Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (65 page)

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In 1808 the County Asylums Act encouraged local authorities to build separate lunatic asylums to house pauper lunatics.

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In 1845 the Lunacy and County Asylum Act made the provision of care for the mentally disabled compulsory for local authorities by providing public asylums. These asylums were to be under the authority of the Lunacy Commission, reporting to the Home Secretary. The Commission would inspect the newly created asylums, and the vast majority were created in the following 25 years. As these asylums were administered locally, most records will be found in local record offices.

Records for lunatics recorded in Chancery documents can be found at The National Archives. The documents fall into the following categories:

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Petitions:
Anyone seeking an inquisition to prove an individual's mental incapability had to provide two sworn affidavits in a petition. The majority of affidavits have not survived (apart from approximately 1,000 in C 217/55 from 1719 to 1733). However, they have been surmised in the petitions' abstracts found in C 211.

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Inquisition records:
Records for inquisitions by the Lord Chancellor into ascertaining the state of mind of the individual can be found in the following series, depending on the date:

    
  C 132–142 for before 1540. These are held with the Inquisitions post mortem

    
  WARD 7 for 1540 to 1648. From 1540 to 1646 the Court of Wards was responsible for lunatics and idiots, not the Lord Chancellor

    
  C 211 for 1648 to 1932 (PL 5 for Lancashire). If you are researching a Chancery case from the late 1700s onwards remember to check in newspapers as the press often reported these cases

    
  C 43, C 44 and C 206 contain records for inquisitions that were subject to dispute (‘traverses'), dating from the time of Edward I to Queen Victoria

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Records for the possessions of lunatics/idiots:
The Clerk of Custodies collected this information and also decided who would be responsible for the lunatic and his or her possessions. The clerks would issue letters patent to the committees. Many of these records have not survived, but registers of bonds by committees dating from the eighteenth century onwards can be found in series J 103, J 92 and J 117.

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Records of the Chancery Master:
The Master would collect annual accounts and also make reports on individual cases. Their records, where they survive, can be very useful:

    
  Committee Accounts were submitted annually and are in C 101 (indexed by IND 1)

    
  The Masters would also compile reports and collect exhibits relevant to the case. The reports are in C 38 (indexed by IND 1). The surviving exhibits are in C 103–115 and J 90. C 103–114 has an index in the beginning of the C 103 list