1766 Manchester Lunatic Asylum, a private asylum, opens in Piccadilly
1798 Lord Chancellor appoints Secretary of Lunatics, Clerk of Custody of Idiots and Lunatics,
and 5 Commissioners for Lunatics
1800 Criminal Lunatics Act designed to give safe custody to lunatics charged with criminal
offences
1801 King George III suffers recurring bouts of insanity
1808 County Asylums Act – first law to allow counties to raise funding to build public asylums
for housing lunatics out of prisons and workhouses
1816 The Lancashire Moor Asylum, the first public asylum in Lancashire, opens.
1842 Lunacy Commission considers case for two new asylums for Lancashire – Rainhill in
Liverpool and Prestwich in Manchester
1843 Attacks by criminal insane prompts calls for lunatics to be treated in asylums for their
own protection and general public safety
1844 Lunacy Report counts 12,000 insane paupers, some dangerous, living in workhouses or
outside asylums; recommends lunatics should be cured and controlled with discipline and
moral management
1845 County Asylums Act obliges all insane poor to be transferred from workhouses and treated
in specially built asylums
1845 Lunacy Act requires monitoring and regulation of all lunatic asylums
1851 Lancashire opens a second County Asylum at Prestwich for 350 patients
1858 Prestwich County Asylum has 510 patients
1863 Prestwich extended to accommodate a further 560 patients
1870 Royal Albert Asylum for Idiots and Imbeciles of the
Northern Counties opens in Lancaster, specialising
in training for children with
mental disability
1884 Prestwich Annexe opens to accommodate 1,100 patients
1886 Idiots Act - first law to make provision for education and training for those with mental
disability, rather than illness or insanity
1888 Colonies for epileptics begin to open in many areas of the country, a concept which
marked out mental hospitals as institutions segregated from ordinary communities
1890 Lunacy Act consolidated several legal changes on mental illness. Detention of a lunatic
person could only be ordered by a judge and must be limited by time; new private asylum
building was restricted
1899 Defective and Epileptic Children Act allows all councils to make special arrangements
for teaching or training mentally disabled children
1903 Prestwich County Asylum can accommodate 3,125 patients
1905 Manchester Corporation opens Langho Colony, in Lancashire,
a residential home for epileptics
1905 Syphilis bacteria identified, thought to be major cause of
General Paralysis of the Insane, and much mental illness
1907 Eugenics Education Society established to promote population
control measures on undesirable genetic traits, including mental defects
1908 Report by Royal Commission on Care and Control of Feeble-Minded
1913 Mental Deficiency Act established Board of Control to replace the Lunacy Commission.
Every council required to set up Mental Deficiency Committee to provide for mentally
disabled people under 4 categories: ‘idiot’, ‘imbecile’, ‘feeble-minded’ and ‘moral defective’
(under which unmarried mothers could be detained in asylums)
1919 Prince John, son of King George V, dies aged 13. Epileptic and learning disabled,
his existence was largely unknown to the rest of the country
1924-26 Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder recommends more modern treatment
of mental illness and limits asylum patient numbers and certification
1927 Mental Deficiency (Amendment) Act distinguishes between mental impairment from
birth and as a result of accident or illness. Local councils responsible for providing
training for those with mental disability
1930 Mental Treatment Act modernises existing laws relating to mental patients, aiming
to promote voluntary treatment of all patients, whether private or rate-aided (pauper),
rather than detention or certification. This Act made a crucial change in amending
legal terminology from ‘lunatic’ to ‘person of unsound mind’.