![]() ![]() ![]() By identifying the conflicts and tensions, and examining the imperatives that drove the development of the law to their resolution, this article reveals a new perspective within the growth of the Victorian administrative state, namely the engagement of the judiciary with the movement for state intervention in lunacy in nineteenth century England.Īt the beginning of the Victorian era, the environment of mental illness changed radically, primarily because of the considerable increase in that affliction during that period. It queries how far the creation of the second, namely the bureaucratic structure for the management of lunacy, addressed the issue of property ownership and explores the interaction between the state's regulation of lunacy and the jurisdiction of the judicial authorities in this respect at a time when fundamental principles of law in this field of social and legal development were being formulated. It discusses whether the first of these systems, the paternal and esoteric jurisdiction of the Lord Chancellor in lunacy, was appropriate to the new social and economic conditions and whether it was accessible to patients of small property. It examines how, if at all, the mentally ill with small estates were able to establish themselves in a turbulent regime of lunacy law administered by two parallel and distinct systems rife with jurisdictional tensions. The aim of this article is to explore how this challenge was met, which solution was adopted to address the problem of small estates and, in so doing, to assess the extent to which the Victorian legislature and judicature demonstrated a real commitment to ensuring the protection of the smaller properties of the increasing numbers of middle and working class mentally ill. This created a significant test for the nineteenth century regime of lunacy law. In the first half of the nineteenth century there occurred an unprecedented intersection of two factors – the need for legal safeguards to protect the property of the mentally ill from abuse, and a major increase in the numbers of mentally ill individuals with small properties. Contemporary legal provision and perception in this respect evolved from the legal and administrative frameworks established during the nineteenth century when a new environment for mental illness created new challenges that demanded a response from the legal order. ![]() Footnote 1 Balancing the degree of formal protection imposed on the property and person of the mentally ill against that of personal control, responsibility and independence is a challenge inherent in conceiving and implementing an effective legal framework for the care of this sector of society. Hence there was an emphasis on how to unfold design research from the intimacy of the detail outwards encouraging new & old approaches to composition and foregrounding the potential of the image – cinematic, architectural or otherwise – as a compositional device.Mental illness is a growing burden on modern society and the economy. This was an urban project, medium scaled with a focus on detailed architectural outcome. This studio developed the potential of the North Fitzroy Library and Community Centre, a real architectural proposal destined for the site. This Masters of Architecture design studio tested the dimensions of an architecture that can exceed our habitual approaches on a triangular site in the Melbourne suburb of North Fitzroy. The essay within examined the various lunatic solutions to this problem, and in doing so enquired after the implication of an unending number of possible arrangements that conceptually extend beyond the habitual. Lunacy and the Arrangement of Books derived its title from a small publication which explores the various methods of arranging books according to principles of colour, size, number, aesthetics and subject order. ![]()
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