, opening as the First Middlesex County Asylum in 1831. Some of the original buildings are now part of the headquarters for the West London Mental Health NHS Trust (WLMHT).
The Williams-Wynn Baronetcy, of Gray's Inn in the County of Middlesex was created in the Baronetage of England on 6 July 1688 for William Williams, a prominent Welsh politician and lawyer from Anglesey, Wales. A member of the family, Sir Watkin, became one of the richest men in Britain.
This article is about the particular significance of the year 1840 to Wales and its people.
This article is about the particular significance of the year 1828 to Wales and its people.
The Commissioners in Lunacy or Lunacy Commission were a public body established by the Lunacy Act 1845 to oversee asylums and the welfare of mentally ill people in England and Wales. It succeeded the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy.
Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4th Baronet was a Welsh landowner, politician and patron of the arts. The Williams-Wynn baronets had been begun in 1688 by the politician Sir William Williams, 1st Baronet, but had inherited, in the time of the 3rd baronet, Sir Watkin's father, the estates of the Wynn baronets, and changed their name to reflect this.
Lt-Col. Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 6th Baronet was a Welsh Conservative Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1841 to 1885.
Denbighshire was a county constituency in Denbighshire, in north Wales, from 1542 to 1885.
This article is about the particular significance of the year 1811 to Wales and its people.
This article is about the particular significance of the year 1808 to Wales and its people.
This article is about the particular significance of the year 1771 to Wales and its people.
Events from the year 1742 in Wales.
This disability rights timeline lists events outside the United States relating to the civil rights of people with disabilities, including court decisions, the passage of legislation, activists' actions, significant abuses of people with disabilities, and the founding of various organizations. Although the disability rights movement itself began in the 1960s, advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities started much earlier and continues to the present.
Prestwich Hospital is a mental health facility in Prestwich, Greater Manchester, England.
Mental health in the United Kingdom involves state, private and community sector intervention in mental health issues. One of the first countries to build asylums, the United Kingdom was also one of the first countries to turn away from them as the primary mode of treatment for the mentally ill. The 1960s onwards saw a shift towards Care in the Community, which is a form of deinstitutionalisation. The majority of mental health care is now provided by the National Health Service (NHS), assisted by the private and the voluntary sectors.
The County Asylums Act 1828 was an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that addressed concerns with the administration of asylums and the slow creation of county asylums within Britain. It required magistrates to send annual records of admissions, discharges, and deaths to the Home Office; and allowed the Secretary of State to send a Visiting Justice to any county asylum, although the visitor couldn't intervene in how the asylum was run. It also allowed counties to borrow money to build an asylum, but it had to be paid back within 14 years of the initial loan. This was designed to incentivize counties to build asylums, but it did not make it compulsory, a continuation of the County Asylums Act 1808. It also imposed the requirement of a residential medical officer, whose permission was necessary to justify the restraint of a patient.