VPRS 8236 Register of Patients

Full description

From at least 1845 and the proclamation of An Act for the Regulation of the Care and Treatment of Lunatics (8 & 9 Vic c.100), public asylums and licensed houses were required to maintain a Register of Patients. Initially the register maintained by licensed houses was officially known as the Book of Admissions. In some institutions the Register was also known as an Admissions Register or as an Admission and Discharge Register and these terms were sometimes stamped on the volumes.

Immediately upon the admission of a person to an asylum, the clerk of the asylum was required to make an entry in the Register of Patients. Details recorded included:

-patient's name
- date of admission
- admission number
- date of last previous admission
- age
- marital status
- occupation
- previous place of abode
- religion, and
- once examined by a medical officer, the form of mental disorder and state of physical health.

Further details were entered in the register on the death, transfer or discharge of a patient. Institutions were also required to maintain a separate Register of Discharges, Removals and Deaths, usually known as a Discharge Register.

The format of the Register of Patients which was specified in a schedule to the Lunacy Statute and succeeding legislation, changed little until the proclamation of the Mental Health Act 1959 in 1962.

The record then became officially known as the Register of Patients and Discharge Register and included information about the types of admission. The following five types of admission were specified under sections 41 to 49 of the Mental Health Act 1959.

- Voluntary Boarders (V) were those who entered the hospital at their own request or, if under the age of 16 at the request of a parent or guardian and on the opinion of a medical practitioner.

- Recommended (R) and Approved (A) Patients. A person could be admitted upon the recommendation set out in a prescribed form, of a medical practitioner who had examined the person. As soon as possible after admission the superintendent of the hospital was required to examine the patient and either approve the recommended admission or discharge the patient.

- Judicial Admissions (J). Upon information provided on oath before a justice that a mentally ill person was not receiving proper care, or could not support himself/herself or had committed an offence, and after examination by two medical practitioners, an order could be made for the person to be admitted to or detained in a mental hospital.

- Security Patients (S) were those who had been detained in a gaol but were transferred to a mental hospital upon being determined to be mentally ill.

The post 1962 Registers of Patients also included information previously recorded in a separate Discharge Register, e.g. institution to which the patient was transferred; assigned cause of death where applicable. However some institutions continued to maintain a separate Discharge Register.

Sunbury Register of Patients

These volumes were created to record the admission of patients to the Sunbury Lunatic Asylum between 1877 and 1970. The Register lists patients chronologically by date of admission, with each patient's admission number recorded against their name. A separate series of numbers were maintained for men and women.

The admission numbers were recorded on the warrants issued on the admission of a patient to a lunatic asylum. The actual warrants can be found in VPRS 8259 (Male Patients) and VPRS 8261 (Female Patients).

An alphabetical index is extant in the front of each volume. From 1934 the indexes are not part of the bound volume, but rather are a separate book attached to the frontispiece of the volume. The register and its indexes can be used to gain access to the patient histories in the Case Books which are arranged chronologically by date of admission: VPRS 7405 (Male Patients) and VPRS 7406 (Female Patients).

The first 44 pages of the first unit of this series list patients admitted to the Ballarat Asylum (VA 2843) between 1877 and 1880 and who were subsequently transferred to Sunbury. The numbering sequence was recommenced again when the volume was taken to Sunbury. It is the Sunbury numerical sequence which is recorded on the spine of this volume.

While the discharge details were always included in the `Admission Registers', in 1963 the title given to the volumes was changed to `Admission and Discharge Register' to confirm a practice which had been followed previously. A separate series of Discharge Registers was also created between 1877 and 1970 (VPRS 8237).

The new admission numbering system which distinguished five categories of admission commenced in the first of the `Admission and Discharge Registers'. However there continued to be two separate sequences for males and females. Prior to 1963 the admission of Voluntary Boarders was recorded in separate Registers: VPRS 8238 - Voluntary Boarders Register.