First general report
1922-05 1922 1920s 55 pages : illustrations Copy of the Home Secretary's Speech at the opening of the series of Lectures on "The Mind and What We Ought to Know About It," at the Royal Society of Arts," on February 6th, 1922, THE RT. HON. EDWARD SHORTT : Miss Net...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
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London : People's League of Health
May 1922
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/DF39FE48-B980-4A82-AEA7-1547E2A59703 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/146F680B-E805-47E7-ADFF-2F42BE938A9F |
| Summary: | 1922-05
1922
1920s
55 pages : illustrations
Copy of the Home Secretary's Speech at the opening of the series of Lectures on "The Mind and What We Ought to Know About It," at the Royal Society of Arts," on February 6th, 1922, THE RT. HON. EDWARD SHORTT : Miss Nethersole, ladies and gentlemen, I can assure you I esteem it a very great pleasure to be here to-night at the inaugural lecture of a series of lectures of the greatest importance. The League which is promoting them — The People's League of Health — is, comparatively speaking, a young body. I think I am right in saying that it was established in 1917, but it is a body which has a great work before it, because it is concerned not only with the health of the body, but with the health of the mind of the people of this country. It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of a scientific knowledge of the health of the mind as well as of the body, and fortunately for us as a country progress in mental knowledge and mental treatment is advancing, although it is not advancing as quickly as we should desire, but still it is advancing, and lectures of this kind will do a great deal to promote this knowledge — this scientific knowledge that is required, and it is equally of great importance that that knowledge should be possessed not only by experts, but by all the people of the country. We at the Home Office, while it is true that we are no longer concerned with the Control Board or Mental Deficiency, still are very greatly interested in all mental subjects. We come across it, because it is our duty to have the control and the guardianship — and I use advisedly the word guardianship — of criminals of all ages from the youngest to the oldest. We see in our Certified Schools which take young children, in the Industrial Schools which take older children, in the Reformatories, and we see in our Borstal Institutions a large number of what we know as temperamental cases, and the more that is known by scientists of mental troubles, mental disorders, and mental diseases, the easier our task will become. It is really monstrous to think that a person who is a criminal because of some mental disorder should be continually punished as a criminal instead of treated as a patient. You might just as well whip a child because it had curvature of the spine in order to cure it. It is just about as sensible, and we are every day acquiring more and more knowledge of how to deal with temperamental cases, and the number of great scientific men who are devoting their lives to the subject, and of others who could not be described as scientific men, like the Foundress of this Society, is increasing every day. Miss NETHERSOLE, after a very distinguished career in another sphere of activity, probably by some considered more frivolous, has been devoting her energies to the study of sociology, of criminology, and of the mind and the body of human beings, and if more people who are not perhaps in the abstract scientific people, that is to say, people who don't devote their lives to science pure and simple, would give some of their spare time, some of their interest to a study of mentality, it would help them enormously both in their own homes with their own children, and those who have to deal with other people's children would derive great benefit. I only wish we could have present every Judge, every Recorder, every Magistrate who has to deal with the young criminals. I know it would be of the greatest possible value if we could; but I can assure you of this, that every day we are advancing more and more in our knowledge of how to treat young criminals, in our knowledge that it is not merely original sin from which they suffer, but it is from a disease, as purely a disease of the mind as is any disease of the body, and we treat them accordingly. I am sorry to say I can't do all I would like in that direction. If I could put into operation all the schemes that I have in my mind both for our Certified Schools and for our Borstal Institutions, the expenditure would be so enormous that the axe would at once decapitate me and my department, but still, what we can do we are doing, and I hope that with reviving trade and reviving prosperity, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be more generous to my department, and we may be able to do in our schools many of the things we want. We want to have, not men trained in the Army — soldiers — we want Schoolmasters and Doctors combined ; we want men who can really study each individual case, and I should like to see a thorough Borstal tutor for each thirty boys that we possess. Then there would be some chance of his getting into their mentality, and thoroughly understanding and doing something to cure and to prevent, and while I am on that, may I say that cure is not everything. Prevention is, if anything, more important than cure. If we can take steps to prevent, we have done far more than if we merely cure those who have gone wrong. Prevention is of vital importance, and these lectures are calculated to teach everyone of us who hear them how to prevent, to give us such a knowledge that we may understand symptoms and know what treatment we ought to give. We have a distinguished, a very distinguished, number of lecturers, who have undertaken to give lectures from time to time. The Lecturer to-night, Dr. HART, is a gentleman of a very distinguished career. He did splendid work during the War in all mental cases. He is now a physician at the University College Hospital, and he has written a number of books on Psychology and Mental Disorders, and I think his record shows that his Lecture to-night will be one of very great interest and most instructive. 48
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