Volume 1

Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor : 65th part 1, 1910.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor : 65th part 1, 1910. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    63/118 (page 43)
    48 that will accommodate from 600 to 900 patients. Contracts for the foundation works of the whole of the buildings, the sinking of the well, and the erection ol the cottages have already been entered into. Insufficiency of Asylum Accommodation. Lancashire.—There is at present urgent need for additional accommodation in this county, many lunatics that ought to hai e Asylum care and treatment having to be retained in the woik- houses. It is hoped, however, that before very long this want will, to a considerable extent at least, be. met ; for, besides the before-mentioned sixth Asylum, the erection of which is now in hand, schemes for additions to some of the other Asylums are at present under consideration. As another expedient foi meeting the present demand for accommodation a scheme was during the year submitted and approved by the Secretary of State for acquiring on lease and converting for the use of 345 chronic harmless male patients a house belonging to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board situate at Seaforth on the Mersey and known as Seafield House. The scheme was, however, after much time and thought and some expense had been bestowed upon it, abandoned by the Asylums Board mainly on the grounds of the large outlay that would have to be incurred in making the house suitable, and of the short term for which the Dock Board were willing to grant the lease. Although the proposal has been given up, it may perhaps be well to place on. record the fact that the Asylums Board was desirous that the premises should be treated as a separate Asylum controlled by its own Visiting Committee, but our Board maintained that this was not possible in law, inasmuch as the period for which the building was to be acquired was a term of less than 60 years. Ultimately it was arranged, after our view had been fortified by the opinion of the Daw Officers of the Crown, that the property should be acquired and managed as a part of Rainhill Asylum, and that it should, be.subject to all the existing provisions relating to that Institution. As a means of affording some slight temporary relief, it was . also hoped that a certain number of harmless chronic female patients might be boarded out, under Section 26, Lunacy Act, 1890, in the Oldham Workhouse, but on the accommodation offered by the guardians to the Asylums’ Board being inspected by a member of our Board, the proposal had to be abandoned, for it was found that though there were certain unoccupied dormi¬ tories that would have given suitable sleeping accommodation, there was no vacant dayroom space available. Salop and Montgomeryshire— The Asylum at Bicton, hitherto owned jointly by the counties of Salop and Montgomery and the boroughs of Shrewsbury and Much Wen lock, has for years E 0.15. i>