General Chat

if someone once lived in asylums back before people would talk / deal with mental health and disabled people etc would there be a record ??? mainly looking in the leeds area

should be

i didn't know if people under the care of social services ect were protected by some kind of data protection act or any thing :-S

When were you thinking of? Institute records may have survived, but in the main are covered by the '100 year' rule unless it can be proved that the person died x years ago or were born over 100 years ago.

If they were born before Sep 1939 and died by early 1991, their entry on the 1939 register will be in the public domain.

All you can really do if the institution residence was in the last 100 years is to google the hospital's name to find out where any surviving records are held, then contact them.

I had a distant relative in an asylum and her full name is there on the 1911 census. That was how I was able to find her as she quite a distance from the rest of the family.

I then found more info about her and after several years there she was released but went back shortly after as a voluntary patient, she died there in her late 70s. Died early 1960s.

EDIT just checked she is on the 1939 registry.

Thinking specifically about Electoral Rolls - totally emancipation didn't occur until the early 1920's. Even then it didn't extend to Prisoners and probably not to Asylum patients.

It's only in the last couple of years that long-term patients in mental health units have been given the option to vote. Until then it was up to their medical staff/guardians to decide if they had the cognitive ability to be registered.

Historical ER are frequently held at nearest library with a Local Studies Section or the Archive. They are only searchable by address. If you can't visit in person, they may charge a fee to search on your behalf.

i can't really say much as i work in mental health and i was looking for someone in our care we don't no much about his past but he has the most interesting last name but can't find any records of him he is non verble with no known family :-)
thank you

Ok – considering your position re confidentiality and the fact that he is living….

Have you been able to find his birth reg? Even though you don’t believe he has any living relatives, it might be possible to find some more distant ones such as nephews and nieces.
They might have verbal knowledge of ‘Mad Uncle Joe we don’t talk about’.
Alternatively, if he is non-British & has a ‘Foreign’ surname, reach out to the relevant local community.

Even if you are only looking for topics of conversation/family members to talk about, it’s worth working out who his parents were, when they died, where they lived (via ER or certs). From various addresses, you might be able to suggest which schools he or his neighbour’s children went to.

If you don’t feel confident enough to research his family relations, you could start a new thread on Find Living Relatives. If you did so, best to then delete this thread.
Just say something like ‘looking for living relatives of xx xx who was born (give whatever basic details you can) and just say that he has no knowledge of his family.