| Description | Minute volume BCC/1/AF/1/1/16 indexed. The minutes are handwritten and printed and signed by the committee chairman. Minutes BCC/1/AF/1/1/1 are in the volume entitled 'House Committee', and are also duplicated in a separate minute volume. Minutes BCC/1/AF/1/1/2 onwards are in uniformly titled committee minute volumes. The minute number sequence continues unbroken throughout all of the periods of the committee, until minute 10,000 is reached, after which the sequence starts again. The committee minutes contain the annual committee reports, which give detailed breakdowns of committee business. They include the reports of the various asylum sub-committees to the main committee, information on hospital buildings (including maintenance and equipment); details of the appointment and dismissal of committee members and medical and auxiliary staff employed at the city's mental hospitals (including some names); and statements of committee expenditure and annual accounts. There are also articles detailing procedures and instructions to be followed by hospital staff (usually detailed in the sub-committee reports for individual hospitals), agreements for the reception of patients for individual hospitals (with payments), tables giving total patients and vacant beds per hospital (which also detail numbers relating to what were then regarded as individual mental disorders, e.g. hereditary illnesses, epilepsy, alcoholism), recreational activities and social events organised for patients (including associated work of outside volunteers), and details on the potential impact of central government mental health legislation on the work of the committee and its subordinate hospitals, particularly during the early twentieth century. |