¹Daniel Hack Tuke, Chapters in the history of the insane in the British Isles, London, Kegan Paul and Trench, 1882, pp. 324–5; Robert Brown Campbell, ‘The development of the care of the insane in Scotland’, J. ment. Sci., 1932, 78: 774–92.

²See Francis J Rice, ‘Madness and industrial society: a study of the origins and early growth of the organisation of insanity in nineteenth century Scotland, c.1830–70’, PhD thesis, 2 vols, University of Strathclyde, 1981, vol. 1, pp. 272–5; Harriet C G Sturdy, ‘Boarding-out of the insane, 1857–1913: a study of the Scottish system’, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 1996, pp. 41–3; Jonathan Andrews “They're in the trade … of lunacy they ‘cannot interfere’ – they say”: the Scottish Lunacy Commissioners and lunacy reform in nineteenth-century Scotland, London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1988, pp. 2–6.

³See An Act for the Regulation of the Care and Treatment of Lunatics, and for the Provision, Maintenance, and Regulation of Lunatic Asylums in Scotland 1857, 20 & 21 Vict., c. 60. In the period between 1815 and 1857 there were two further amending acts: An Act for Altering and Amending an Act Passed in the Fifty-Fifth Year of the Reign of His late Majesty, intituled An Act to Regulate Mad-houses in Scotland 1828, 9 Geo. IV cap. 34; An Act to Alter and Amend Certain Acts Regulating Madhouses in Scotland; and to Provide for the Custody of Dangerous Lunatics 1841, 4 & 5 Vict. cap. 60.

⁴R A Houston, Madness and society in eighteenth-century Scotland, Oxford, Clarendon, 2000, pp. 6, 56; idem, ‘Professions and the identification of mental incapacity in eighteenth-century Scotland’, J. Hist. Sociol., 2001, 14: 441–66, p. 449, pp. 454–5; idem, ‘Care of the mentally disabled in and around Edinburgh c.1680–c.1820’, J. Roy. Coll. Phys. Edin., 2003, 33 (suppl. 112): 12–20, pp. 12–13; idem, ‘Rights and wrongs in the confinement of the mentally incapable in eighteenth-century Scotland’, Continuity and Change, 2003, 18: 373–94, pp. 374–5.

⁵For discussion of the 1774 act, see Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine, Three hundred years of psychiatry 1535–1860: a history presented in selected English texts, Oxford University Press, 1963, pp. 451–6; William Ll Parry-Jones, The trade in lunacy: a study of private madhouses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 9–18. The main other measures included provincial inspection by Justices of the Peace accompanied by a medical man and a certification procedure.

⁶For the 1808 act, see Leonard D Smith, ‘Cure, comfort and custody’: public lunatic asylums in early nineteenth-century England, London and New York, Leicester University Press, 1999, pp. 20–6. It allowed county magistrates to authorize the erection of pauper asylums, to combine together to do so, and to adapt existing subscription asylums by an optional, rather than compulsory, rate assessment.

⁷Jonathan Andrews, ‘Raising the tone of asylumdom: maintaining and expelling pauper lunatics at the Glasgow Royal Asylum in the nineteenth century’, in Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe (eds), Insanity, institutions and society, 1800–1914: a social history of madness in comparative perspective, London and New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 200–22, on pp. 200–2; Andrew Scull, ‘Rethinking the history of asylumdom’, in ibid., pp. 295–315, on pp. 305–6; R A Houston, ‘Poor relief and the dangerous and criminal insane in Scotland c.1740–1840’, J. Soc. Hist., 2006, 40: 453–76.

⁸Third report from the [Select] Committee on madhouses in England, &c. with an appendix. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 11 June 1816, pp. 3–44. It was also reproduced in PP 1816, vol. VI, pp. 353–402. The Committee's other reports and evidence can be found in ibid., pp. 249–352. Whereas the Select Committee of 1807 played a significant role in securing the 1808 act, no new English lunacy legislation was passed until 1828.

⁹See Third report, op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 11–18. Colquhoun became a member of the Committee in the spring of 1814. On his wider career, see G W T Omond, The Lord Advocates of Scotland, Edinburgh, Douglas, 1883, pp. 224–9. His role in the reform of the Court of Session in 1815 is discussed but there is no mention of the Act to Regulate Madhouses, even though it was passed at the same time. The Whig Henry Cockburn expressed his regret at serving briefly as one of the Tory Colquhoun's deputies after the fall of the 1806 ministry in Memorials of his time, Edinburgh, Black, 1856, pp. 228–30. Cockburn resigned soon afterwards and long before the 1815 act, which passed unmentioned in his reminiscences.

¹⁰S W F Holloway, ‘The Apothecaries’ Act, 1815: a reinterpretation', Med. Hist., 1966, 10: 107–29, 221–36; Ivan Waddington, The medical profession in the Industrial Revolution, Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 1984. See also Irvine Loudon, Medical care and the general practitioner 1750–1850, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980; Anne Digby, Making a medical living: doctors and patients in the English market for medicine, 1720–1911, Cambridge University Press, 1994; M Anne Crowther and Marguerite W Dupree, Medical lives in the age of surgical revolution, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

¹¹For an influential expression of this viewpoint, see Roy Porter, Health for sale: quackery in England, 1660–1850, Manchester University Press, 1989.

¹²See Rosalie Mary Stott, ‘The Incorporation of Surgeons and medical education and practice 1696–1755 in Edinburgh’, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1984; Christopher John Lawrence, ‘Medicine as culture: Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment’, PhD thesis, University of London, 1984; Lisa Rosner, Medical education in the age of improvement: Edinburgh students and apprentices 1760–1826, Edinburgh University Press, 1991. Michael Barfoot, ‘Brunonianism under the bed: an alternative to university medicine in Edinburgh in the 1780s’, in W F Bynum and Roy Porter (eds), Brunonianism in Britain and Europe, London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1988, pp. 22–45.

¹³Although the historical explanations are similar, the contexts of English medicine and Scottish lunacy clearly differed. For example, Holloway deals with the impact of the Apothecaries' Act on medical education in the second part of his paper, and there is no exact equivalent to this with respect to the 1815 act. However, the medical inspection system it created is an equally important consequence, but this is reserved for discussion elsewhere.

¹⁴Alexander Murdoch, ‘The people above’: politics and administration in mid-eighteenth century Scotland, Edinburgh, Donald, 1980; idem, ‘The importance of being Edinburgh: management and opposition in Edinburgh politics, 1746–1784’, Scot. Hist. Rev, 1983, 62: 1–16. See also John Stuart Shaw, The management of Scottish Society: power, nobles, lawyers, Edinburgh agents and English influences, Edinburgh, Donald, 1983; Gordon Neil Pentland, ‘Radicalism and reform in Scotland 1820–1833’, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2005; Jeffrey Charles Williams, ‘Edinburgh politics: 1832–1852’, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1972.

¹⁵Michael Fry, The Dundas despotism, Edinburgh University Press, 1992; Laurence James Saunders, Scottish democracy, 1815–1840: the social and intellectual background, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1950.

¹⁶Roger L Emerson, ‘The founding of the Edinburgh Medical School’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 2004, 59: 183–218; Christopher Lawrence, ‘The Edinburgh Medical School and the end of the “old thing” 1790–1830’, History of Universities, 1988, 7: 259–86; L S Jacyna, Philosophic Whigs: medicine, science and citizenship in Edinburgh, 1789–1848, London, Routledge, 1994; Michael Barfoot (ed.), ‘To ask the suffrages of the patrons’: Thomas Laycock and the Edinburgh Chair of Medicine, 1855, London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1995.

¹⁷This draws upon sources cited under notes 12 and 16 above and unpublished research by the author.

¹⁸Helen M Dingwall, ‘A famous and flourishing society’: the history of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 1505–2005, Edinburgh University Press, 2005; idem, Physicians, surgeons and apothecaries: medicine in seventeenth-century Edinburgh, East Linton, Tuckwell, 1995; Clarendon Hyde Creswell, The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh: historical notes from 1505 to 1905, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1926.

¹⁹W S Craig, History of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Oxford, Blackwell, 1976; Morrice McCrae, Physicians and society: a social history of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Donald, 2007.

²⁰Guenter B Risse, Hospital life in enlightenment Scotland: care and teaching at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Cambridge University Press, 1986; A Logan Turner, Story of a great hospital: the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, 1729–1929, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1937.

²¹Practice alliances between physicians and surgeons, as well as competition between younger and older members, meant that intra-College conflict could, on occasions, be as virulent as the warfare between the two corporations. Also, the situation is further complicated on the individual level because some surgeons—especially those practising anatomy and midwifery—became physicians and left one College for the other; and some did not, but acquired medical degrees to enhance their qualifications and status.

²²Craig, op. cit., note 19 above, pp. 178–214.

²³Ibid., p. 196.

²⁴Ibid., pp. 198–9, p. 230. See also McCrae's recent account, op. cit., note 19 above, pp. 123, 131, 216–19.

²⁵Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (hereafter RCPE) Muniments, Minutes 1806–22, fols 2254–2256 (transcript). The Council consisted of seven resident fellows who elected the president and other office bearers of the College as specified in its Charter. For an English translation of the 1681 original, see Craig, op. cit., note 19 above, pp. 1043–8. At this period its membership was dominated by University medical professors. Duncan was professor of the institutes of medicine, a medical publisher and an inveterate founder of local medical societies and clubs of various kinds. For a contemporary view, see Cockburn, op. cit., note 9 above, pp. 284–5. For a recent treatment, see M McCrae, ‘Andrew Duncan and the health of nations’, J. Roy. Coll. Phys. Edin., 2003, 33: 2–11.

²⁶RCPE Muniments, Letters 1811–17, Matthew Baillie to Andrew Duncan, 25 Oct. 1813. A nephew of William and John Hunter, Baillie was a well-connected, London-based, expatriate Scot physician who was sympathetic to the College. The parliamentary paper he sent was: A Bill (as Amended by the Committee) to Repeal an Act made in the Fourteenth Year of His Present Majesty, intituled, ‘An Act for Regulating Madhouses, and for Making other Provisions and Regulations thereof, 13 July 1813’.

²⁷For the wider background to asylum and other confinement for the insane in Scotland, see R A Houston, ‘Institutional care for the insane and idiots in Scotland before 1820’, Hist. Psychiatr., 2001, 12: 3–31 (Part 1); 177–197 (Part 2).

²⁸RCPE, Minutes, 18 Dec. 1813, fol. 2256.

²⁹RCPE, Minutes 1776–1806, 2 Aug. 1791, fols 1723–4 (transcript).

³⁰This extended to those within seven miles of London and Westminster and in Middlesex. See Sir George Clark, A M Cooke and Asa Briggs, A history of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 4 vols, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964–2005, vol. 2 (by George Clark), pp. 583–8.

³¹RCPE, Miscellaneous, Proposed amendments on Mad House Bill. This document was enclosed in a 10 March 1814 letter from the president to the College secretary, Alexander Boswell WS. However, the latter's annual accounts indicate the secretary made two copies of a “proposed addition for the regulation of madhouses presented to Parliament” on 10 Feb. See RCPE Accounts, Vouchers for the Treasurer's accounts 1814–17, Accompt of charge and discharge … 1814, item 24.

³²Bill, op. cit., note 26 above, fols 8–9, fols 11–13.

³³McCrae, op. cit., note 25 above, p. 9, suggests that, as a lecturer, Duncan discussed but did not endorse the interventionist approach to public health by the state found in Germany and France. However, Duncan was certainly in favour of it with respect to the provision of asylums for Scottish pauper lunatics. See Andrew Duncan, A letter [to His] Majesty's Sheriffs-Depute in Scotland, recommending the establishment of four national asylums for the reception of criminal and pauper lunatics, Edinburgh, Patrick Neill, 1818.

³⁴Spens was the son of a former College treasurer. He and his father belonged to the Royal Company of Archers, like Duncan. Connected by marriage to the Wood family of Edinburgh surgeon-apothecaries, he was also a Physician to both the Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum (1813?– 42) and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (1802–1842). See Turner, op. cit., note 20 above, p. 164.

³⁵Proposed amendments, op. cit., note 31 above.

³⁶Hamilton moved from the College of Surgeons to the College of Physicians in 1792. He was professor of midwifery at the University of Edinburgh (1800–1839), succeeding his father Alexander to the chair and the local General Lying-in Hospital (1793). Holders of this position were amongst Edinburgh's richest mid-eighteenth- to mid-nineteenth-century professorial practitioners. For an indication of Hamilton's status, wealth and property ownership, see Lothian Health Services Archive, GD1/71, James Hamilton papers. See also Lisa Rosner, The most beautiful man in existence: the scandalous life of Alexander Lesassier, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999, pp. 26–30 and passim.

³⁷On Colquhoun's early involvement, see Andrew Halliday, A letter to the Right Honourable Lord Binning … containing some remarks on the state of lunatic asylums, and on the number and condition of the insane poor in Scotland, Edinburgh, Francis Pillans, 1816, pp. 4–5.

³⁸RCPE, Letters, Thomas Spens to Matthew Baillie, 19 Feb. 1814 (copy drafted on behalf of the president).

³⁹RCPE Muniments, Miscellaneous Papers no. 331, Part 1, Lunatic Asylums 1814–20, Thomas Spens to Matthew Baillie, 21 Feb. 1814 (copy). Rose was a leading sponsor of English lunacy reform in Parliament during the 1800s and 1810s who introduced several bills on the subject and also guided the deliberations of the Select Committee on Madhouses. The overlaps between the English and Scottish lunacy initiatives during the second decade of the nineteenth century are complex and deserve further comparative study in relation to other aspects of the Government's legislative programme.

⁴⁰RCPE, Miscellaneous, George Rose to [Matthew Baillie], 1 March 1814.

⁴¹Ibid., Thomas Spens to James Hamilton, 11 March 1814; George Rose to James Hamilton, 16 March 1814.

⁴²Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (hereafter RCSE) Muniments, Minutes, vol. 8, 1810–22, fol. 137. Attendance at meetings was not recorded at this time.

⁴³Ibid., vol. 6, 1771–93, 13 Feb. 1792, fols 399–400.

⁴⁴Although the date of commencement of “Thomas Wood's Asylum for Lunatics” is unknown, a College Committee was set up in 1796 to visit and inquire into its “Regulations and internal Government” (Ibid., vol. 7, 1793–1810, 11 Nov. 1796, fol. 73). They reported back in early 1797 “to recommend the encouragement of the undertaking to the warmest support and protection of the public” (Ibid., 2 Feb. 1797, fol. 75). This became known as Saughton Hall Asylum. For a very favourable account of its subsequent development, see Rae's comments in Third report, op. cit. note 8 above, p. 14.

⁴⁵RCPE, Miscellaneous, Report and Scroll Minute of Council meeting 17 Feb. 1814. Both versions are factually similar but differ slightly in tone.

⁴⁶Presumably this was the Select Committee on Madhouses, rather than a committee of the whole House of Commons.

⁴⁷For the Surgeons' original Seal of Cause of 1505, subsequent charters and the events leading up to the granting of a Royal Charter in 1778, see Dingwall, op. cit., note 18 above, pp. 18–27, 87–91; Creswell, op. cit., note 18 above, pp. 160–2.

⁴⁸RCSE, Minutes, vol. 8, 18 March 1814, fol. 139.

⁴⁹RCPE, Miscellaneous, Thomas Spens to James Hamilton, 11 March 1814.

⁵⁰The English bill was redrafted and rejected several times more before new English and Scottish Lunacy Acts were passed ten years after Rose's death and thirteen after the 1815 act had been in operation.

⁵¹Journals of the House of Commons (hereafter JHC), vol. 69, Nov. 4 1813–Nov. 1 1814, p. 338; ibid., p. 350 [13 June 1814].

⁵²RCPE, Miscellaneous, James Hamilton to Lord Advocate, 25 June 1814.

⁵³Ibid., Lord Advocate to James Hamilton, 25 June 1814.

⁵⁴RCPE, Minutes, 3 May 1814, fols 2268–9.

⁵⁵RCPE, Miscellaneous, Circular, 4 July 1814.

⁵⁶RCPE, Minutes, 6 July 1814, fols 2269–71. The roll of resident fellows has not survived for this period. Therefore it is difficult to know the exact size of the membership. However, judging from attendance at annual election meetings and the fines for absentees, active resident fellows probably numbered less than twenty at this time.

⁵⁷Ibid.

⁵⁸JHC, vol. 69, p. 434 [5 July 1814].

⁵⁹RCPE, Miscellaneous, Lord Advocate to James Hamilton, 7 July 1814. There is no suggestion that the delay was to allow this to take place in Edinburgh. Rather the reason given was that the English bill was unlikely to be carried before the end of the parliamentary session and the Scottish one would be held up as a result.

⁶⁰RCPE, Letters, Note to Lord Advocate, 8 July 1814. The written comments were sent on 13 July.

⁶¹RCPE, Letters, Thomas Spens to James Hamilton, 10 July 1814. He also sent a copy of the contentious clauses of the bill, the printed circular and the proposed amendments.

⁶²RCPE, Letters, Note to Lord Advocate, 14 July 1814 (copy dated 27 March 1815).

⁶³One of the notes accompanying the March 1815 copy of the written submission to the Lord Advocate stated, “The granting of licences should be confined to Sheriff deputes”. This suggests that the Physicians made this concession themselves, rather than having it forced on them by the Lord Advocate.

⁶⁴It was stated that the proposed arrangements for “country men” were acceptable but those at the “permanent seat of a College of Physicians” were not. See RCPE, Letters, Memorandum for Messrs Gregsons, 26 April 1815 (copy). Two years later they opposed Glasgow's attempt to become a Royal College on the ground that it was prejudicial to their interests. See RCPE, Minutes, 23 Oct. 1817, fol. 2369.

⁶⁵RCSE, Minutes, 21 July 1814, fols 151–2; RCPE, Minutes, 1 Nov. 1814, fol. 2777.

⁶⁶RCPE, Letters, Lord Advocate to James Hamilton, 27 March 1815.

⁶⁷Ibid.

⁶⁸JHC, vol. 70, Nov. 8 1814–Jan. 17 1816, p. 207 [12 April 1815].

⁶⁹Ibid. (first reading and printing); p. 218 [17 April 1815] (second reading); p. 236 [24 April] (committee and amendments), p. 238 (amendments read and agreed to “and a Clause was added, and several Amendments were made to the Bill”); p. 245 [26 April] (third reading, passed, and sent to House of Lords).

⁷⁰This version has not been located. On Newbigging, see M H Kaufman, ‘Sir William Newbigging (1772–1852) and Patrick Newbigging (1813–1864)—father and son presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh’, J. med. Biog., 2004, 12: 189–95.

⁷¹Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine (hereafter Wellcome), MS 5122/114, William Newbigging to Viscount Melville, 24 April 1815.

⁷²Wellcome, MS 5122/114, William Newbigging to Lord Advocate, 24 April 1815.

⁷³Craig, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 198. See, for example, RCPE, Letters, James Hamilton to the Earl of Lonsdale, 30 April 1815 (copy).

⁷⁴RCPE, Letters, William Newbigging to James Hamilton, 24 April 1815.

⁷⁵RCPE Muniments, Accounts, Account … respecting proceedings for procuring amendments on the bill at present in progress through Parliament for the better regulation of madhouses. Boswell charged the College 6s 8d and half a guinea for each meeting, which suggests the discussions were lengthy.

⁷⁶RCPE, Letters, James Hamilton to Lord Advocate, 25 April 1815; Wellcome, MS 5122/116, James Hamilton to Lord Melville, 26 April 1815.

⁷⁷No copies appear to have survived, but the letter can be dated to 3 May from Boswell's charges for copying and circulating it and also from a note of this date from him to the president.

⁷⁸Wellcome, MS 5122/115, William Newbigging to Lord Advocate, 24 April 1815.

⁷⁹For background, see J Geyer-Kordesch and F MacDonald, Physicians and surgeons in Glasgow: the history of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow 1599–1858, London, Hambledon, 1999. Judging by their titles, two physicians and two surgeons were appointed to serve as the first madhouse inspectors. See Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (hereafter RCPSG), Muniments 1/1/1/5, Faculty Minutes 1807–1820, 3 Oct. 1815 (unpaginated).

⁸⁰Wellcome, MS 5122/115, William Newbigging to Lord Advocate, 24 April 1815.

⁸¹RCPE, Letters, James Hamilton to Lord Advocate, 25 April 1815 (copy).

⁸²See James Gregory, Memorial to the Managers of the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, Murray and Cochrane, 1800, pp. 185–6, where the figure is put at between three quarters and nine tenths.

⁸³RCPE, Letters, Memorandum for Messrs Gregsons, 26 April 1815 (copy).

⁸⁴Ibid. The Scot, Hamilton, had to explain the wider professional, social and political circumstances affecting his College to the English lawyer, Gregson. In the process, implicit taken-for-granted features of the Edinburgh medical community were spelled out. What is perhaps more surprising is the fact that he had to go through more or less the same process with the Lord Advocate.

⁸⁵RCPE, Letters, Memorandum for Messrs Gregsons, 26 April 1815 (copy).

⁸⁶RCPE, Letters, James Hamilton to Lord Advocate, 25 April 1815 (copy); Memorandum for Messrs Gregsons, 26 April 1815 (copy).

⁸⁷Journals of the House of Lords, vol. 50, 8 Nov. 1814 to 2 Jan. 1817, p. 193 [2 May 1815]. No copy has been located.

⁸⁸RCPE, Miscellaneous, J Gregson to Alexander Boswell, 4 May 1815.

⁸⁹Ibid., and 6 May 1815.

⁹⁰RCPE, Miscellaneous, J Gregson to Alexander Boswell, 12 May 1815.

⁹¹This notion is certainly almost entirely absent from lunacy measures at this time. At a later stage in the English bill this prompted John Scott, Lord Chancellor Eldon, to remark that “its regulations would tend to aggravate the malady with which the unfortunate persons were afflicted, or to retard their cure. It was of the utmost importance … that they should be under the superintendence of men, who had made this branch of medical science their peculiar study, and that the superintendence of physicians should not be interfered with.” See Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, vol. 40, 3 May–30 July 1819, cols 1345–6.

⁹²RCPE, Letters, James Hamilton to Marquis of Douglas and Clydesdale, 17 May 1815.

⁹³RCPE, Minutes, Extraordinary Meeting, 3 July 1815, fols 2291–4.

⁹⁴RCSE, Minutes, vol. 8, 15 May 1815, fols 196–8.

⁹⁵Ibid. See also Arthur Birnie, ‘The Edinburgh Charity Workhouse, 1740–1845’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, 1938, 22: 38–55.

⁹⁶Lunacy reform was eventually taken up within the College by Richard Poole during the late 1830s.

⁹⁷Third report, op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 16–17.

⁹⁸See Lothian Health Services Archive, LHB7/1/1, Minute book of the Association for Instituting a Lunatic Asylum, 1792–1816, 22 May 1815, pp. 148–50; 5 Oct. 1815, pp. 152–3. As presidents of their respective Colleges, Hamilton and Newbigging were members of the Medical Board of the Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum under the terms of its Royal Charter.

⁹⁹Spens received a total of 35 guineas for five inspections and a report he produced between 20 Dec. 1815 and 29 March 1816. See RCPE Miscellaneous, Accompt of monies received [and discharged] by the Sheriff Clerk of the County of Edinburgh … 7 June 1815 to 30 April 1816 and of all expenses incurred in carrying the said act into execution. There is an unexplained gap in inspections after this date and until 1820, when they resumed and full records were kept. See RCPE Muniments, Miscellaneous Papers no. 331, Part 2 (Lunatic Asylums) 1821–30; Part 3 (Lunatic Asylums) 1831–45. Copies also survive in National Archives of Scotland, Court of Justiciary records, JC51/1–8.

¹⁰⁰RCPE, Minutes, Extraordinary Meeting, 2 May 1820, fol. 2447. From 1816 Spens was also remunerated by the Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum for his services as a non-resident physician, formerly an honorary unpaid post.

¹⁰¹See RCPE, Accounts, which shows that Boswell received £12 4s 10d for his work “Respecting Mad House Bill”. This was in addition to his annual salary of £10 and £12 14s 5d charged for other business in 1815. See ibid., General account to the Royal College of Physicians 1815.

¹⁰²Halliday, op. cit., note 37 above, p. 4.

¹⁰³Hamilton observed that it put “Lunatics [and] Criminals on the same footing, which indeed was always the principle of his L[ord]ships Bill”. See RCPE, Letters, James Hamilton to the Earl of Lonsdale, 30 April 1815.

¹⁰⁴RCPE, Miscellaneous, J Gregson to Alexander Boswell, 12 May 1815. No evidence has been found that the Lord Advocate consulted with the Glasgow Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons about arrangements for Lanarkshire before the Sheriff-Depute there informed the Faculty of their responsibilities with respect to the act nearly four months after it became law. See RCPSG, Faculty Minutes, op. cit., note 79 above, 3 Oct. 1815 (unpaginated), reporting upon a meeting of 26 Sept. between the Sheriff-Depute and two members of the Faculty. The four members elected as inspectors stated they knew of no private madhouses operating within the jurisdiction of the Faculty.

¹⁰⁵National Register of Archives for Scotland, Baillie–Hamilton papers, 3503/1/21/4, J Clerk Rattray to William Rae, 5 April 1817. See also Houston, ‘Care of the mentally disabled’, op. cit., note 4 above, p. 16, where this passage is cited as part of an argument that tensions between different elements of the medical community could be productive with respect to local institutional provision for lunatics.

¹⁰⁶Scottish acts concerning records of the Court of Session and hawkers and pedlars received royal assent at the same time. Cockburn, op. cit., note 9 above, p. 231, considered that the whole Scottish administration at this time “had no taste for good internal measures, on their own account”, a judgement that may also be relevant to Melville and Colquhoun's approach to the 1815 act.

¹⁰⁷N T Phillipson, The Scottish Whigs and the reform of the Court of Session 1785–1830, Edinburgh, Stair Society, 1990.

¹⁰⁸For example, [Andrew Duncan] Address to the public respecting the establishment of a lunatic asylum at Edinburgh, Edinburgh, James Ballantyne, 1807. This was a bound group of pamphlets that also included the original 1792 ‘Proposals for establishing a lunatic asylum in the neighbourhood of the city of Edinburgh’; idem, op. cit., note 33 above.

¹⁰⁹Thomas Lacquer, ‘Bodies, details and the humanitarian narrative’, in Lynn Hunt (ed.), The new cultural history, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989, pp. 176–204.