The name of John Conolly, writes his obituarist in the Journal of Mental Science [12 (1866): 146] “liveth for ever more.” As a reformer he will go down in history as one of the most distinguished men of his age, to be mentioned in the same breath, say, as John Howard, Thomas Clarkson and Lord Shaftesbury. As a psychiatrist he will be identified for all time with the non-restraint system after its translation from France to England. “There is no asylum in the world,” he opined, “in which all mechanical restraints may not be abolished not only with safety, but with incalculable advantage.”