A Choreography of Consensus: The Use of Hybrid Templates in Ontario

Sposini, Filippo Maria

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-42742-8_6

Filippo Maria Sposini ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9462-2892⁴

Part of the book series: Mental Health in Historical Perspective ((MHHP))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the certification procedure in Ontario during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Using legal and archival sources, it investigates the examination process as it took place between 1873 and 1883, a decade in which civil confinements depended on a standardized template called “Form K Certificate of Insanity”. First, I examine the origins of lunacy certificates in Ontario and explain how this province became a unique case worldwide. Second, I analyse the key features of Form K, highlighting how the medico-legal determination of lunacy relied on physicians and witnesses. Third, I explore the problems of certification and point out that despite the early abandonment of Form K, its formula continued to inform Ontario’s mental health documentation right down to the present. This chapter argues that committal decisions rested on a choreography of consensus, as a paper technology that outlined the necessary steps to follow, Form K arranged a peculiar scene of inquiry composed of interviewers, witnesses, and suspects.

This chapter elaborates some of the major themes outlined in Filippo Maria Sposini, “Just the basic facts: The certification of insanity in the era of the Form K”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (2020), 75: 2, 171–192.

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Notes

1.
Stephen Smith, The Commitment and Detention of the Insane in the United States; Report of a Committee to the National Conference of Charities (Boston, MA: Geo. H. Ellis, 1888), 4.
2.
Stephen Smith, “The commitment of the insane. Report of the committee on the commitment and detention of the insane”, in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, ed. Isabel C. Barrows (Boston, MA: Geo. H. Ellis, 1892), 94–154, 113.
3.
Alexander E. MacDonald, “The examination and commitment of the insane”, American Journal of Insanity (1876), 32: 4, 502–522, 507.
4.
See also Stephen Smith, “Unification of the laws of the States relating to the commitment of the insane”, American Journal of Insanity (1892), 49: 2, 157–183.
5.
Stephen Smith, “The commitment of the insane”, in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), 105.
6.
Stephen Smith, “The commitment of the insane”, in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), 113.
7.
While many accepted medical prerogatives in decisions about forceful committals, there was opposition from various parts of society especially during early twentieth century. In the United States, for instance, the Columbia-trained John A. Chaloner turned Dr Stephen Smith’s hierarchy upside down. Having experienced a period confinement himself at the Bloomingdale Asylum in New York, Chaloner saw medical prerogatives over civil committals as “an utter disregard for the very first elementary principles of common law, common justice, and common sense, to say nothing regarding the palpable fact that said atrocious spectacle is in direct contravention of Magna Charta and the Constitution of the United States”. Appealing to the right of a fair trial for all citizens before incarceration, Chaloner noted that North American and European laws “utterly ignored the absolute rights of the individual”. The responsibility for spreading such a “state of illegality” lied first on London which introduced medical certificates of insanity as a solution for depriving persons of their liberty without judicial intervention. The fact that Great Britain trailed “behind Russia in the race for legality, constitutionality, common justice, and humanity” was sufficient to make Blackstone, Coke, and Lyttelton turn in their respective graves—concluded the American activist. See John Armstrong Chaloner, The Lunacy Law of the World (Roanoke Rapids, N.C.: Palmetto Press, 1906), XX and XXIII.
8.
David Wright, “The certification of insanity in nineteenth-century England and Ontario: Medical men as ‘judicial auxiliaries,’” in Entre Justice et Justiciables: Les Auxiliaires de la Justice du Moyen Âge au XXe Siècle, ed. Claire Nolan (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université de Laval, 2005), 773–788.
9.
See, for instance, James E. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth-Century Quebec and Ontario (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000); James E. Moran and David Wright, eds, Mental Health and Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006).
10.
Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, Moments of Unreason: The Practice of Canadian Psychiatry and the Homewood Retreat (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989).
11.
Danielle Terbenche, “‘Curative’ and ‘custodial’: Benefits of patient treatment at the asylum for the insane, Kingston, 1878–1906”, Canadian Historical Review (2005), 86: 1, 29–52.
12.
Erika Dyck and Alexander Deighton, Managing Madness: Weyburn Mental Hospital and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017).
13.
One of the earliest accounts was Thomas Edward Brown, “‘Living with God’s Afflicted’: A History of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum at Toronto, 1830–1911” (PhD Thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada, 1982).
14.
See Thomas Edward Brown, “The origins of the asylum in Upper Canada, 1830–1839: Towards an interpretation”, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (1984), 1: 1, 27–58; Rainer Baehre, “Imperial authority and colonial officialdom of Upper Canada in the 1830s: The state, crime, lunacy and everyday social order”, in Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal History, eds. Susan Binnie and Louis Knafla (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 181–214.
15.
Barry Edginton, “The well-ordered body: The quest for sanity through nineteenth-century asylum architecture”, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (1994), 11, 374–386; Edna Hudson, ed, The provincial asylum in Toronto: Reflections on social and architectural history (Toronto: Toronto Region Architectural Conservancy, 2000), in particular John P. M. Court, “From 999 to 1001 Queen Street: A consistently vital resource”, in The Provincial Asylum in Toronto: Reflections on Social and Architectural History, ed. Edna Hudson (Toronto: Toronto Region Architectural Conservancy, 2000), 191–201; John P. M. Court, “Lands of the asylum—part 2, neighbours and allies for Toronto’s 19th-century asylum”, Friends of the CAMH Archives Newsletter (2021), 29: 2, 5–10.
16.
Wendy Mitchinson, “Gender and insanity as characteristics of the insane: A nineteenth-century case”, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (1987), 4, 99–117; Wendy Mitchinson, “Reasons for committal to a mid-nineteenth-century Ontario insane asylum: The case of Toronto”, in Essays in the History of Canadian Medicine, eds. Wendy Mitchinson and Janice Dickin McGinnis (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988), 88–109; David Wright, James Moran, and Sean Gouglas, “The confinement of the insane in Victorian Canada: The Hamilton and Toronto asylums, c. 1861–1891”, in The Confinement of the Insane, 1800–1965: International Perspectives, eds. Roy Porter and David Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 100–128.
17.
Geoffrey Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997).
18.
Geoffrey Reaume, “‘Keep your labels off my mind! Or now I am going to pretend I am craze but don’t be a bit alarmed’: Psychiatric history from the patients’ perspective”, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (1994), 11, 397–404; Geoffrey Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997); Geoffrey Reaume, “Patients at work: Insane asylum inmates’ labour in Ontario 1841–1900”, in Mental Health and Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives, eds. David Wright and James Moran (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 69–96; Geoffrey Reaume, “Eugenics incarceration and expulsion: Daniel G. and Andrew T.’s deportation from 1928 Toronto, Canada”, in Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada, eds. Liat Ben-Moshe, Chris Chapman, and Allison Carey (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 63–80.
19.
Jennifer L. Bazar, “An Exploration of the History of the Toronto Asylum from Multiple Perspectives, 1853 to 1875” (MA Thesis, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2006); Jennifer L. Bazar, “Patients, Dr Workman and life at the provincial lunatic asylum in Toronto”, History and Philosophy of Psychology Bulletin (2007), 19: 1, 4–16; Jennifer L. Bazar, “Objects of Daily Life: Materiality in North American Institutions for the Insane” (PhD Thesis, Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2013); Maximilian Smith, “‘The World Outside these Walls’: Toronto’s Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Context, 1830– 1882” (Toronto, ON, Canada: York University, 2019).
20.
Joseph Dunlop, “Politics, patronage and scandal at the provincial lunatic asylum, 1848–1857”, Ontario History (2006), 98: 2, 183–208; Danielle Terbenche, “Public Servants or Professional Alienists? Medical Superintendents and the Early Professionalization of Asylum Management and Insanity Treatment in Upper Canada, 1840–1865” (PhD Thesis, History Department, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada, 2011); Danielle Terbenche, “‘A soldier in the service of his country’: Dr William Rees, professional identity, and the Toronto Temporary Asylum, 1819–1874”, Histoire Sociale/Social History (2010), 43: 85, 97–129.
21.
James E. Moran, Madness on Trial: A Transatlantic History of English Civil law and Lunacy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019); Peter Bartlett, The Poor Law of Lunacy (London & Washington, DC: Leicester University Press, 1999); Joel Peter Eigen, Witnessing Insanity: Madness and Mad-Doctors in the English Court (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1995); Catherine L. Evans, Unsound Empire: Civilization and Madness in Late-Victorian Law (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 2021).
22.
For traditional overviews of psychiatric theories, see German E. Berrios, The History of Mental Symptoms: Descriptive Psychopathology Since the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1997).
23.
Peter Bartlett, “Legal madness in the nineteenth century”, Social History of Medicine (2001), 14: 1, 107–131.
24.
Peter Bartlett and David Wright, eds, Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750–2000 (London & New Brunswick, NJ: The Athlone Press, 1999).
25.
Dale Peterson, ed, A Mad People’s History of Madness (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982); Roy Porter, “The patient’s view: Doing medical history from below”, Theory & Society (1985), 14, 175–198.
26.
Tom Butler, Mental Health, Social Policy and the Law (London: The MacMillan Press Ltd, 1985); Clive Unsworth, The Politics of Mental Health Legislation (London: Clarendon Press, 1987).
27.
Richard D. Schneider, The Annotated Ontario Mental Health Statutes (4th Edition) (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2007), 526; R.S.O., 1990, M. 7, Regulation 741, Last Amendment Reg. 331/04.
28.
For the legislative context leading to the British North America Act (30 & 31 Vict., c. 3), see Philip Girard, Jim Phillips, and Black R. Brown, A History of Law in Canada. Volume One, Beginnings to 1866 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2018).
29.
Robert Bothwell, The Penguin History of Canada (London: Penguin, 2007).
30.
Alvin Finkel, Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 206.
31.
See Edward S. Rogers and Donald B. Smith, eds, Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1994); Martin J. Cannon and Lina Sunseri, eds, Racism, Colonialism, and Indigeneity in Canada: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
32.
Chris Raible, Muddy York Mud: Scandal and Scurrility in Upper Canada (Toronto: Curiosity House, 1993).
33.
The Toronto asylum changed name several times. From 1841 to 1871 it was known as the “Provincial Lunatic Asylum”. From 1873 to 1907, it was named the “Asylum for the Insane, Toronto” following the provincial statute enacted on 15 February 1871 which rebranded all Ontario asylums under the same formula: “Asylum for the Insane, city”, S.O., 1871, c. 18. Later on, it will be known as the “Hospital for the Insane, Toronto”, from 1907 to 1919, and as the “Ontario Hospital, Toronto”, from 1919 to 1966. See Geoffrey Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997), 6.
34.
John P. M. Court, “From 999 to 1001 Queen Street: A consistently vital resource”, in The Provincial Asylum in Toronto: Reflections on Social and Architectural History, ed. Edna Hudson (Toronto: Toronto Region Architectural Conservancy, 2000), 191–201.
35.
John P. M. Court, “Lands of the asylum—part 2, neighbours and allies for Toronto’s 19th-century asylum”, Friends of the CAMH Archives Newsletter (2021), 29: 2, 5–10.
36.
See Geoffrey Reaume, “Patients at work: Insane asylum inmates’ labour in Ontario 1841–1900”, in Mental Health and Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives, eds. David Wright and James Moran (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 69–96.
37.
Colonial Office, Colonial Hospitals and Lunatic Asylums (London: Harrison and Sons, 1864), 33.
38.
Daniel Hack Tuke, The Insane in the United States and Canada (London: H. K. Lewis, 1885), 212.
39.
Daniel Hack Tuke, The Insane in the United States and Canada (London: H. K. Lewis, 1885), 213.
40.
See Geoffrey Reaume, “Patients at work: Insane asylum inmates’ labour in Ontario 1841–1900”, in Mental Health and Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives, eds. David Wright and James Moran (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 69–96.
41.
Thomas Edward Brown, “The origins of the asylum in Upper Canada, 1830–1839: Towards an interpretation”, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (1984), 1: 1, 27–58; James E. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth-Century Quebec and Ontario (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000); James E. Moran and David Wright, eds, Mental Health and Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006).
42.
David Wright, Shawn Day, Jessica Smith, and Nathan Fils, “A janus-like asylum: The city and the institutional confinement of the mentally ill in Victorian Ontario”, Urban History Review (2008), 36: 2, 43–53.
43.
In September 1873, the London and Kingston asylums totalled respectively 520 and 359. See Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, &c., Sixth Annual Report for the Province of Ontario 1872–1873 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, and Co., 1873), 3–4. The number of people confined throughout the province numbered 1,505 marking a five-year increase. It was the highest number recorded in the province until then.
44.
Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, &c., Sixth Annual Report for the Province of Ontario 1872–1873 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, and Co., 1873), 9. For the role of John W. Langmuir in creating what the 1880 U.S. National Conference of Charities and Correction defined as “one of the most complete charitable and correctional systems on the continent”, see Peter Oliver, “Langmuir, John Woodburn”, in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, accessed 5 April 2022.
45.
S.O., 1873, c. 32.
46.
S.O., 1873, c. 33.
47.
S.O., 1873, c. 34.
48.
S.O., 1873, c. 31.
49.
The 1873 act presented a list of eleven forms, including a “form for the urgent committal of dangerous insane” (Form A), a “warrant of committal for safe custody pending inquiry” (Form B), a “final warrant of committal to the gaol” (Form C), a “certificate of the judge when a prisoner is not fit for the asylum” (Form D), a “certificate of medical practitioner when a prisoner is fit for the asylum” (Form E), a “certificate by the judge or justice when a prisoner is insane” (Form F), a “certificate by medical practitioner when a prisoner is insane” (Form G), a “warrant to retake a probationary patient” (Form H), a “warrant to retake an escaped patient” (Form I), a “certificate of medical practitioner in ordinary cases” (Form K), and a twenty-two-question “form for investigating the alleged insanity of prisoners” (Schedule no. 2), S.O., 1873, c. 31.
50.
General Statutes of New York, 1874, c. 446; Massachusetts Acts of 1879, c. 291.
51.
Chronologically: Nova Scotia, S.N.S., 1872. c. 3; Ontario, S.O., 1873, c. 31; Prince Edward Island, S.P.E.I., 1875, c. 6; Québec, S.Q., 1880, c. 14; New Brunswick, S.N.B., 1891, c. 17; British Columbia, S.B.C., 1893, c. 18; Newfoundland, S.N., 1897, c. 15.
52.
See for instance, Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Shaunnagh Dorsett and John McLaren, eds, Legal Histories of the British Empire: Laws, Engagements and Legacies (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014); Brett M. Bennett and Joseph M. Hodge, eds, Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science Across the British Empire, 1800–1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011); Diane Kirkby and Catharine Coleborne, eds, Law, History, Colonialism: The Reach of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001); Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001).
53.
For the peculiar relationship between the Canadas and the British Empire, see Phillip Buckner, ed, Canada and the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
54.
S.O., 1873, c. 31, s. 31.
55.
New Brunswick and British Columbia also required witnesses in lunacy certificates respectively from 1891 and 1893.
56.
Forbes Winslow, “Lunacy legislation”, Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology (1858), 11: 12, 523–535, 531.
57.
In Nova Scotia, asylums admitted patients via a Form B signed by two medical practitioners, S.N.S., 1872, c. 3, s. 20. Two practitioners were also required in British Columbia and New Brunswick, see S.B.C., 1893, c. 18 and S.N.B., 1891, c. 17. In Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and Saskatchewan, one doctor participated in the certification procedure as an independent expert or in conjunction with a Justice of the Peace, S.P.E.I., 1875, c. 4; S.N., 1897, c. 15; S.S., 1906, c. 22. In Québec, asylum admission depended on six people including only one physician, S.Q., 1880, c. 19, s. 6. In Alberta, Manitoba, and Yukon committals were in charge of Justices of the Peace with no medical intervention, S. A., 1907, c. 7; S.M., 1875, c. 22; O.Y.T., 1902, c. 77.
58.
After the abolition of the East India Company and the placement of India under direct British rule (21 & 22 Vict., c. 106), the 1858 Indian Lunatic Asylum Act enacted that Darogahs and district police officers could order the confinement of persons upon a medical certificate signed by one medical officer, Indian Lunatic Asylums Act, 1858, c. 36, s. 4 & 7. Ceylon, instead, demanded the examination from two practitioners, see Lunacy Ordinance, 1873, Ceylon, s. 9. In Caribbean islands like Jamaica, Justices of the Peace authorized committals upon the certificate of one doctor, see Act for the Government of the New Lunatic Asylum, 1862, c. 9, s. 14. New Zealand followed the English model of two physicians for paying patients, The Lunatics Act, 1868, New Zealand, c. 16. Australian states like Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, or New South Wales largely employed the distinction between one certificate for paupers and two for private patients, see for instance Insane Persons Hospital Act, 1858, Tasmania, c. 23; Lunatics Act, 1864, South Australia, c. 21; Lunacy Act, 1867, New South Wales, c. 19; Lunacy Statute, 1867, Victoria, c. 309. In the Strait Settlements and the Malay States, a certificate “duly signed by a medical officer of the colony” sent patients to asylums, see Lunatics Reception Ordinance, 1889 and Lunacy Enactment, 1915. In Africa, colonies like Nigeria, Gold Coast, and Kenya required only one medical certificate of insanity, see The Lunatic Asylum Ordinance, 1907, Nigeria, No. 5; The Lunatic Asylum Ordinance, 1888, Gold Coast, No. 3. In other parts of the continent, however, two doctors were necessary such as in the Cape Colony, Sierra Leone, or Gambia, see The Lunacy Act, 1891, Cape Colony, No. 35, Form No. 3; Lunacy Ordinance, 1902, Sierra Leone, No. 157; Lunatics’ Detention Act, 1917, Gambia.
59.
In England and Wales, civil confinement required two examining practitioners for paying patients and one for paupers, 16 & 17 Vict., c. 97. In Scotland, two medical certificates were sufficient with the approval of the Sheriff, 20 & 21 Vict., c. 71. In France, following the so-called Loi Esquirol of 30 June 1838, only one medical practitioner in addition to a local authority was necessary for cases of civil confinement, Loi 7443, 1838, Art. 8. In Belgium, the Loi du 18 Juin 1850 sur le Régime des Aliénés required one medical certificate. In mid-nineteenth-century Spain, the care of lunacy pertained to charity institutions with physicians not obliged to take part in the confinement process. For instance, the Decreto de 22 de Abril de 1873 prescribed that the Director General de Beneficencia y Sanidad on behalf of the minister regulated admission to the Manicomio de Santa Isabel de Leganés. After the 1885, two doctors or licentiates in medicine authorized asylum committals in Madrid, see Real Decreto 15 Mayo 1885; Real Decreto 19 Mayo 1885, Art. 3. In the Italian Kingdom, no unified legislation existed until 1904, see Luigi Anfosso, La Legislazione Italiana sui Manicomi e sugli Alienati (Torino: UTET, 1907). Patient admission was regulated by pre-unification regional provisions generally involving one physician and local authorities. In Tuscany, for example, Leopold II’s motu proprio of 2 August 1838 required one physician in cases of civil committal, see Giuseppe Pantozzi, Storia delle Idee e delle Leggi Psichiatriche: 1780–1980 (Trento: Centro Studi Erickson, 1994), 78. In Sicily, admission to the Real Casa dei Matti in Palermo relied on the Lieutenant General, see Pietro Pisani, Instruzioni per la Novella Real casa dei Matti in Palermo (Palermo: Della Società Tipografica, 1827), 36. In Campania, the local prefect instructed the confinement of patients, see Biagio G. Miraglia, Progetto del Regolamento Interno Medico e Disciplinare pel Manicomio di Aversa (Caserta: Stabilimento Tipografico del Comm. G. Nobile, 1866), 64. In most German states, Austro-Hungary, Swiss cantons, the Netherlands, Sweden, the reception of patients into lunatic asylums mainly required a petition addressed to a local authority including the testimony of one physician and patients’ acquaintances, for German states, see Regulations for the Insane Asylums of the Province of Brandenburg in force since 16 July 1879; for Netherlands, see Act Relating to the Regulation of the Governmental Inspection of Lunatics, 1884; for Sweden, see Royal Ordinance of the 2 November 1883; for Zurich, see Law of 1874, the Burgholzi Asylum was governed by a regulation of the Council of State of the 22 November 1879.
60.
In the 1873–1883 decade, twenty-four US states admitted patients involving one physician who could act as either a member of a jury or as an independent examiner. Another eighteen states required the participation of two physicians. In four states, a Jury or a special Commission of Lunacy was in charge of committing the alleged lunatic without any obligation for physicians to take part. In two states, Florida and Louisiana, the judge alone was responsible for decisions about committal. In Idaho and Wyoming, the lack of any provisions for the insane during the 1870s justified the absence of particular instructions about civil confinement. For a compilation of the US lunacy legislation during the second half of the nineteenth century, see Thomas S. Clouston and Charles F. Folsom, Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases to which is added an Abstract of the Statutes of the United States and of the Several States and Territories Relating to the Custody of the Insane (Philadelphia: H.C. Lea’s Son and Co, 1884); Henry Mills Hurd, ed., The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada, 4 vols. (Baltimore: 1916); Stephen Smith, “Unification of the Laws of the States Relating to the Commitment of the Insane”, American Journal of Insanity (1892) 49: 157–183; George Leib Harrison, Legislation on Insanity (Philadelphia: Privately Printed 1884); John Koren, Summaries of Laws Relating to the Commitment and Care of the Insane in the United States (New York, NY: The National Committee for Mental Hygiene, 1912).
61.
Thomas S. Clouston and Charles F. Folsom, Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases (Philadelphia: H.C. Lea’s Son and Co, 1884), 452.
62.
Philip Girard, Jim Phillips, and Blake R. Brown, A History of Law in Canada. Volume One, Beginnings to 1866 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 7.
63.
Daniel Hack Tuke, The Insane in the United States and Canada (London: H. K. Lewis, 1885), 210.
64.
For the Durham report see, Earl of Durham, Report on the Affairs of British North America (London, 1839). The resulting 1840 Act of Union created the Province of Canada with an elected assembly advising the Lieutenant Governor on domestic matters, especially related to taxation and commerce, see 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35.
65.
S.U.C., 1839, c. 11, s. 1.
66.
S.U.C., 1839, c. 11, s. 6.
67.
S.P.C., 1853, c. 188.
68.
C.S.U.C., 1859, c. 71.
69.
S.O., 1871, c. 18.
70.
From March 1851 until July 1853, two forms co-existed. From July 1853 until April 1873, a slightly different template was introduced, Archives of Ontario (AO), Queen Street Mental Health Centre admission warrants and histories (RG 10-268), Box B296093.
71.
S.O., 1867, c. 45.
72.
See for instance S.P.C., 1853, c. 188.
73.
8 & 9 Vict., c. 100, s. 45; 16 & 17 Vict., c. 96, s. 74.
74.
S.O., 1871, c. 18, s. 6.
75.
Maximilian Smith, “The World Outside these Walls”: Toronto’s Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Context, 1830–1882 (PhD Thesis, Department of History, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2019).
76.
Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, &c., Fifth Annual Report for the Province of Ontario 1871–1872 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, and Co., 1872), 9.
77.
Archives of Ontario (AO), Queen Street Mental Health Centre Admission Warrants and Histories (RG 10-268), Box B296098, Admission N° 4082.
78.
AO, RG 10-268, B296098, Admission N° 4098.
79.
For instance, John C. Bucknill, “On medical certificates of insanity”, Journal of Mental Science (1860) 7: 79–88, 82; John Millar, Hints on Insanity (London: Henry Renshaw, 1861); Thomas Nadauld Brushfield, “On medical certificates of insanity”, The Lancet (1880), 1: 2956, 638–641.
80.
AO, RG 10-268, B296100, Admission N° 4340.
81.
AO, RG 10-268, B296100, Admission N° 4572.
82.
AO, RG 10-268, B296100, Admission N° 4128.
83.
AO, RG 10-268, B296100, Admission N° 4092.
84.
The importance of family members in procedures of civil confinement has been studied by historians. See, for instance, Akihito Suzuki, Madness at Home: The Psychiatrist, the Patient, and the Family in England 1820–1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
85.
AO, RG 10-268, B296100, Admission N° 4539.
86.
AO, RG 10-268, B296100, Admission N° 4709.
87.
Charles K. Clarke and William G. Metcalfe both graduated from Toronto’s School of Medicine in 1874 and 1879, then practiced at the Toronto lunatic asylum as assistants to Joseph Workman during the 1870s. In time, they became brothers-in-law and achieved some prominence as superintendents of various establishments in Ontario. C. K. Clarke, for instance, was amongst other appointments, also the superintendent of the Toronto asylum from 1905 to 1911. See Cyril Greenland, “Metcalf, William George”, in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, accessed 5 April 2022; Ian Robert Dowbiggin, “Clarke, Charles Kirk”, in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, accessed 5 April 2022; also Ian Robert Dowbiggin, Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada 1880-1940 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
88.
RG 10-268, B296104, Admission N° 4891.
89.
According to the Case Law database of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, from the period 1876 (earliest available date) to 1884, no medical certificate for the purpose of asylum committal was appealed in Ontario (Canlii.org, accessed 24 April 2019). The only case dealing with insanity presented at the Court was that of Neill v. Travellers’ Insurance Co. decided on 23 September 1882. This concerned the alleged lunacy of a person working for a travel company and it was unrelated to confinement or certification. Results from a more extensive database, Lexis Advance Quicklaw, also confirm these results. During the period 1868–1890, there were nineteen civil cases of insanity tried in Ontario. Though related to lunacy, the vast majority of these trials dealt with issues outside asylum confinements such as testamentary capacity, life insurance, validity of contracts, and child custody. A more interesting case was that of Dobbyn v. Decow, 1875, Ontario Court of Common Pleas, No. 93. The case was tried before judge Gwynne and a jury, at London, ON, at the Fall Assizes of 1874 and it was decided on 4 March 1875. Here a patient named Dobbyn escaped the asylum in London, ON, and trespassed the property of another man named Decow (Advance-lexis.com, accessed 17 May 2022). While pertaining to custodial treatment, this case did not deal specifically with wrongful certificates, medical negligence, or clandestine committals. Legal and published records thus indicate that no Form K was officially contested at the provincial level. This does not exclude, of course, the presence of grievances in Ontario during the 1870s that for various reasons, including costs and publicity, did not reach the wider public.
90.
Louis Riel is a significant figure in the history of nineteenth-century Canada, particularly in regard to his fight for the rights of Metis and Indigenous people against colonial state policies. For an overview of the large historiography on his alleged insanity, see Gregory Betts, “Non compos mentis: A meta-historical survey of the historiographic narratives of Louis Riel’s ‘Insanity’”, International Journal of Canadian Studies (2008), 38: 1, 15–40. For the case of Louis Riel in local newspapers, see Anonymous, “The insanity plea”, Toronto Daily Mail (Ontario, Canada, 4 December 1885), 2 and Patria, “A reformer speaks”, Toronto Daily Mail (Ontario, Canada, 3 December 1885), 2. For the assassination of the U.S. President James A. Garfield, see Charles E. Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and the Law in the Gilded Age (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
91.
See Report from the Select Committee on Lunacy Law; So Far as it Regards the Security Afforded by it Against Violations of Personal Liberty (London, 1877).
92.
Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, &c., Sixth Annual Report for the Province of Ontario 1872–1873 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, and Co., 1873), 6.
93.
S.O., 1882, c. 32, s. 2.
94.
James Grant Snell, “The cost of living in Canada in 1870”, Histoire Sociale/Social History (1979), 12: 23, 186–93.
95.
According to the Bank of Canada’s inflation rate calculator, five Canadian Dollars in 1914 (earliest available date) would be equal to CAD$ 112.83 today (BankofCanada.ca, Inflation Calculator, accessed 24 April 2019). With due caution, this means that the price for three certificates would be approximately CAD$ 300–400 in today’s currency, not accounting for travel costs.
96.
An analogous phenomenon took place in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, see Mark Finnane, Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland (London: Croom Helm, 1981).
97.
S.P.C., 1851, c. 27, s. 4.
98.
Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities, Fourteenth Annual Report for the Province of Ontario (Toronto: Blackett Robinson, 1882), 10.
99.
C.S.U.C., 1859, c. 60.
100.
Toronto Historical Association, Eagle House Hotel, retrieved from www.torontohistory.net/eagle-house-hotel (accessed 5 April 2022).
101.
AO, RG 10-268, B296104, Admission N° 4909.
102.
AO, RG 10-268, B296104, Admission N° 4072.
103.
Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, &c., Fifth Annual Report for the Province of Ontario 1871–1872 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, and Co., 1872), 11.
104.
S.O., 1882, c. 32, s. 3.
105.
AO, RG 10-268, B296104, Admission N° 5703.
106.
R.S.O., 1887, c. 245, Schedule N. 1, Form A; R.S.O., 1897, c. 317, s. 7 and 8.
107.
R.S.O., 1914, c. 295, s. 7.
108.
R.S.O., 1937, c. 392, s. 20.
109.
R.S.O., 1950, c. 229, s. 20.
110.
R.S.O., 1960, c. 236, s. 23.
111.
Theodore Porter, Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).
112.
R.S.O., 1970, c. 269, s. 8.
113.
R.S.O., 1980, c. 262, s. 8.
114.
R.S.O., 1990, m. 7, s. 15.
115.
House of Commons, “Lunatics”, Parliamentary Debates (London, 11 July 1845), Column 417, Volume 82.
116.
R.S.O., 1990, M. 7, Regulation 741, Last Amendment Reg. 331/04. The “Form 21– Certificate of Incapacity to Manage One’s Property” also follows the same structure by dividing “personally observed” and “communicated facts”, see Richard D. Schneider, The Annotated Ontario Mental Health Statutes (4th Edition) (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2007), 557.
117.
Anna Mehler Paperny, “In bad Form? The rise of coercive care in Canada”, The Globe and Mail (Toronto, ON, 10 August 2019).
118.
See Filippo Maria Sposini, “Confinement and certificates: Consensus, stigma and disability rights”, Canadian Medical Association Journal (2020), 192: 48, E1642-1643.
119.
For Prince Edward Island, see Form 2, Mental Health Act, R.S.P.E.I. 1988, c. M-6.1, updated 2018. For Nova Scotia, see Form 2, Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Act, S.N.S. 2005, c. 42.

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Filippo Maria Sposini

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Sposini, F.M. (2023). A Choreography of Consensus: The Use of Hybrid Templates in Ontario. In: The Certification of Insanity. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42742-8_6

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