The evidence taken before a committee of the House of Commons respecting the asylum at York : with observations and notes, and a letter to the committee &c. &c. &c. / by Godfrey Higgins.
- Godfrey Higgins
- Date:
- 1816
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The evidence taken before a committee of the House of Commons respecting the asylum at York : with observations and notes, and a letter to the committee &c. &c. &c. / by Godfrey Higgins. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![it was my duty, both as a man and a magistrate, to effect if possible. It will be in the recollection of Mr. Rose and Mr. Bennet, that, when I Avas in London last spring-, I did not court the inquiry. - I met with Mr. Wakefield, whose exertions in the cause of the unfortunate lunatics have done him so much credit, by acci- dent, at the new Penitentiary at Milbank. I had then been nearly three weeks in London on my own afi^irs, and was about to leave it in a few days. In conversation with him, he told me he did not believe that Mr. Rose had dropped the inquiry : he pressed me to permit him to speak to Mr. iJennet upon the sub- ject, and to inform him that I was in town. To this I consented; and, in consequence, had immediately a message both from him and Mr. Rose, requesting that I would call upon them. During- my interview with the latter, I represented to him that I thought the inquiry might be dispensed with, as I under- stood his bill had been lost in the preceding- session, from a mere mistake of the Governors of the York and Nottingham Asylums, and that as it would no longer be opposed by them, I supposed it would pass without any difficulty. In this he satisfied me I was mistaken; and I consented to defer my journey home a couple of days that I might be examined. I name these circumstances, because it has been said that I sought this inquiry merely out of enmity to Dr. Best, as it had been said, in an early stage of the business, that I sought the reform for a similar reason, viz. enmity to a man whom I had never seen and had scarcely heard of, and whom, at first, I did not know to be physician to the institution. Throughout the whole of my proceedings, it was my object to save Dr. Best's character, as much as might be consistently with the attainment of my object. I considered that some anger, on his part, was what might reasonably be expected. I could not suppose he would give up a very large income, and see the well-founded suspicions of many respectable persons of York, whom he was pleased to consider as his personal enemies, confirmed by an investigation into the state of the Asylum, without some marks of irritation ; but I also considered, that, in the capacity in which I was acting- as a magistrate, it was my duty, whatever I might feel, to let nothing like personality in- fluence my conduct; and if I am now at last compelled to place some circumstances in a stronger point of view than I have hitherto done, and, by so doing expose Dr. Best, I hope I shall be excused by the absolute necessity of the case, if I am to justify myself from the charge of wilful misrepresentation, and to s]iew that, as much as possible, it has been my desire to exercise for- bearance towards him.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21058751_0049.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
