Catalogue description Lunacy Commission and Board of Control: Correspondence and Papers

This series contains a selection of the papers and correspondence of the Board of Control: a body set up in 1913, but effectively dating back to the establishment of the Lunacy Commission in 1845. The records contain general correspondence registered or re-registered in a 60,000 series of files, a set of law officers' opinions from 1857 onwards and the County Register 1798-1812, a list of private asylums and patients admitted to them.

Earlier records include reports on patients, submitted by medical superintendents under the Lunacy Act 1890, s.38; copies of removal orders for the removal of pauper lunatics from one asylum to another; visitors' special reports, etc, on institutions and patients' cases; papers relating to research grants; returns in respect of insane prisoners in gaols; and a complete record of proceedings of the Departmental Committee on Sterilization, 1932 to 1933, with subsidiary papers. Also included are circular letters of the Lunacy Commission and Board of Control 1845 to 1860; papers on the organisation and procedure of the Board; and papers of Lord Shaftesbury and Sir Laurence Brock as chairmen. There are also some records of the Home Office relating to its responsibilities in this area.

Board of Control, 1913-1960

Commissioners in Lunacy, 1845-1913