Eighth annual report of the Committee of Visitors of the Cambridgeshire, Isle of Ely and Borough of Cambridge Pauper Lunatic Asylum, for the year ending the 31st day of December, 1865 : with appendices.

  • Cambridgeshire, Isle of Ely and Borough of Cambridge Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eighth annual report of the Committee of Visitors of the Cambridgeshire, Isle of Ely and Borough of Cambridge Pauper Lunatic Asylum, for the year ending the 31st day of December, 1865 : with appendices. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the pauper had been insane for upwards of eleven years, and that her husband had died of typhus fever at Milton, where she resided, only three weeks before the patient was brought to the Asylum, the patient leaving a daughter in the same house ill with that infectious disease. Under these circumstances, and from the fact of there not being an infectious Ward at the Asylum, the Medical Superintendent, acting on the 53rd section of “ The Lunatic Asylums Act, 1853,” frefused to admit the patient into the Asylum, which course was fully approved of by your Committee. A correspondence thereupon ensued with the Guardians of the Chesterton Union with the view to their repri¬ manding the Medical Officer who filled up the forms for the admission of the patient into the Asylum, the result being that the Guardians fully approved of Dr. Lawrence’s conduct in refusing to admit the patient into the Asylum and remarked that the Medical Officer, in explanation of the matter, stated “ that as the order for the woman’s removal to the Asylum came from the Board of Guardians he pre¬ sumed they were aware from the Medical Report Book that her husband had died of fever, and that he was bound to obey their order.” Your Committee cannot leave this unfortunate subject without adding a caution to Medical Officers and others not to send patients to the Asylum afflicted with any disease or malady which might be deemed infectious or contagious, the dreadful consequences of which in an Asylum crowded as it is with patients, if such an event occurred, can scarcely be estimated. At a Meeting of your Committee held the 31st of October last, the following letter was read from the Town Clerk of the Borough of Ipswich relative to renewing the Contract for the reception of the Ipswich pauper lunatics in the Asylum. [copy.] Ipswich, Sept. 23rd, 1865. Dear Sir, Ipswich Pauper Lunatics. In 1862 the Committee of Visitors of the Asylum at Fulbourn entered into a contract with the Corporation of Ipswich for the reception of the Ipswich Pauper Lunatics into that Asylum. This contract will terminate in November, 1866. The Guardians of the Ipswich Union have reported to the Town Council that there is no probability that this contract will be renewed. It will be' the subject of much regret if we can no longer send our Pauper Lunatics to an Asylum so admirably conducted as the