THE LUNATICS ACT.

Evening Star, Issue 4103, 21 April 1876, Page 4

THE LUNATICS ACT.

' To the Editor.

Sir, —Last Saturday Mr Pyke waxed eloquent overithe misdeeds of certain people in connection with a case, of lunacy. On a later day he exonerated the police and the whom 'he -had previously reproved, from all blame, and said that the only faulty step in the matter was taken by the" medical men, who had signed the wrong fonn of certificate. One would have expected from the Magistrate’s virtuous indignation that they bad done something slightly more atrocious than this—that jin .-fact, they had aided in consigning a sane man to “ the horrors of a lunatic asylum.” . Now, Mr Editor, let l me state that there is only one form of schedule printed for. medical certificates of lunacy applicable alike .to paupersandprivate patients. Borne are printed bn blue, some on white paper; all are marked Schedule 7. I enclose you specimens to judge for yourself. There is nothing in the Act that consecrates blue paper to pauperism or vice versd, and, as a' matter of fact, the smaller and larger sizes of paper are used indifferently. Another charge made against the medical examiners by Mr Pyke was that they did wrong in certifying before the order was made out. On this point Balfour Browne, in his “Handbook of Law and Lunacy,” a work of high authority, says: “As the order may be signed any time within one calendar month , before, the reception of the lunatic into - the asylum, it is immaterial 'whether the order be signed before or after'the medical certificates, or either of them.” To support his statement he refers to the sixth report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, p. 15. Seeing then that'police and justices are exonerated from blame by Mr Pyke, that the doctors told no untruth when they said the man was-insane, * Mid used no wrong form nf schedule, seeing there is but one, where are we to find justification for Mr Pyke’s philippic ? 1 am able to state, as the latest phase of this case,'that the justices’ order is to be withdrawn and a statement by a relative to be put in-its place, as should have been the mode of procedure at first.

Supposing instead of being able to pay for his support, the relatives of this man had been poor.; and supposing that he was likely, if left at large, to injure himself Or others, would not Mr Pyke have been obliged as a magistrate, to sign an order on a public holiday, as last Friday was, without waiting for hearing the case m open Court ? As I read the Lunacy Act, I think lie would.—l

am, &c., > ■■■■ X.Y.Z. Dunedin, April 20. ‘ P.S.—There is a difference between the two forms which had escaped my observation. One has at the head “32 Victoria, No. 16, N.Z., Seventh Schedule ;” the other has at the foot “ Lunatics Act, 1868, Schedule 7.”