Report on the Royal Lunatic Asylum of Montrose for 1864 : instituted 1782.

  • Royal Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary, and Dispensary of Montrose.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the Royal Lunatic Asylum of Montrose for 1864 : instituted 1782. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    family. This holds good especially with the better classes : the con¬ stant recurrence of recreations and occupations which a large institution necessarily affords beguile the weary hours, and they experience a feeling of independence which more than counter-balances the unques¬ tionably disagreeable concomitants of their situation. The modes of distribution of the insane poor in Scotland at present are so various in different counties that it is difficult to draw any definite conclusions from statistical tables as to the respective cost of maintenance in asylums, lunatic wards, and private houses. It is necessary of course not merely to look at the board charged for patients in an asylum, and contrast that with the cost of their maintenance in the lunatic wards of*a poor-house or in private dwellings, but to take the average charge for pauper lunatics in a given district, and compare it with another in which the mode of distribution is different. In my last report I stated my conviction that lunatic wards in poor-houses were objectionable, in an economical point of view. The statistics given in the sixth annual report of the Board of Lunacy, just issued, confirm these views. In Lanark it appears that while 292 pauper lunatics are in asylums, 34-5 are in poor-houses; and that in Forfarshire 347 are in asylums, and only 3 in poor-houses. Yet in the former county the average daily cost of maintenance of the lunatics, whether in asylums, poor-houses, or private dwellings, is Is If-d ; whereas in Forfarshire it is only Is Ofd. Again, Dumfries, Elgin, Kirkcudbright, Caithness, which have no patients in poor-houses, pay respectively lljd, lQjd, lljd, and lOd ; while Edinburgh, Lanark, Benirew, Aberdeen, and Ayr, which enjoy the privilege of poor-house lunatic wards to a greater extent than any districts in Scotland, pay severally Is 1 Ad, Is lfd, Is Ijd, Is Id, and Is Id. In fact, it appears that the cost of maintenance for pauper lunatics increases in proportion to the extent of accommodation provided for them in poor-houses. In the prospect of the parishes of Dundee and Liff and Benvie open¬ ing the poor-house lunatic wards for the reception of quiet and tract¬ able patients, it will become the duty of the Directors to fix a rate of board for those that remain in the Asylum, different from that charged for parishes who send all their patients to it. The District Lunacy Board of Argyll have fixed their asylum rates at sixpence a day higher for such parishes as dispose part of their lunatics in other establish*