Richard Paternoster

Richard Paternoster (14 October 1802 - 21 July 1892) was an English civil servant in the East India Company, barrister and founder of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society, an organisation that exposed abuses in lunatic asylums and campaigned for the reform of the lunacy laws.

Paternoster was born in 1802 in London, the son of surgeon John Paternoster and Elizabeth Twining. He followed his older brother John to Haileybury College, where he was a brilliant student and won prizes for Sanskrit and Deva Nagri writing. He started his career in the Madras civil service as a writer (a junior clerk) and in 1824 was promoted to an assistant to the magistrate at Bellary. In 1827 he returned to England due to ill-health and was awarded a pension of £150 a year from the East India Company. After spending some time in Paris he settled in London, lodging with widowed basketmaker Catherine Scott and her children in Haymarket. Paternoster was interested in politics and in 1835 produced a handbill calling for parliamentary and various other reforms.

In 1838 Paternoster quarrelled over money with his father and his brother-in-law, solicitor Thomas Wing. These two then arranged to have Paternoster certified as insane and incarcerated in William Finch's private madhouse in Kensington High Street. Paternoster immediately smuggled out a letter to Catherine Scott, who mobilised his friends to try and secure his release. The Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy were called in and by a vote of 6 to 4 pronounced him sane. The commissioners had, by law, to see a patient on 3 occasions at least 21 days apart before they could make a decision, so Paternoster spent 41 days in captivity.

On his release Paternoster inserted an advertisement in The Times, appealing for others who shared his concerns about the lunacy laws to join him. Respondents included two people who were to play a leading role in the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society (as the group was known when it became a formal organisation in 1845):

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