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Trespass and False Imprisonment Tried at the Summer Assizes for the County of York, August 4, 1819, before the Hon. Sir George Wood, Knight of one of the Barons of his Majesty’s Court of Exchequer and a Special Jury. Taken from the shorthand notes of Mr Fraser (York: T. Wilson and Sons, 1819); Mather, Plain Narrative of Facts; J. Gray, Horsmania: Mr J. Gray’s Statements and Observations Occasioned by the Publications of Mr Mather (York: J. Wolstenholme, 1819). 3 Mather, Plain Narrative of Facts, p. 52. 4 K. Jones, Lunacy, Law and Conscience, 1744–1845: The Social History
strategy for revitalising Britain, they drew on neo-liberal theorists such as Milton Friedman and William Niskanen, who believed that welfare states had allowed professions to become overly bureaucratic and self-serving, and argued that the solution lay in remodelling them on market lines.115 The influence of this neo-liberal worldview was apparent in a 1980 speech by Nigel Lawson, who encouraged privatisation of the public sector during his time as Treasury Secretary, Secretary of State for Energy and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lawson declared that the new government
Lunatic.’ The cost of running an asylum was shared by local councils who provided a suitable charge on the poor rate, and this was assisted by a capital grant raised by local taxation. 117 The maintenance of these ‘Criminal Lunatics’ was, therefore, paid by the Imperial Exchequer. While there were accusations that the War Office discontinued a man's pension to make up for the additional cost of maintenance, this practice appears to have stopped with amendments to the 1909 Army Act. 118
and perplexing problem as it occurred in the context of a persistent decline in the population after the Famine. According to census returns, the number of ‘lunatics and idiots’ in Irish asylums almost trebled between 1871 and 1911, while the population declined by just under 20 per cent and there were additional numbers of ‘lunatics and idiots’ maintained in the country’s workhouses.145 Dublin Castle was primarily concerned with the financial burden the Irish asylum system placed on the exchequer.146 However, the increase also prompted extensive debate among
above any obligations to his class or his status. William Windham was from an old Norfolk family. He came of age, married a courtesan, and began running through the family fortune. His behaviour, even by the standards of the day, went beyond merely eccentric, rakish, or unconventional. Over the holiday season of 1861–1862, a jury of twenty-four men and Masters in Lunacy oversaw an Inquiry at the Court of Exchequer in Westminster before bursting crowds to decide whether that behaviour reached the threshold of madness. No less