It seems strange that, notwithstanding these various Acts, and especially that of 1862, there should still be occasion for improvement in providing for the care of the property of insane persons. Yet so it is; and one of the Lord Chancellor's Visitors, Dr. Lockhart Robertson, has so recently as 1881 stated that "the important requisite of a cheap and speedy method of placing the property of lunatics under the guardianship of the Lord Chancellor has yet to be attained," and he quoted Master Barlow's evidence before the Dillwyn Committee of 1877: "I am a great advocate for a great reform in lunacy (Chancery) proceedings; I would facilitate the business of the procedure in the office and shorten it in such a way as to reduce the costs." Various important suggestions will be found in the evidence given before the above Committee by the present Visitors and an ex-Visitor, Dr. Bucknill, who has also, in his brochure on "The Care of the Insane, and their Legal Control," advocated radical changes in the official management of the insane. In addition to the establishment of State asylums for the upper and middle classes, he proposes that two central lunacy authorities should administer the laws, severally relating to the rich and the poor. The present Board of Commissioners would cease to exist; the Lord Chancellor, under the Royal prerogative, would preside over the former—the non-pauper—and the Local Government Board would exercise authority over the entire pauper class. By this means the existing system, under which the Chancery lunatics are cared for, "rooted," as Dr. Bucknill points out, "in the foundations of the English constitution," would be greatly extended, and "the present entanglement of authorities, always costly and sometimes conflicting," would cease. It remains to be seen whether these proposals can or will be carried out, and if so, whether they will prove as beneficial in practice as they are doubtless attractively harmonious and symmetrical in theory.
It remains to add the number of Chancery lunatics in England and Wales at the present time, namely 992, who were thus distributed on January 1, 1881:—
| Location. | M. | F. | Total. |
|---|---|---|---|
| County and borough asylums | 22 | 10 | 32 |
| Registered hospitals | 102 | 66 | 168 |
| Metropolitan licensed houses | 123 | 119 | 242 |
| Provincial „ „ | 104 | 82 | 186 |
| Naval and military and East India Asylums | 2 | — | 2 |
| Criminal asylums | 3 | — | 3 |
| Private single patients | 55 | 80 | 135 |
| 411 | 357 | 768 | |
| Residing in charge of their committees | — | — | 224 |
| Total | 992 |
The percentages on the incomes of Chancery lunatics amounts to about £22,000, an amount which goes far to cover the cost, not only of the Masters and Registrar, but also the Visitors; viz. Masters in Lunacy, £12,805; Registrar, £2,216; Visitors, £8,317; total, £23,339.[223]
Footnotes:
[[Skip]]
[213] Free use has been made of Shelford's "Law concerning Lunatics, etc.," and Elmer's "Practice in Lunacy," 1877.
[214] "Rex habet custodiam terrarum fatuorum naturalium, capiendo exitus earundem sine vasto et destructione et inveniet eis necessaria sua de cujus cumque fœdo terre ille fuerint; et post mortem eorum reddat eas (eam) rectis hæredibus ita quod nullatenus per eosdem fatuos alienentur vel (nec quod) eorum hæredes exheredentur."