L I E> RA R.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLl NOIS
 
 
 AMERICAN LEGISLATION 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 INEBRIATE 
 
 A. OAKEY HALL 
 
 EX-MAYOR OF NEW YORK 
 
 {Paper read to the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, 
 and reprinted from the Proceedings) 
 
 LONDON 
 H. K. LEWIS, 136, GOWER STREET, W.C. 
 
 ^SIXPENCE.']
 
 oricin for tin Sfuirg milr (SLnxt oi Inebriety. 
 
 A'l- the meeting at which Mr. Oakey Hall's paper was read, it was resolved : 
 "That the President l)e requested to bring Mr. Oakey Hall's able and com- 
 prehensive pa]:>er before the I*rime Minister, Home Secretary, and the Legis. 
 lature." 
 
 This clear and statesmanlike account of the noble legislation in the United 
 States on behalf of the helpless confirmed inebriate is now. published in the hope 
 that an awakened public conscience may lead to a realizntion of the shameful 
 fact that at present there is No Home in Britain, under the provisions of 
 the " Habitual Drunkards Acit," into which the Destitute Inebriate, desirous 
 of reformation, can be received. Who will aid in the Removal of this 
 NATIONAL DISGRACE? 
 
 NORMAN KERR, M.D., 
 
 42, Grove Road, 
 
 Regent's Park, N.W.
 
 AMERICAN LEGISLATION FOR 
 THE INEBRIATE.* 
 
 By a. OAKEY hall, 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 EX-MAYOR OF NEW YORK. 
 
 I COULD interestingly devote much time to narrating the progress in 
 America of the doctrine that Inebriety, after passing through stages 
 of selfish desire and vice, can finally reach a stage of disease to be 
 radically treated in hospitals, asylums, or retreats, instead of being 
 treated by the pillory, as was prescribed by a statute of James I., 
 quoted in Blackstone, or by the treadmill or prison so lately as the 
 time of William IV. But such a narrative would perhaps only 
 reiterate much already pubHshed, and would invite a task not 
 comprehended within my assigned theme. We all admit the stage 
 of disease in Inebriety, and I am to refer only to the legal treat- 
 ment thereof in the United States. 
 
 I shall mainly select the type of such legal treatment as is im- 
 pressed upon the legislation of New York State, to which many sister 
 States have paid the sincere flattery of imitating its general legal 
 doctrine and procedures in the treatment of Inebriety. Which 
 imitation was quite appropriate, for New York is one of the oldest 
 of the States, and New York City remains the most English in its 
 traditions and customs of all the cities which in Colonial times 
 received royal charters from Great Britain. 
 
 In that State it has long been admitted by legislators, as a social 
 
 * Paper read at a meeting of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, 
 held in the rooms of the Medical Society of London, on 7th October, 1884, 
 Dr. Norman Kerr, F.L.S., President, in the chair.
 
 fact and as a moral necessity, that the confirmed Inebriate ought to 
 be compulsorily quarantined — as the State would quarantine scarlet 
 fever, varioloid, yellow fever, cholera, or Chinese leprosy. 
 
 If it were supposable that American legislation — erratic as it 
 sometimes is — was based as to this subject upon poetry, I should 
 select two verses from a pamphlet now in the British Museum, with 
 this title, " The Drunkard's Prospective, or Burning Glasse. Com- 
 posed by Joseph Rigbie, Gentleman, Clerke of the Peace of the 
 County Palatine of Lancaster. London : Printed for the Author, 
 and are to be sold at the Brazen Serpent in St. Paul's Churchyard, 
 1656." 
 
 One verse runs thus : — 
 
 *' Drink beastiates the heart, and spoiles the brains. 
 Exiles all reason, all good graces staines, 
 Infatuates judgement, understanding blinds, 
 Perverts the wits, and doth corrupt the minds, 
 It doth surprize the thoughts, and it doth all 
 The povjers and faculties of sottle enthrall.'^ 
 
 These versicles plainly express that Inebriety in its grossest forms 
 amounts to disease. 
 
 Another verse suggests the necessity of legislation : 
 
 " To you churchwardens, constables, and others, 
 That love the Lord, the Church, the State, your brothers, 
 Yourselves, your sons, the people of the land, 
 Put forth against this sin your helping hand. 
 Help, help the Lord, the lawes, some ground to win, 
 Against I say, against this mighty sinne." 
 
 Half a century ago American legislators recognized that there was 
 a class of Inebriates who had — as has been well phrased — " a disease 
 of incapacity," and its victim one whose craving for intoxicating 
 drink was stronger than his better self, whose better self was over- 
 whelmed, and his sense of right, wrong, love, fear, pride, and shame 
 was obliterated. This doctrine having been agreed to, American 
 legislators simply added Inebriety in those extreme stages to the 
 list of diseases for which the State cared. It is difficult for 
 Englishmen to realize to what an extent the care of diseased persons 
 at the public expense in hospitals and retreats is carried in America. 
 Each State levies taxes to support those. All the city governments 
 are noted for their really lavish expenditure upon hospitals and 
 retreats. New York City, for instance, is named " the City of 
 Charities," because of its outlay in such behalf. In its City Govern- 
 
 U.UC
 
 ment is a Department of Public Charities, governed by a Board of 
 Charity Commissioners. Among the charities cared for from the 
 first of its history was a Charity Hospital, with a compartment for 
 non-infectious diseases, a small-pox ward, one for sexual diseases, 
 and one for lunatics — the insana menSy although in sano corpore. 
 Last year ;^4oo,ooo of public monies in New York City went to 
 the support of such public hospitals, and for donations to many 
 private ones. When, therefore, the confirmed and will-powerless 
 Inebriate became equally acknowledged to be a diseased person, it 
 was simply in accordance with the public system that the State 
 should provide him or her with a public Hospital or Retreat. The 
 public-hospital system was not only based upon the eleemosynary 
 feeling, but upon a sense of public security and welfare. One 
 hospital was for the merely unsound body, in which this unsoundness 
 carried contagion or infection, with injury to the public weal and 
 comfort. What more consistent than that another public hospital 
 should be added in behalf of the diseased will, when coupled with 
 the diseased body, as the result of Inebriety? With hospitals 
 supported entirely by voluntary contributions under State guarantees, 
 exist also in America private retreats for the diseased Inebriates, 
 which retreats are protected by State authority, and are aided in 
 their operations by State procedures. The Dipsomaniac then took 
 legal place beside the Monomaniac, or the Homicidal-maniac, or 
 the Delusionist. The Dipsomaniac has not only to be protected 
 against himself when helpless in the clutches of his temptation, 
 but society must be protected against him. The first germ of 
 American legislation on the subject was planted in the statute book 
 by the passage of laws that aimed to substitute for a vanished indi- 
 vidual will a statutory will, and to replace a vacated individual 
 judgment with a statutory judgment. The legislators enacted pro- 
 cedures by which friends and relatives could put this statutory will 
 and that statutory judgment in force, to compel the Dipsomaniac to 
 enter a hospital or retreat in behalf of his disease. Soon the legis- 
 lators found that there were Dipsomaniacs who had lost all friends or 
 relatives, and who were simply the wards of the State. This led to 
 establishing public places into which the Dipsomaniac could be 
 pushed, as it were, by the strong arm of the Law for treatment and 
 cure. Only a few weeks ago I read that an East-End magistrate, to 
 whom a wife had complained of a drunken and diseased husband, 
 who threatened the life of herself and of their children, answered, 
 " I can do nothing for you." In America the magistrate would
 
 have instantly issued a warrant for the husband's apprehension, and 
 have had him summarily examined by an official physician, and on 
 the certificate of the latter, and on the affidavits of the wife and 
 neighbours (with opportunity of his being heard in his own defence), 
 have committed him to a public Retreat for the Inebriate ; and, 
 pari passu, as in the case of a person charged with a loathsome 
 disease. American legislation throughout the thirty-seven States is 
 now co-operative in such respects (differing only in details of a local 
 colour), as well as in schemes of jurisprudence regarding the disease 
 of Inebriety. The universal statutory theory in the States is, that, 
 like as out of the vices of sexuality grows the disease, par exempky 
 of paresis, so out of the vice of Intemperance grows the disease of 
 Inebriety. Against the latter American legislation writes the maxim, 
 Sahis populi siiprema lex. It protects society against him or her who 
 has drunk himself or herself into a state of perfect loss of a resisting 
 power. Fifty years ago ]the laws of New York, in conferring upon 
 the Supreme Court powers to deal with confirmed (and in this 
 connection the word " diseased^'' has become in American legal argu- 
 ments and decisions quite convertible with " confirmed ") Inebriates, 
 classified Inebriates, under that phrase confirmed, in the same 
 category with " idiots, lunatics, and persons of unsound mind " — all 
 in one phrase of statutory enumeration. This classification I 
 remember particularly struck the mind of Dr. Stephen S. Alford 
 when he was in the States a few years ago, and whose observations 
 resulted in an exhaustive paper on American Inebriate Asylums^ 
 that is filed with the Social Science Association. 
 
 Prior to the year 1857 (when the first charter of a Public and 
 State-aided Asylum or Retreat for the diseased drunkard was enacted 
 in New York, relating to an establishment at Binghamton, and 
 when the Boston private asylum for the diseased drunkard was put 
 into operation) the Supreme Court of New York had power to 
 order an inquisition of fact by a jury in a summary way at request 
 of any relative of a confirmed drunkard, and if the fact of disease 
 was established, the Court ordered him to be confined. What for ? 
 That his family might be protected ? that an estate should not be 
 wasted ? yes ; but for the additional object (and thus expressed 
 always in the Court order) of "treatment" also. In 1857 the 
 Legislature of New York also recognized that the public and the 
 community had some rights to be looked after with regard to the 
 confirmed drunkard — rights of security, not to say of example in 
 an express way — and the Legislature then instituted what has since
 
 5 
 
 become a thoroughly developed system of summarily inquiring (in 
 the name of the sovereignty of the people, on complaint of autho- 
 rities or private citizens, not relatives of an accused confirmed 
 drunkard) into the matter, and of discharging or of confining the 
 diseased Inebriate for a term of (not punishment, except perhaps in 
 " a quasi " way, but of) " treatment and cure " ! 
 
 I now quote from a few American statutes as to Laws regulating 
 the Admission of Inebriates to various Asylums. I quote them as 
 being samples of laws as to spirit and scope existing in other States 
 than those now named. 
 
 Extract from Charter of New York State Inebriate 
 Asylum, incorporated March 27, 1857. 
 
 § 4. The object of this Institution shall be for the medical 
 treatment and control of the inebriate. 
 
 § 9. Said Institution shall have power to receive and retain all 
 inebriates who enter said Asylum, either voluntarily or by the order 
 of the committee of any habitual drunkard. All poor and destitute 
 inebriates who are received into said Asylum shall be employed in 
 some useful occupation in or about the Asylum. Said inebriates 
 shall have all moneys accruing from their labour after the ex- 
 penses of their support in said Asylum shall have ^been paid, which 
 shall be sent to their families monthly. If said inebriates have no 
 families it shall be paid to him or her on his or her discharge from 
 said Institution. 
 
 Inebriates' Home, New York, King's County, 1867. 
 
 § 6. Upon becoming satisfied by return of a commission as here- 
 tofore provided that any person is an habitual drunkard, and in- 
 capable, in consequence thereof, of conducting his or her own 
 affairs, said Justice shall have power, in his discretion, to issue his 
 warrant, committing the person so found to be an habitual drunkard 
 to the custody of the said " Home," to be detained in the said 
 " Home " for such period, not exceeding one year, as the said 
 Justice may deem proper, and such warrant shall be executed by 
 any member of the Metropolitan Police. Any such warrant, duly 
 issued, shall be full and sufficient justification for all acts done 
 by any properly authorized officer, under and in accordance 
 therewith. Such order of commitment may at any time be
 
 vacated or modified by any Justice of the Supreme Court, on cause 
 shown. 
 
 § 8. The estate of any person committed to such *' Home," and the 
 person committed, shall be liable for the support of such person 
 therein, and the committee of every such person shall pay out of his 
 estate such reasonable and proper sum as shall be fixed by the 
 Justice ordering the commitment. 
 
 Extract from Act of Incorporation of the Washingtonian 
 Home of Chicago, approved February i6, 1867. (State of 
 Illinois.) 
 
 § 2. Object — the care, cure and reclamation of inebriates. 
 
 § 5. Any persons sentenced by the authorities of the City of 
 Chicago to the Bridewell or House of Correction, for intemperance, 
 drunkenness, or for any misdemeanour caused thereby, may, with 
 the consent of the proper officers of said " Home," be received and 
 detained as inmates of said " Home," in Heu of the Bridewell or 
 House of Correction, until the expiration of such sentence. Ten per 
 cent, of all moneys received for liquor licenses to go to the support 
 of the Home. 
 
 Pennsylvania Sanitarium, 1867. 
 
 Habitual drunkards received on presentation by committee of 
 applicant, or, if no committee, on production by guardian or next 
 friend of certificate by two physicians on oath. 
 
 Extract from an Act to incorporate the Washingtonian 
 Home, Boston, Mass., 1869. 
 
 A corporation by the name of the Washingtonian Home, for the 
 purpose of providing a retreat for inebriates, and the means for 
 reforming them, with all the powers and privileges, and subject to all 
 the duties, Habilities, and restrictions set forth in the forty-fourth 
 chapter of the Revised Statutes. 
 
 Extract from Charter of Maryland Inebriate Asylum. 
 
 § 5. The said board of trustees shall have power to receive and 
 retain all inebriates who enter said Asylum either voluntarily or are 
 there placed by the order of any courts or by the order of the com-
 
 mittee of any habitual drunkard, or if such drunkard should be a 
 minor, by the order of his or her parents or guardian ; and the said 
 board of trustees are authorized and empowered to employ all ine- 
 briates who are received into said Asylum in some useful occupa- 
 tion in or about the said Asylum : said inebriates shall have all 
 moneys accruing from their labour, after the expenses of their 
 support in said Asylum shall have been paid, which shall be sent to 
 their families monthly : in case the said inebriates have no families, 
 it shall be paid to him or her at their discharge from said Asylum. 
 
 In California is a law incorporating an Institution for Inebriates, 
 with similar powers ; and in Texas the Legislature long ago passed 
 an act incorporating an Institution for the Cure of Inebriates, and 
 appropriating one hundred thousand dollars for its construction, 
 with ample legal powers. 
 
 In every State of the American Union the apparently irreclaimable 
 Inebriate, if a tramp, a vagrant, or a pauper, is at public expense, by 
 due magisterial warrant, committed to a confinement partaking 
 almost entirely of a hospital nature — sometimes upon merely magis- 
 terial view, and often at the own request of the unfortunate patient. 
 This expense is willingly borne from the tax-paying purse. In some 
 of the States Inebriety is legislatively treated as a disease, which 
 lessens and often destroys the intention, which is an element to 
 many kinds of crime ; and in nearly all the States, by the unwritten 
 laws of evidence and judicial action, such Inebriety often wholly 
 excuses acts of violence committed by the diseased Inebriate, and very 
 generally mitigates such acts from (e.g.) alleged or apparent murder 
 to manslaughter, or from alleged or apparent felonious assault into 
 common assault — much-wise as the Central Criminal Court and Jury 
 seem to have dealt with the recent charge against Lord St. Leonards. 
 In several States the frenzy of deliriuj7i tre?nens or of ma?ua a potu 
 is as an admissible and debatable defence to crime, as to the ele- 
 ment of intention, placed upon a plane with the frenzy of clearly- 
 defined delusions or insane fancies. Which doctrine of juridical 
 decision is regarded by American statute-makers as an additional 
 reason why the State should deal protectively with Inebriety as a 
 dangerous disease. In some States subsidies are given (of public 
 moneys raised by taxation, or out of the proceeds of license fees for 
 the sale of liquors) to private retreats for the treatment of Inebriety 
 as a disease ; and, coupled with a condition that the State may, to a 
 prescribed extent, obtain the quid pro quo of occasional magisterial 
 commitment of those Inebriates whose family circumstances in a
 
 8 
 
 social way may recommend such commitment therein. A few States, 
 however, continue to legislatively regard the diseased Inebriate as a 
 humanis hostis — a species of social pirate. Happily, what was first 
 done by American legislators in merely applying to Inebriety the 
 doctrine of disease and hospital treatment, has been participated 
 in by England ; and possibly the mother country may soon outstrip 
 the daughter-land in yet more beneficently recognizing in a parHa- 
 mentary method the doctrines, the generous aims, and the benefi- 
 cent far-reachings of this Society, which honours your Speaker with 
 membership and audience. As, indeed, '' Saxon-ly " (to coin a 
 phrase), such honourable permission and audience may exist with a 
 propriety and fitness of design : for — 
 
 " Are we not all children of the men who fought at Crecy, 
 We were all Englishmen when Shakespeare wrote : 
 We were all Englishmen, compatriots in esse, 
 
 Though called Australians, Yankees, and what not. 
 
 '* We are all Englishmen, and one in our devotion, 
 Whether the York we have be old or new ; 
 And English if Boston o'erlooks the German Ocean, 
 Or has the broad Atlantic in her view. 
 
 ** We are all Englishmen, wedded in one great union 
 Of blood and language, history and song ; 
 We are all English, and will cherish our communion 
 In face of all the world the world's life long."
 
 HOMES FOR INEBRIATES ASSOCIATION 
 
 OBJECT. 
 
 The efficient care, treatment, and cure of the Habitual Drunkard 
 by the estabUshment of a Retreat, or Retreats, under the 
 Habitual Drunkards Act, 1879. 
 
 EARL SHAFTESBURY, K.G. 
 
 fia-ipwsihnts. 
 
 ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTER- 
 BURY AND YORK. 
 BISHOP OF CARLISLE. 
 
 DURHAM. 
 
 EXETER. 
 
 GLOUCESTER. 
 
 HEREFORD. 
 
 LLANDAFF. 
 
 NORWICH. 
 
 RIPON. 
 
 ROCHESTER. 
 
 SALISBURY. 
 
 ST. DAVID'S. 
 
 WINCHESTER. 
 BISHOP ABRAHAM. 
 DEAN OF LICHFIELD. 
 
 YORK. 
 REV. CANON ELLISON, M.A. 
 HOPKINS, B.D. 
 REV. DAWSON BURNS, D.D. 
 DUKE OF WESTMINSTER. 
 
 LORD ABERDARE. 
 
 LORD DERWENT. 
 
 SIR J. W. PEASE, BART., M.P. 
 
 DR. CAMERON, M.P. 
 
 J. J. COLMAN, M.P. 
 
 J. COWEN, M.P. 
 
 J. P. CORRY, M.P. 
 
 C. DALRYMPLE, M.P. 
 
 DR. FARQUH ARSON, M.P. 
 
 W. HOLMS, M.P. 
 
 J. HOWARD, A^,P. 
 
 GEORGE PALMER, M.P. 
 
 ARTHUR PEASE, M.P. 
 
 SIR ANDREW CLARK, Ml)., 
 
 F.R.C.P. 
 SIR HENRY THOMPSON, 
 
 F.R.C.S. 
 B. W. RICHARDSON, M.D., 
 
 F.R.S. 
 SIR W. T. CHARLEY, Q.C. 
 J. BARLOW, J. P., BOLTON. 
 
 ;2{^i5,ooo urgently needed to establish a Home for the Poor, and 
 a Home for Females. Donations and Annual Subscriptions will be 
 thankfully received by the Chairman, Rev. Canon Duckworth, 
 D.D., 5, Abbey Road, N.W. ; and the Hon. Sec, Norman Kerr, 
 M.D., F.L.S., 42, Grove Road, Regent's Park, N.W. 
 
 Cheques crossed London and County Bank, Paddington Branch.
 
 alrg^mplc P0mc for ^wthx'xuitB, 
 
 THE CEDARS, RICKMANSWORTH, HERTS. 
 
 LICENSED UNDER THE HABITUAL DRUNKARDS ACT, 1879, 
 
 Patients received Privately and under the Act. 
 
 B.W. RICHARDSON, M.D., F.R.S., ALFRED CARPENTER, M.D., J. P., 
 NORMAN KERR, M.D., F.L.S. 
 
 Iltsibent IH^bital 5upn*iutnii)tiit. 
 
 R. WELSH BRANTHWAITE, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 The Times. — " A very pleasant house standing in about five acres of 
 
 beautiful grounds, admirably adapted to the purpose it is intended 
 
 to fulfil. " 
 The Lancet. — " Practitioners having dipsomaniac patients cannot do 
 
 them a greater kindness than to urge them to use this Home, with 
 
 its regulated life and pleasant surroundings." 
 British Medical Journal, — " Charming grounds. A very pleasant 
 
 view from the public rooms, the house standing on a terrace 30 ft. 
 
 above the river Colne. Spacious dining hall and kitchen. The 
 
 billiard-room a prominent feature." 
 
 ALSO RECOMMENDED BY THE 
 
 Medical Press, Sanitary Record, Morning Post, Standard, 
 
 Daily News, Pall Mall Gazette, St. James s Gazette, Echo, 
 
 Christian World, Church oj England Temperance Chro7iick\ 
 
 A lliance News, Temperance Record, National PhilantJiropisi, 
 
 &c., &c. 
 
 For Terms, apply to the Medical Superintendent, 
 
 K. Welsh Branthwaite, M.R.C.S., 
 
 The Cedars, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire.
 
 
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 LANDLORDS, FARMERS, LABOURERS, TRAVELLERS, 
 SCIENCE, 
 
 WITH AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY, &c., 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ABBEY. * 
 
 •' There is not, at the present day, any question, in my opinion, which 
 so deeply touches the IMoral, the Physical, and the Religious welfare of the 
 World as the question of Temperance."— Lord Catijns. 
 
 THIRD EDITION REVISED. 
 
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