" In spite of the well-documented deficiencies and abuses associated with the system, lunacy examinations continued to be ordered at a profligate rate. Between 1930 and 1938, one Brooklyn judge alone appointed 1,212 lunacy commissions, doling out the lucrative positions to relatives, friends, and political cronies. Increasingly viewed as nothing more than a flagrant “patronage racket,” the system was finally ended by the New York State Legislature in 1939. At the time of its abolition, the case of Robert Irwin, still fresh in the minds of lawmakers, was cited as a glaring example of everything wrong with lunacy commissions.12 "

― Harold Schechter , The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation