| Act of Parliament | |
 | |
| Long title | An Act for the Regulation of the Care and Treatment of Lunatics. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 8 & 9 Vict. c. 100 |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 4 August 1845 |
The Lunacy Act 1845 or the Lunatics Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. 100) and the County Asylums Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. 126) 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.
Prior to the Lunacy Act, lunacy legislation in England was enshrined in the County Asylums Act 1808, which established institutions for poor and for criminally insane, mentally ill people. The institutions were called asylums and they gave refuge where mental illness could receive proper treatment. The first asylum owing to the County Asylums Act opened at Northampton in 1811. By 1827 however only nine county asylums had opened and many patients were still in gaol as prisoners and criminals. As a consequence of this slow progress the Lunacy Act 1845 created the Lunacy Commission to focus on lunacy legislation. [1] 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. [2] 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 up of 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. [3]
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. It established a network of public county institutions. It monitored the conditions in the asylums and the treatment of the patients. It made a point of reaching out to patients in workhouses and prisons and getting them to the proper institutions where they could be treated. It also focused on "single lunatics" who were not connected with any prisons or workhouse but needed psychiatric care. It monitored the treatment and mental condition of patients whom the commission could not remove from prisons and workhouses. [4]
| Act of Parliament | |
| |
| Long title | An Act to amend the Laws for the Provision and Regulation of Lunatic Asylums for Counties and Boroughs, and for the Maintenance and Care of Pauper Lunatics, in England. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 8 & 9 Vict. c. 126 |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 8 August 1845 |
The Lunacy Act 1845 was passed through Parliament simultaneously with the County Asylums Act 1845. 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 County Asylums Act 1808 and the Lunatic Asylums Act 1853 (16 & 17 Vict. c. 97). The Lunacy Act itself was amended several times after its conception, including by the Lunatic Asylums, etc. Act 1846 and the Lunatic Asylums Act 1847. Both of these versions were repealed by the County Asylums Act 1853. [4]
The importance of these two acts together is that they consolidated lunacy law in England. However, no legislation has ever combined the entirety of lunacy law. Both of these acts were the basis for lunacy law in England until 1890 when both of them were repealed by the Lunacy Act 1890. [5]
When the Lunacy Act was passed in 1845, there were many questions raised about what to do with children in poor mental health. Insane children were more common than is commonly appreciated. The confusion arose because the Act gave no age limits on patients in the asylums. [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. However, many of the asylums were hesitant to admit children. 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]
Involuntary commitment, civil commitment, or involuntary hospitalization/hospitalisation is a legal process through which an individual who is deemed by a qualified agent to have symptoms of severe mental disorder is detained in a psychiatric hospital (inpatient) where they can be treated involuntarily. This treatment may involve the administration of psychoactive drugs, including involuntary administration. In many jurisdictions, people diagnosed with mental health disorders can also be forced to undergo treatment while in the community; this is sometimes referred to as outpatient commitment and shares legal processes with commitment.
Lunatic is a term referring to a person who is seen as mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, or crazy—conditions once attributed to "lunacy". The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck".
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, or behavioral health hospitals are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative identity disorder, major depressive disorder, and others.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was a British Tory politician, philanthropist, and social reformer. He was the eldest son of the 6th Earl of Shaftesbury and Lady Anne Spencer, and elder brother of Henry Ashley, MP. A social reformer who was called the "Poor Man's Earl", he campaigned for better working conditions, reform to lunacy laws, education and the limitation of child labour. He was also an early supporter of the Zionist movement and the YMCA and a leading figure in the evangelical movement in the Church of England.
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).
Lunacy Act is a stock short title used in the United Kingdom for legislation relating to mental illness.
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.
The Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society was an advocacy group started by former asylum patients and their supporters in 19th-century Britain. The Society campaigned for greater protection against wrongful confinement or cruel and improper treatment, and for reform of the lunacy laws. The Society is recognised today as a pioneer of the psychiatric survivors movement.
Kew Lunatic Asylum is a decommissioned psychiatric hospital located between Princess Street and Yarra Boulevard in Kew, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. Operational from 1871 to 1988, Kew was one of the largest asylums ever built in Australia. Later known as Willsmere, the complex of buildings were constructed between 1864 and 1872 to the design of architects G.W. Vivian and Frederick Kawerau of the Victorian Public Works Office to house the growing number of "lunatics", "inebriates", and "idiots" in the Colony of Victoria.
The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
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.
The Old Manor Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. It was established in the early 19th century as a private licensed house called Fisherton House or Fisherton House Asylum, which became the largest private madhouse in the United Kingdom. In 1924, following a change of proprietors, it was renamed Old Manor Hospital and in 1955 it was amalgamated into the National Health Service. From 1813 to 1955 it was owned and managed by members of the same family. The Old Manor Hospital closed in 2003 and was replaced by Fountain Way, a smaller, modern, psychiatric hospital on part of the same site. In 2014 the site was acquired by Quantum Group for development as a residential estate and the conversion of the main building to a hotel.
The Mental Health Act 1959 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom concerning England and Wales which had, as its main objectives, to abolish the distinction between psychiatric hospitals and other types of hospitals and to deinstituitionalise mental health patients and see them treated more by community care.
The County Asylums Act 1808 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. 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.
Mendip Hospital opened in 1848 as the Somerset and Bath Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Horrington, near Wells, in the English county of Somerset.
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.
The Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1857 formed mental health law in Scotland from 1857 until 1913.
The Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland or Lunacy Commission for Scotland were a public body established by the Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1857 to oversee asylums and the welfare of mentally ill people in Scotland.
