LUNATICS' ACT AMENDMENT ACT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8630, 28 July 1891, Page 6

LUNATICS' ACT AMENDMENT ACT.

At yesterday's meeting of the Auckland Hospital and Charitable Aid Board the following circular was received from the secretary of the Otago Benevolent Institution :—

1 have the honour by direction of the trustees of this institution to draw your attention to the provisions of the proposed Lunatics Act Amendment Act, 1891, now before the House of Representatives. The fifth clause of the proposed Act reads as follows : —" Where a lunatic who is a destitute person is discharged from an asylum, hospital, or licensed house, and the medical officer of the. asylum, or the medical attendant of the hospital or house is of opinion that the lunatic has not recovered, and is a proper person to be keDt in a benevolent institution as a lunatic, the medical officer or medical attendant shall certify such opinion, and his certificate shall accompany the notice of discharge, and the lunatic may thereupon be received and detained against his will in a ? benevolent institution without further order if the medical officer of the. benevolent institution certifies in ■writing that the accommodation in the benevolent institution is sufficient for the lunatic's pro- ( per care and treatment, separate from the inmates of the benevolent institution not lunatics, or that the lunatic's condition is snch that it is not necessary for the convenience of the lunatic or of the other inmates that he should be kept separate." The trustees desire me to direct, your attention to the fact that the above clause practically throws one-half the cost of the care and maintenance of harmless lunatics and persons suffering from senile dementia upon the local contributing .bodies, and that if the subsidies to Charitable Aid Boards at present puid by the Government are withdrawn then the entire cost of such care aud maintenance will fall upon the said bodies. The Inspector in Lunacy and the medical superintendents of the various Lunatic Asylums of the colony complain that the asylums are overcrowded by harmless lunatics, and in all probability advantage will be taken of the passing of this Act to discharge a considerable number of such eases, the result of which will certainly be a considerable increase in tlie already heavy demands for charitable aid expenditure. I am also directed to draw your attention to that portion of the clause which takes from the trustees of benevolent institutions the Eower to determine what lunacy cases shall o received into their institution, and vests such power to a great extent in the medical officer of the institution ; and generally into the manner in which the charitable aid boards and trustees of separate institutions are quietly ignored in connection with the whole matter—an alteration which the trustees do not consider desirable. The trustees respectfully request that you will consider the provisions of the proposed Amendment Act, and if you agree with them that it is not desirable that it should become law, that you will take such steps us you may think beat to prevent it being passed. After a conversational discussion the Board unanimously resolved to oppose the Bill.