ABSTRACT
The reports which the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy issued between 1829 and 1842 make impressive reading. They show a constant attention to detail, and an increasingly stringent view of their duties. By 1842, Ashley’s reputation as a social reformer was decisively established. He was forty-one years of age; he had been a member of parliament for sixteen years, and a Lunacy Commissioner for fourteen. How the asylums and madhouses which had hitherto been exempt from any real inspection greeted the prospect of the Commissioners’ visits, we may only guess in most cases. The only reliable records available relate to certain asylums and hospitals; no documents relating to private madhouses appear to be in existence. The report dealt first with county asylums, giving details of conditions in individual asylums, and paying some attention to matters of internal administration, such as heating, diet, and the employment of patients.
