In a message dated 19/05/2007 19:46:21 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Looking at an admission to Morpeth Lunatic Asylum, in 1871, Elizabeth Lavery was listed as 'lunatic'. In 1881 she was one of the few people listed as an 'idiot'. ___________________________________________________________________________ Hi Ann, >From the Report on the 1871 Census. "Of the 69,019 lunatics and imbeciles returned in the Census more than two-thirds were chargeable to the poor rates under the denomination of insane paupers. With respect to this return it is stated that it "includes a large proportion of persons imbecile from old age and of harmless idiots"; the distinction between the idiotic and the insane is not observed in the statistics of poor law relief." >From the Report on the 1881 Census. "Persons of unsound mind are variously returned in the schedules as lunatic, idiot, and imbecile. No accurate line of demarcation can be drawn between the several conditions indicated by these terms. Speaking generally, however, the term idiot is applied in popular usage simply to those who suffer from congenital mental deficiency, and the term imbecile to persons who have fallen in later life into a state of chronic dementia. But it is certain that neither this nor any other definite distinction between the terms was rigorously observed in the schedules, and consequently no attempt has been made by us to separate imbeciles from idiots. The term lunatic also is used with some vagueness, and probably some persons suffering from congenital idiocy, and many more suffering from dementia, were returned under this name. Still, as a rule, the term lunatic is not used to include persons suffering from such affectations, but is limited to those afflicted by more acute forms of mental disease. We have therefore, separated the lunatics from the idiots and imbeciles; the division being desirable for practical purposes hereafter mentioned. Some term, however, was required by us which should stand for all kinds of mental unsoundness, and for convenience we have taken the term insanity to include them all." Regards Stan Mapstone