The Report of the Royal Commission on the Feeble, Minded,
appointed in 1901, and empowered in 1906 to inquire further into the case of the certified insane, was published as a Blue-book yesterday week. The Report is so voluminous—the Times abstract occupies nearly six columns —that we can only deal briefly here with a very few of the two hundred recommendations of the Commissioners. Estimating the number of feeble-minded as 149,679 in England and Wales, in addition to 121,979 at present certified to be insane, the Commissioners recommend (1) that the existing protection of property under the Lunacy Act of 1890 should be extended to all classes of the mentally defective; (2) that all the mentally defective should come under the protection and supervision of a Central Board of Control, superseding the existing Lunacy Commission ; (3) that, subject to such supervision, the Council of each county or county borough should be the local authority for con- trolling and protecting the mentally defective within its jurisdiction, and should be required and empowered to make proper provision for their care and keeping.
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