Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society

There was concern in the United Kingdom in the 19th century about wrongful confinement in private madhouses, or asylums, and the mistreatment of patients, with tales of such abuses appearing in newspapers and magazines.

Perceval contacted Paternoster and they were soon joined by several former patients and others: William Bailey (an inventor and business man who had spent several years in madhouses); Lewis Phillips (a glassware manufacturer who had been incarcerated in Thomas Warburton's asylum); John Parkin (a surgeon and former asylum patient); Captain Richard Saumarez (whose father was the surgeon Richard Saumarez and whose two brothers were Chancery lunatics); and Luke James Hansard (a philanthropist from the family of parliamentary printers).

A pamphlet published in March the following year set out the aims with which the Society was founded: At a meeting of several Gentlemen feeling deeply interested in behalf of their fellow-creatures, subjected to confinement as lunatic patients.

That this Society will receive applications from persons complaining of being unjustly treated, or from their friends, aid them in obtaining legal advice, and otherwise assist and afford them all proper protection.

[10]John Perceval replied that the law afforded patients insufficient protection, and that the Society existed to give legal advice to individuals and draw the government's attention to abuses as well as to encourage a more general discussion about the nature of insanity.

In response to the article's reference to the fact that several members of the Society had been patients in asylums, Perceval had this to say: I would remind the writer of that article, that men are worthy of confidence in the province of their own experience, and as the wisest and best of mankind hold the tenure of their health and reasoning faculties on the will of an Inscrutable Providence, and great wits to madness are allied, he will do well to consider that their fate may be his own, and to assist them in saving others in future from like injustice and cruelties, which the ignorance of the fondest relations may expose patients to, as well as the malice of their enemies.

John Perceval, Admiral Saumarez, Gilbert Bolden and Anne Tottenham (a patient they had rescued from Effra House Asylum) gave evidence to the committee.

In 1862 John Perceval wrote a letter to the magazine John Bull: I am sorry to say that this Society is so little supported, in spite of the great good it has done, and is in consequence so entirely disorganised, that I have repeatedly proposed to the committee that we should agree to a dissolution of it, and I have only consented to continue acting with them, and to lend my name to what is rather a myth than a reality, from their representation that however insignificant we were, we had still been able to effect a great deal of good, and might still be further successful[21]Nicholas Hervey concluded: The Society's importance lies in the wide panorama of ideas it laid before Shaftesbury's Board.

Unrestrained by the traditions of bureaucratic office, it was free to explore a variety of alternatives for care of the insane, many of which were too visionary or impolitic to stand a chance of implementation.

The difficulty it faced was the blinkered perspective of the Commission and of Shaftesbury in particular ... it would not be an exaggeration of the Society's worth to say that patients' rights, asylum care, and medical accountability all suffered with its demise in the 1860s.