Annual report of the General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland : 17th 1875

  • Great Britain. General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland : 17th 1875. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    looked. A considerable number of cases occur where it is known to the authori- Appendix ties of the parish in which the person has latterly been resident that his settle- F. ment is in another parish, and in consequence he is at once reported and registered as belonging to his parish of settlement. He therefore appears in the registers General of the Board only in connexion with the parish of settlement, often found to be Reports on _ his native parish, which he had left many years ago, and whose influence could Patient not have contributed materially to the production of his present state either of ;* i , mind or body. This error I believe I have succeeded in eliminating ; and I am Deputy able to show with considerable exactitude a classification of the patients, based on Commis- the localities where they were actually resident at the time of the occurrence of sioners, their insanity. es If, then, we examine the numbers of those who annually become pauper lunatics Report in the several districts, we find the figures very differently arranged from those by Dr. in the last table. In the following table the population of the principal Sibbald. towns appears as a much more prolific source of pauper lunacy than was indi- cated by the number found chargeable to them at the enumeration made at the beginning of the year. Pauper Lunatics admitted to the Register during 1872. Total Pauper Lunatics, 1st Jan, Classified according | Classified according 1873, to Parish of Resi- LOCALITIES. oo Leaner ae Proportion Proportion Absolute per Absolute per Absolute per Number. | 100,000 of }] Number. 100,000 of Population! Population Principal Towns,. 732 62 638 177 Large Towns, . ; 146 152 175 Small Towns & Rural Districts, . 645 709 206 Total® Wy1':1628 1499 192 The number of lunatics thus found to be chargeable to the principal towns at the end of the year was 177 per 100,000 of population, which was considerably less than the number chargeable to small towns and rural districts. But when we look at the number of persons who have annually become pauper lunatics in the several districts, we find the number belonging to the principal towns to be as much as 80 per cent. above the number who become pauper lunatics in the small towns and rural districts. Another way of reading these facts is to say, that if the number at lst January (which we may call the census number for the year) bore the same proportion to the cases arising during the year in the principal towns as it does in the small towns and rural districts, there would have been more than double the number chargeable to these towns on Ist January than was actually the case. Two important conclusions must be drawn from this. First, that compared with the rest of the country, a much larger number of persons become pauper lunatics in the principal towns than has generally been supposed; and second, that the names of such persons are removed from the rolls of city parishes twice as rapidly as the names of similar persons in country parishes. We may infer from the figures in the table how this is partly to be accounted for. For when the patients are classified according to the parishes to which they are ultimately found to be chargeable, we find that a considerable reduction takes place in the proportion allocated to the principal towns. The extent to which this burden of supporting persons who have become insane in cities falls upon other localities will be made evident by the following statement.