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Lunatics not under proper care and control or cruelly treated or neglected.
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13.—(1.) Every constable, relieving officer, and overseer of a parish, who has knowledge that any person within the district or parish of the constable, relieving officer, or overseer, who is not a pauper and not wandering at large, is deemed to be a lunatic and is not under proper care and control, or is cruelly treated or neglected by any relative or other person having the care or charge of him, shall within three days after obtaining such knowledge give information thereof upon oath to a justice being a judicial authority under this Act.
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(2) Any such justice upon the information on oath of any person whomsoever, that a person . not a pauper and not wandering at large, is deemed to be a lunatic and is not under proper care and control, or is cruelly treated or neglected as aforesaid, may himself visit the alleged lunatic, and shall, whether making such visit or not, direct and authorise any two medical practitioners whom he thinks fit to visit and examine the alleged lunatic and to certify their opinion as to his mental state, and the justice shall proceed in the same manner so far as possible, and have as to the alleged lunatic the same powers, as if a petition for a reception order had been presented by the person by whom the information with regard to the alleged lunatic has been sworn.
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(3) If upon the certificates of the medical practitioners who examine the alleged lunatic, or after such other and further inquiry as the justice thinks necessary, he is satisfied that the alleged lunatic is a lunatic, and is not under proper care and control, or is cruelly treated or neglected by any relative or other person having the care or charge of him, and that he is a proper person to be taken charge of and detained under care and treatment, the justice may, by order, direct the lunatic to be received and detained in any institution for lunatics to which, if a pauper, he might be sent under this Act, and the constable, relieving officer, or overseer upon whose information the order has been made, or any constable whom the justice may require so to do, shall forthwith convey the lunatic to the institution named in the order.
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