Animal rights: political and social change in Britain since 1800

Lord Shaftesbury's Lunacy Commission. Previous government attempts to introduce rate funded district asylums in Scotland, like those of the 1808 English County Asylums Act, had also been resoundingly defeated on a localist agenda. Andrews pauses briefly over the 1855-57 Scottish Lunacy Commission inquiry which led to legislation and the establishment of a full-time Lunacy Commission. This was initiated by the American reformer Dorothea Dix, supported by the Duke of Argyll, and the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey. The appointment of two English Lunacy Commissioners onto this Inquiry, albeit one of them a Scotsman, and indeed the Duke of Argyll's nephew, was deeply unpopular. Many thought that they had set out to do a job on the Scottish system, in much the same way as they had on Bethlem Hospital. Many Scots were proud of the charitable basis of their Poor Law and subscription hospitals, and were fundamentally opposed to the introduction of a Commission. Mr Podsnap's comment on Commissions in Our mutualfriend, "No! Never with my consent. Not English", could just as well have applied to Scotland. There was widespread disquiet at the Commission's introduction, and after five years, there were formal representations to Government for its discontinuance. This monograph tracks the developing composition and influence of the Scottish Board, profiles the individual commissioners and teases out their specific contributions. Andrews successfully captures the tension between Scottish national pride which was opposed to the importation of anything English, and the need to puff those elements of their mental health system which were seen as specifically Scottish. He pays particular attention to the debate over the single care of lunatics and idiots boarded out in the community, drawing on the work of Harriet Sturdy. He discusses the Commission's promotion of boarding out, and identifies the impact of wider hereditarian concerns about the way it was implemented. Notably this occurred in its attempts to prevent the transmission of idiocy by restricting boarding out to certain age groups. Andrews explores the contemporary debate about the relative merits of the Gheel and cottage systems, again teasing out the divergence of individual opinions from the Commission's published views. It is hard to escape the feeling, after reading this monograph, that there were more similarities than differences between the Scottish and English Commissions. Nevertheless, Andrews has provided an excellent account, fleshing out our understanding of lunacy administration north of the border and the different emphasis which the Scottish Commissioners placed on many of the same issues.