Provisions
The Act established the Commissioners in Lunacy to inspect plans for asylums on behalf of the Home Secretary (s.3). The Act required asylums, other than Bethlem Hospital, to be registered with the Commission, to have written regulations and to have a resident physician (s.42). Under the Act, patients lost their right of access to the courts to challenge their detention. Detention could only be reviewed by the commissioners or county visitors.
The Commission had many roles in carrying out the act. It established a network of public county institutions. It monitored the conditions in the asylums and the treatment of the patients. It made a point of reaching out to patients in workhouses and prisons and getting them to the proper institutions where they could be treated. It also focused on "single lunatics" who were not connected with any prisons or workhouse but needed psychiatric care. It monitored the treatment and mental condition of patients whom the Commission could not remove from prisons and workhouses.
Read more about this topic: Lunacy Act 1845
Famous quotes containing the word provisions:
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—James Madison (1751–1836)
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—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Drinking tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages, hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of interest, was now divided among a hundred; and, look where you would, there was a motley assemblage of feasting, talking, begging, gambling and mummery.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)