| Description | The first seven registers were kept under the 1853 County Asylums Act: to consolidate and amend the laws for the provision and regulation of lunatic asylums for counties and boroughs, and for the maintenance and care of pauper lunatics in England. Entries include number (separate sequence for males and females) and date of admission, date of any previous admission, patient's name, age, marital status, occupation and place of abode, form and supposed cause of mental disorder, duration of existing attacks, and date of discharge, removal or death. Registers were signed from time to time by the Commissioners in Lunacy. The following registers were kept under the Rules made by the Commissioners in Lunacy, 29 March 1890.
Registers 19-25 were kept in accordance with the Rules of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 31 October 1906. Entries include classification (private, 'service' or pauper status) and religion, but no longer give age or form and cause of mental disorder.
Registers 26-28 were kept in accordance with the Rules of the Commissioners of the Board of Control, 7 January 1925. Entries include details of any other admission or transfer, age, occupation and religion, as well as classification, marital status and date of discharge, transfer or death.
Registers 29-38 were kept in accordance with the 1930 Mental Treatment Act, which among other things made provision for voluntary treatment and modernised the terms used. Thus 'pauper lunatic' was replaced by 'rate-aided person of unsound mind'. The additional detail of maiden name of married women is recorded. A second sequence of patient number, the serial status number, was introduced which ran in addition to the general reference number. Separate series of registers were kept for voluntary and temporary patients.
Registers 39-52 were kept under the National Health Service Act, in force 5 July 1948. The serial status number was discontinued. Registers record patient's name, age, status (voluntary, temporary or certified), classification (private, Health Service or criminal), mode of admission (for temporary patients: date of permission and extension; for certified patients: dates of orders), destination and date upon discharge or death.
Registers 53-68 also include date of birth, whence admitted, status (Section 25, informal, Section 26 or Section 29) and diagnosis of mental illness upon admission. Register 60 (from June 1972) is the earliest to be noted as entered on computer. From January 1973 the separate general reference number series for males and females ceased (having reached 31,592 for males and 39,279 for females). The male number series was continued for a short while for day patients. The in-patients were numbered in one general sequence (commencing at 1323, possibly the computer reference number), but female patients' numbers continued to be written in red ink. From November 1984 diagnoses were entered by number code only. |