The private asylum : how I got in and out : an autobiography / by a Clerical Ex-Lunatic.

Date:
[1889]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The private asylum : how I got in and out : an autobiography / by a Clerical Ex-Lunatic. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    De minimis (lege insanis) non curet lex. The Rectory, Shenley, June i]th, 1889. To the Lord High Chancellor of England. My Lord, The notice of an Amended Lunacy Bill brought up very vividly before my mind my detention in a Private Lunatic Asylum in Scotland in 1859, of the cause of which I was never able to obtain any explanation whatever. 1 had the honour lately to write to your Lordship on the subject, but my letter was merely acknowledged by your Lordship's secretary.* I am told that the Committee of the House of Commons has no power to send for persons or papers, or to take any evidence with a view of introducing fresh safeguards against unjust detention. I had hoped that they would have obtained for me a copy of the various reports made by the Medical Proprietors of the Asylums to the Commissioners respecting my state, but the present ones refuse me this justice on the plea that all reports about patients are confidentially communicated to them. As the head officer of the law, therefore, I appeal to your Lordship, and shall be perfectly satisfied if you will appoint any two or three persons who shall examine the certificates, one of them a scientific man, others of the legal or medical profession, who shall report to your Lordship whether I was ever a Lunatic at all, or how, having lapsed into imbecility, I was instan- taneously cured. There are also two legal points which I am desirous to have cleared up— 1 st. Whether an action at law could be legally carried on against a defendant of which he had no notice, the same defendant being at that moment a lunatic in an asylum ? * This letter contained several suggestions for insertion into the Amended Lunacy Bill, for the benefit of the alleged Luna- tics ; but of course, as coming from one of them, was treated with contempt.