In the V&A Museum is an opulent example of gratitude to someone who fought on behalf of sane patients who found themselves certified into insane asylums. In the late 1840s, Gloucestershire magistrate Purnell B. Purnell (pictured below) single-handedly instigated an investigation of that county’s asylums, with devastating conclusions that grabbed national headlines in 1849.

Many lunacy certificates were found to be invalid, some downright untruthful, and some patients had clearly recovered during detention but had been unable to get themselves discharged.

One asylum was shut down and two proprietors had their licence renewals refused. Many people were released and their certification overturned.

Purnell hoped that his actions would demonstrate to the national inspectorate, the Commissioners in Lunacy, and to other English magistrates, just how much could be achieved if the will-power was there.

He became a huge local hero, and a subscription raised thousands of pounds, with which they bought him an ebony and rosewood table with silver inlay. It was displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and remains the V&A’s grandest example of nineteenth-century presentation silver.

The V&A is remarkably ungenerous in permitting imagery to be reproduced for free from its Picture Library, so you need to go here to see it:
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O84362/table-hancock-charles-frederick/