County Asylums Act 1828

United Kingdom legislation

County Asylums Act 1828
Act of Parliament
Parliament of Great Britain
Long title	An Act to amend the Laws for the Erection and Regulation of County Lunatic Asylums. And more effectually to provide for the care and maintenance of Pauper and Criminal Lunatics in England.^[1]
Citation	9 Geo. 4. c. 40

The County Asylums Act 1828 (9 Geo. 4. c. 40) was an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that addressed concerns with the administration of asylums and the slow creation of county asylums within Britain. It required magistrates to send annual records of admissions, discharges, and deaths to the Home Office; and allowed the Secretary of State to send a Visiting Justice to any county asylum, although the visitor couldn't intervene in how the asylum was run.^[2] It also allowed counties to borrow money to build an asylum, but it had to be paid back within 14 years of the initial loan.^[3] This was designed to incentivize counties to build asylums, but it did not make it compulsory, a continuation of the County Asylums Act 1808.^[4] It also imposed the requirement of a residential medical officer, whose permission was necessary to justify the restraint of a patient.^[5]

Background

Issues of mistreatment and abuse, raised in a 1817 select committee report, quickened reform, leading to this Act of Parliament.^[6]

At the time of royal assent, nine county asylums had been established in England, and the need for more was growing due to overcrowding in public or charity asylums like St. Luke's Hospital for Lunatics and Bethlehem Royal Hospital.^[7]

References

^ Roberts, Andrew. "Mental Health History Timeline". www.studymore.org.uk. Retrieved 19 May 2018.
^ Puri, Basant; Brown, Rob; McKee, Heather; Treasaden, Ian (2005). Mental Health Law: a practical guide. CRC Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-340-88503-3.
^ Ball, Christopher Allan (2010). Mental Health Legislation in New Zealand from 1846 to Date: A Discourse Analysis (PDF). Eastern Institute of Technology, Taradale, New Zealand. Eastern Institute of Technology. p. 31.
^ Stebbings, Chantal (2011). "An Effective Model of Institutional Taxation: Lunatic Asylums in Nineteenth-Century England". The Journal of Legal History. 32 (1): 31–59. doi:10.1080/01440365.2011.559119. ISSN 0144-0365. PMC 3083005. PMID 21552307.
^ McCrae, Niall; Nolan, Peter (2016). The Story of Nursing in British Mental Hospitals: Echoes from the Corridors. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-81238-8.
^ Patrick Raftery, James (2014). The Economics of Psychiatric Services in the UK and Ireland, 1845-1985 (PDF). Faculty of Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. pp. 37 (Actually 39 in the PDF).
^ Butterworth, Hannah. "The Evolution of Attitudes and Treatments Regarding Mental Health Disorders" (PDF). Think. No. 4. p. 1.