[154] "I do hereby certify that by the directions of L. M. and N. O., Justices of the Peace for the county of H., I have personally examined C. D., and that the said C. D. appears to me to be of insane mind." Unfortunately a medical certificate in those days was not always of great value. Too many were illiterate productions like the following, on which a patient was admitted to Dr. Finch's asylum, Salisbury: "He{y} Broadway A Potcarey of Gillingham Certefy that Mr. James Burt Misfortin hapened by a Plow in the Hed which is the Ocaision of his Ellness and By the Rising and Falling of the Blood And I think a Blister and Bleeding and Meddesen Will be A Very Great thing but Mr James Burt wold not A Gree to be don at Home. March 21, 1809. H{ay} Broadway." [155] "A General View of the Present State of Lunatics and Lunatic Asylums in Great Britain and Ireland." [156] The cost of some of the asylums mentioned is worth noting:--Bedford, with 180 beds, £20,500; Cornwall, with 172, £18,780; Gloucester, with 120, £42,856; Lancaster, for 593, £100,695; Stafford, for 120, £36,500; Nottingham, for 170, £36,800; Norfolk, for 220, £50,000; Wakefield, for 420, £46,620. (Except Cornwall, land is included.) [157] In reply it was asserted that the room was twenty-six feet long, and the number of cribs fifteen. [158] In 1827 Sir A. Halliday wrote: "This Act, the inadequacy of which has long been ascertained and fully exposed, is still the only law by which mad-houses are licensed and regulated in England and Wales.... That it has remained so long upon the statute book must hereafter excite astonishment; and that even now, there should exist so much difficulty in having it altered and amended, is a fact scarcely to be credited. Yet such is the fact; and thousands of our fellow-men have been hurried to an untimely grave, in all the horrors of raving madness or helpless fatuity, without its being possible to get their condition altered or amended, merely because certain (we hope mistaken) prejudices were entertained by an exalted individual whose voice was long paramount in the senate; and we had almost added, through the influence of those who have realized immense fortunes as wholesale dealers and traffickers in this species of human misery." [159] Hansard, vol. xviii. p. 583. [160] Hansard, vol. xix. p. 195. [161] See Appendix D. [162] Minutes of Evidence of Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1859, p. 65. [163] The Act of 1828 was amended by 2 and 3 Will. IV., c. 107. [164] 2 and 3 Will. IV., c. 107. The Metropolitan Commissioners were, under this Act, to be appointed by the Lord Chancellor instead of the Home Secretary. Not less than four or more than five were to be physicians, and two barristers. [165] Hansard, vol. lxi. p. 806. [166] 5 and 6 Vict., c. 87. [167] Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners, 1844. [168] For some of the details of this Report, see chapter v. [169] Hansard, vol. lxxvi. p. 1274.