Ellis Robert
University of Huddersfield, School of Music and Humanities, Division of History, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK.
Soc Hist Med. 2006 Apr;19(1):55-71. doi: 10.1093/shm/hkj008.
In the mid-1870s, the British government introduced a grant that transferred a proportion of the cost of asylum care from local to central funds. Typically, this has been seen by contemporary and more recent commentators as part of the explanation for the therapeutic failure of the County and Borough Asylums, and for their degeneration into custodial institutions. Building on recent work on the Poor Law, the aim of this article is to reassess the impact of the grant using both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Contrasting the records of two County Asylums with the annual reports of the Lunacy Commissioners, it shows that there is little evidence to suggest that the grant was responsible for a change in either the size or composition of the asylum population. Ultimately, it argues that the admission of patients in general, and the admission and discharge of chronic cases in particular, rested with longer-term factors than simply the introduction of one fiscal incentive.
19世纪70年代中期，英国政府推出了一项拨款，将一部分收容所护理费用从地方资金转移到中央资金。当代及近期的评论家通常将此视为郡立和市立收容所治疗失败以及沦为监禁机构的部分原因。基于近期关于济贫法的研究，本文旨在利用定量和定性证据重新评估该拨款的影响。通过对比两所郡立收容所的记录与精神病专员的年度报告，发现几乎没有证据表明该拨款导致了收容所人口规模或构成的变化。最终，本文认为，一般患者的入院，尤其是慢性病患者的入院和出院，取决于比单纯引入一项财政激励措施更长期的因素。
