Twenty-first annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1858.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum
Date:
[1859]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-first annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1858. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    any account, bat he knew all the work that he had done throughout the year for each of his employers, and dictated his annual bills with such exactitude that, he never made a mistake of half a day either way. The number of applicants for admission for patients whose condition is just above pauperism has been continued as usual; we have had as many as Jive in one week. It is certainly most desirable that the notice of the Legislature should be directed to this helpless and unrecognized class of patients. Their anomalous position has just and urgent claims which may well be pressed in the approaching Session, when very extensive and important alterations are expected to be made in the Lunacy laws. Independently of that questionable exercise of humanity which can sketch an order to the extent of declaring actual chargeability when it does not really exist, we believe the practice to be hazardous and dangerous, leading to treatment under disadvantage in the Asylum, and perhaps to the exhibition of vindictive feelings when removed from it. Whatever the motive may be, nothing justifies deception, and we can speak positively but painfully upon this point because we have felt (and it may be suffered from) its injustice. A patient is now in the House who declares that he was very much upset when he found that he had been deceived in this objectionable manner; and another, who lately left us, coupled his expressions of gratitude with the addition, “I was never in any proper position with you, I never was, or am ever likely to be chargeable to a parish.” It may be, as stated in justification, that such patients are better off\ and that the little property they possess would soon be spent in the endeavour to obtain the desired relief, still while we are most feelingly alive to the truth that much valuable time, or indeed the most valuable time, may be occasionally lost, and parochial relief sought after unsuccessful efforts ; our conviction is, that as all pauper patients are likely to be removed from private Asylums, so
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