Lunacy versus liberty : a letter to the Lord Chancellor, on the defective state of the law, as regards insane persons, and private asylums for their reception : with remarks, original and select, including the author's own case, and others / by William Griggs.

  • Griggs, William, late Patient at Kensington House.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lunacy versus liberty : a letter to the Lord Chancellor, on the defective state of the law, as regards insane persons, and private asylums for their reception : with remarks, original and select, including the author's own case, and others / by William Griggs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    such cases of convenience are as notorious as the sun at noon day. Are these things known, and if they are, to pass by unheeded ?—if any say, Aye, Why then reward him, heaven. And put a scourge in every honest hand, To lash the coward naked through the world. The extreme facility the law affords to medical men of cutting off from society all they choose to suspect of being- of unsound mind, is the most abo- minable tyranny I know of in the present age. Some years since, I read of a certain Indian Mo- narch, who used to amuse himself by pounding his subjects to death in a huge mortar. If this fellow was not mad, his subjects ought to have risen en masse, and made a target of his body, as a lesson for future monsters. Magna Charta, of which Englishmen appear so proud, makes no distinction of persons, sane or in- sane, but grants common protection to all; and it is an absurdity, to say the least of it, to think we are to hold our liberties under the cobweb tenure of medical men, however respectable they may be. The law is very defective, and it is impossible, as at present constituted, that ample justice can be done to these particularly unfortunate jpersons. I may be told, that certain commissioners watch most carefully all private Lunatic Establishments. How often these gentlemen choose to perform their duty I have yet to learn. But this I do know, that the asylum I was in,—Kensington House, Kensing- ton,^—I saw no commissioner while I was there, which was four weeks, from October 29th, to No- vember 25th, 1831. Now if they can keep away four weeks, I do not see but they can keep away any time they may think proper. I understand they do attend, and very properly, at times when the keepers know not of their coming; but it appears bordering on insanity, to examine mad people; and as to asking