District lunacy boards/District boards of control
This entry in the Knowledge Base refers to local authorities and central authorities by the name they were given in the relevant legislation at the time. This terminology is now obsolete and its use in this entry is limited to formal names.
District lunacy boards were established in 1858 as local authorities comprising representatives of the commissioners of supply and magistrates of burghs within the district.[1] They were supervised by a General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland. The function of the district boards was to provide asylums for the reception and care of people with mental health issues who had no means to support themselves. From 1862 this was extended to include voluntary patients and children with congenital disabilities.[2] In 1914 the District lunacy boards were re-named district boards of control and the General Board of Commissioners was re-named the General Board of Control for Scotland.[3] District boards of control were then required to provide accommodation or contribute to the cost of accommodation of people with congenital learning disabilities or other disabilities as well as people with mental health issues. District boards of control were abolished in 1930 and responsibility for the provision of mental health services at a local level was transferred to the county councils and the four counties of cities.[4]
With the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948 local authority responsibility for the provision of hospitals and local mental health services was transferred to the National Health Service.[5] However it was not until 1960 that the Lunacy (Scotland) Acts 1857-1913 and the Mental Deficiency (Scotland) Acts 1913 and 1940 were finally repealed.[6]
Records of the district boards are mainly held by health services archives. The minutes of the General Board of Commissioners are held by National Records of Scotland (reference code MC).
Compilers: SCAN contributors (2000). Editor: Elspeth Reid (2021)
Related Knowledge Base entries
Hospitals and local health provision under the NHS
Bibliography
Andrews, Jonathan, They’re in the trade…of lunacy, they cannot interfere – they say’: the Scottish Lunacy Commissioners and lunacy reform in nineteenth-century Scotland. (Wellcome Trust, 1998)
Hunter, T. Drummond, ‘Mental health and mental handicap: a new look at patterns in care’ in Improving the Common Weal: Aspects of Scottish health services 1900-1984 ed. by Gordon McLachlan (Edinburgh University Press for the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, 1987) pp.325-65
Stone, J.A.W., ‘Lunacy’ in Source book and history of administrative law in Scotland ed. by M. R. McLarty (Hodge, 1956), pp. 161-76
References
[1] Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1857 (20 & 21 Vict. c.71).
[2] Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1862 (25 & 26 Vict. c.54).
[3] Mental Deficiency and Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1913 (3 & 4 Geo. V c.38).
[4] Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929 (19 & 20 Geo. V c.25).
[5] National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1847 (10 & 11 Geo. VI c.27).
[6] Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1960 (c.61).