Chapter IV: Part 4

Some very pertinent observations occur in the Report of the Massachusetts Lunacy Commission (_op. cit._ p. 166), on the mixing of the sane and insane together in the State Almshouses, which correspond to our Union Workhouses. They report that the superintendents "were unanimous in their convictions that the mingling of the insane with the sane in these houses operated badly, not only for both parties, but for the administration of the whole institution." Further on, the Commissioners observe (p. 168), "By this mingling the sane and insane together, both parties are more disturbed and uncontrollable, and need more watchfulness and interference on the part of the superintendent and other officers.... It has a reciprocal evil effect in the management of both classes of inmates. The evil is not limited to breaches of order; for there is no security against violence from the attrition of the indiscreet and uneasy paupers with the excitable and irresponsible lunatics and idiots. Most of the demented insane, and many idiots, have eccentricities; they are easily excited and disturbed; and nothing is more common than for inmates to tease, provoke, and annoy them, in view of gratifying their sportive feelings and propensities, by which they often become excited and enraged to a degree to require confinement to ensure the safety of life.... The mingling of the state paupers, sane and insane, makes the whole more difficult and expensive to manage. It costs more labour, watchfulness, and anxiety to take care of them together than it would to take care of them separately."

These sketches from America may be matched in our own country; and they truthfully represent the reciprocal disadvantages of mixing the sane and insane together in the same establishment.

Even supposing the presence of insane in workhouses involved, on the one hand, no disadvantages to the institutions, or to the sane inmates; yet on the other, the evils to the lunatic inhabitants would be condemnatory of it; for the insane necessarily suffer in proportion as the workhouse accommodation differs from that of asylums; or, inversely, as the economical arrangements and management of a workhouse approach those of an asylum. They suffer from many deficiencies and defects in locality and organization, in medical supervision and proper nursing and watching, in moral discipline, and in the means of classification, recreation, and employment.

Workhouses are commonly town institutions; their locality often objectionable; their structure indifferent and dull; their site and their courts for exercise confined and small, and their means of recreation and of occupation, especially out of doors, very limited. Petty officers of Unions so often figure before the world, and have been so admirably portrayed by Dickens and other delineators of character, on account of their peculiarities of manner and practice, that no sketch from us is needed to exhibit their unfitness as guardians and attendants upon the insane. As to workhouse nurses, little certainly can be expected from them, seeing that they are only pauper inmates pressed into the service; if aged, feeble and inefficient; if young, not unlikely depraved or weak-minded; always ignorant, and it may be often cruel; without remuneration or training, and chosen with little or no regard to their qualifications and fitness.

However satisfactory the structure of the ward and its supervision might be rendered, its connexion with a Union Workhouse will be disadvantageous to the good government and order of the establishment, as above noticed, and detrimental to the welfare of the insane confined in it. Thus it must be remembered that very many of the lunatic inmates have been reduced to seek parochial aid solely on account of the distressing affliction which has overtaken them; before its occurrence, they may have occupied an honourable and respectable position in society, and, consequently, where consciousness is not too much blunted, their position among paupers--too often the subjects of moral degradation--must chafe and pain the disordered mind and frustrate more or less all attempts at its restoration. To many patients, therefore, the detention in a workhouse is a punishment superadded to the many miseries their mental disorder inflicts upon them; and consequently, when viewed only in this light, ought not to be tolerated.

Of all cases of lunacy, the wards of a workhouse are least adapted to recent ones, for they are deficient of satisfactory means of treatment, whether medical or moral, and the only result of detention in them to be anticipated, must be to render the malady chronic and incurable. Yet although every asylum superintendent has reported against the folly and injury of the proceeding, and notwithstanding the distinct and strong condemnation of it by the Commissioners in Lunacy, the latter, in their Report for 1857, have to lament an increasing disposition, on the part of Union officers, to receive and keep recent cases in workhouses. Moral treatment we hold to be impossible in an establishment where there are no opportunities of classification, no proper supervision and attendance, and no means for the amusement and employment of the mind; but where, on the contrary, the place and organization are directly opposed to it, and the prospects of medical treatment are scarcely less unfavourable. An underpaid and overworked medical officer, in his hasty visits through the wards of the workhouse daily, or perhaps only three or four times a week, very frequently without any actual experience among the insane, cannot be expected to give any special attention to the Pauper Lunatics, who are mostly regarded as a nuisance in the establishment, to be meddled with as little as possible, and of whose condition only unskilled, possibly old and unfeeling pauper nurses, can give any account. Indeed, unless reported to be sick, it scarcely falls into the routine of the Union medical officer regularly to examine into the state and condition of the pauper lunatics. These remarks are confirmed by the statement of the Lunacy Commissioners, in their 'Further Report,' 1847 (p. 276), that pauper inmates, "in their character of lunatics merely, are rarely the objects of any special medical attention and care," and that it "was never found (except perhaps in a few cases) that the medical officer had taken upon himself to apply remedies specially directed to the alleviation or cure of the mental disorder. Nor was this indeed to be expected, as the workhouse never can be a proper place for the systematic treatment of insanity."

It would unnecessarily extend the subject to examine each point of management and organization affecting the well-being of the insane in detail, in order to show how unsuitable in all respects a workhouse must be for their detention; yet it may be worth while to direct attention to one or two other matters.

Except when some bodily ailment is apparent, the lunatic fare like the ordinary inmates; that is, they are as cheaply fed as possible, without regard to their condition as sufferers from disease, which, because mental, obtains no special consideration. It is in the power of the medical officer, on his visits, to order extra diet if he observes any reason in the general health to call for it; but the dependent position of this gentleman upon the parish authorities, and his knowledge that extra diet and its extra cost will bring down upon him the charge of extravagance and render his tenure of office precarious, are conditions antagonistic to his better sentiments concerning the advantages of superior nutriment to his insane patients.

Moreover, the cost of food is a principal item in that of the general maintenance of paupers, and one wherein the guardians of the poor believe they reap so great an economical advantage over asylums. But this very gain, so esteemed by poor-law guardians, is scouted as a mistake and proved an extravagance, _i. e._ if the life and well-being of the poor lunatics are considered, by the able superintendents of County Asylums. Dr. Bucknill has well argued this matter in a paper "On the Custody of the Insane Poor" (Asylum Journal, vol. iv. p. 460), and in the course of his remarks says,--"The insane cannot live on a low diet; and while they continue to exist, their lives are rendered wretched by it, owing to the irritability which accompanies mental disease. The assimilating functions in chronic insanity are sluggish and imperfect, and a dietary upon which sane people would retain good health, becomes in them the fruitful source of dysentery and other forms of fatal disease."

In his just published Report, already quoted, the same excellent physician remarks (p. 9),--"A good diet is essential to the tranquil condition of many idiots and chronic lunatics, and is, without doubt, a principal reason why idiots are easily manageable in this asylum, who have been found to be unmanageable in union houses. The Royal Commission which has recently reported on the Lunatic Asylums in Ireland states this fact broadly, that 'the ordinary workhouse dietary is unsuited and insufficient for any class of the insane.' It is therefore my opinion, founded upon the above considerations, that neither the lunatics nor the idiots in the list presented are likely to retain their present state of tranquillity, and to be harmless to themselves and others, if they are placed in union houses, unless they are provided with those means which are found by experience to ensure the tranquillity of the chronic insane, and especially with a sufficient number of trustworthy attendants, and with a dietary adapted to their state of health. I have thought it desirable to ascertain the practice of charitable institutions especially devoted to the training of idiots, and I find that a fuller dietary is used in them than in this asylum."

Until a recent date, it was the custom in workhouses, with few exceptions, to allow most of their insane inmates to mingle with the ordinary pauper inmates of the same age and sex, and in general to be very much on the same footing with them "in everything that regards diet, occupation, clothing, bedding, and other personal accommodation" (Report, 1847, p. 276).

This mingling of the sane and insane, having been found subversive of good order and management, gave rise first to the plan of placing most of the latter class in particular wards, many of them in the infirmary, and, subsequently, owing to the advance of public opinion respecting the wants of the insane, to the construction, in many unions, of special lunatic wards, emulating more or less the character and purposes of asylums. The false economy of this plan has been already exposed; and although the Lunacy Commissioners have always set their faces against lunatic wards, yet their construction has of late been so rapid as to call forth a more energetic denunciation of it:--"Impressed strongly (the Commissioners write, Report, 1857, p. 17) with a sense of their many evils, it became our duty, during the past year, to address the Poor-Law Board against the expediency of affording any encouragement or sanction to the further construction, in connexion with Union Workhouses, of lunatic wards."

The evils of lunatic wards, alluded to in the last-quoted paragraph, are thus enlarged upon in another page of the same Report (p. 15):--"It is obvious that the state of the workhouses, as receptacles for the insane, is becoming daily a subject of greater importance. They are no longer restricted to such pauper lunatics as,--requiring little more than the ordinary accommodation, and being capable of associating with the other inmates,--no very grave objection rests against their receiving. Indeed it will often happen that residence in a workhouse, under such conditions, is beneficial to patients of this last-mentioned class; by the inducements offered, from the example of those around them, to engage in ordinary domestic duties and occupations, and so to acquire gradually the habit of restraining and correcting themselves. But these are now unhappily the exceptional cases. Many of the larger workhouses, having lunatic wards containing from 40 to 120 inmates, are becoming practically lunatic asylums in everything but the attendance and appliances which ensure the proper treatment, and above all, in the supervision which forms the principal safeguard of patients detained in asylums regularly constituted.

"The result is, that detention in workhouses not only deteriorates the more harmless and imbecile cases to which originally they are not unsuited, but has the tendency to render chronic and permanent such as might have yielded to early care. The one class, no longer associating with the other inmates, but congregated in separate wards, rapidly degenerate into a condition requiring all the attendance and treatment to be obtained only in a well-regulated asylum; and the others, presenting originally every chance of recovery, but finding none of its appliances or means, rapidly sink into that almost hopeless state which leaves them generally for life a burthen on their parishes. Nor can a remedy be suggested so long as this workhouse system continues. The attendants for the most part are pauper inmates, totally unfitted for the charge imposed upon them. The wards are gloomy, and unprovided with any means for occupation, exercise, or amusement; and the diet, essential above all else to the unhappy objects of mental disease, rarely in any cases exceeds that allowed for the healthy and able-bodied inmates."

The subject had previously received their attention, and is thus referred to in their Ninth Report (p. 38):--"They are very rarely provided with any suitable occupation or amusement for the inmates. The means of healthful exercise and labour out of doors are generally entirely wanting, and the attendants (who are commonly themselves paupers) are either gratuitous, or so badly organized and so poorly requited, that no reliance can be placed on the efficiency of their services. In short, the wards become in fact places for the reception and detention of lunatics, without possessing any of the safeguards and appliances which a well-constructed and well-managed lunatic asylum affords. Your Lordship, therefore, will not be surprised to learn that while we have used our best endeavours to remedy their obvious defects and to ameliorate as far as possible the condition of their inmates, we have from the first uniformly abstained from giving any official sanction or encouragement to their construction."

They further make this general observation:--"So far as the lunatic and idiotic inmates are concerned, the condition of the workhouses which have separate wards expressly appropriated to the use of that class, is generally inferior to that of the smaller workhouses, and in some instances extremely unsatisfactory."

Dr. Bucknill, whose excellent remarks on lunatic wards in their economical aspect we have already quoted, has very ably canvassed the question of their fitness as receptacles for the insane, and, in a paper in the 'Asylum Journal' (vol. iii. p. 497), thus treats on it:--"It is deserving of consideration, whether the introduction of liberally-conducted lunatic wards into a Union Workhouse would not interfere with the working of the latter in its legitimate scope and object. A workhouse is the test of destitution. To preserve its social utility, its economy must always be conducted on a parsimonious scale. No luxuries must be permitted within its sombre walls; even the comforts and conveniences of life must be maintained in it below the average of those attainable by the industry of the labouring poor. How can a liberally-conducted lunatic ward be engrafted upon such a system? It would leaven the whole lump with the taint of liberality, and the so-called pauper bastile would, in the eyes of the unthrifty and indolent poor, be deprived of the reputation which drives them from its portals."

There is a general concurrence among all persons competent to form any opinion on the matter, that workhouses are most unfit places for the reception of recent cases of insanity. On the other hand, there is a prevalent belief that there is a certain class of the insane, considered "harmless," for whom such abodes are not unsuitable. The Lunacy Commissioners, in the extract from the Eleventh Report above quoted, partake in this opinion: let us therefore endeavour to ascertain, as precisely as we can, the class of patients intended, and the proportion they bear to the usual lunatic inmates of Union Workhouses.

In their 'Further Report' for 1847, the Commissioners enter into a particular examination of the characters of the lunatics found in workhouses, and class them under three heads (p. 257):--1st, those who, from birth, or from an early period of life, have exhibited a marked deficiency of intellect as compared with the ordinary measure of understanding among persons of the same age and station; 2ndly, those who are demented or fatuous; that is to say, those whose faculties, not originally defective, have been subsequently lost, or become greatly impaired through the effects of age, accident, or disease; and 3rdly, those who are deranged or disordered in mind, in other words, labouring under positive mental derangement, or, as it is popularly termed, "insanity." Those in whom epilepsy or paralysis is complicated with unsoundness of mind, although their case requires a separate consideration, do not in strictness constitute a fourth class, but may properly be referred, according to the character of their malady and its effects upon their mental condition, to one or other of these three classes.

Further on in the Report, after remarking on the difficulties besetting their inquiry, they write (p. 274):--

"We believe, however, we are warranted in stating, as the result of our experience thus far, that of the entire number of lunatics in workhouses, whom we have computed at 6020 or thereabouts, two-thirds at the least, or upwards of 4000, would be properly placed in the first of the three classes in the foregoing arrangement; or, in other words, are persons in whom, as the mental unsoundness or deficiency is a congenital defect, the malady is not susceptible of cure, in the proper sense of the expression; and whose removal to a curative lunatic asylum, except as a means of relieving the workhouse from dangerous or offensive inmates, can be attended with little or no benefit.

"A considerable portion of this numerous class, not less, perhaps, than a fourth of the whole, are subject to gusts of passion and violence, or are addicted to disgusting propensities, which render them unfit to remain in the workhouse; and it is the common practice, when accommodation can be procured, to effect the removal of such persons to a lunatic asylum, where their vicious propensities are kept under control, and where, if they cannot be corrected, they at least cease to be offensive or dangerous. But although persons of this description are seldom fit objects for a curative asylum, they are in general capable of being greatly improved, both intellectually and morally, by a judicious system of training and instruction; their dormant or imperfect faculties may be stimulated and developed; they may be gradually weaned from their disgusting propensities; habits of decency, subordination, and self-command may be inculcated, and their whole character as social beings may be essentially ameliorated."

The conclusion to be deduced from these extracts is, that one-fourth or two-thirds, that is, one-sixth of the whole number of occupants in workhouses of unsound mind, found in 1846, were unfit for those receptacles, and demanded the provision of institutions in which a moral discipline could be carried out, and their whole condition, as social beings, ameliorated and elevated. A further examination of the data supplied in the same Report will establish the conviction that, besides the proportion just arrived at, requiring removal to fitting asylums, there is another one equally large demanding the same provision.

In this number are certainly to be placed all those of the third class "labouring under positive mental derangement," and who, although reported as "comparatively few" in 1846, have subsequently been largely multiplied, according to the evidence of the 'Eleventh Report' (_ante_, p. 56). Those, again, "in whom epilepsy or paralysis is complicated with unsoundness of mind," are not suitable inmates for workhouse wards. No form of madness is more terrible than the furor attendant on epileptic fits; none more dangerous; and, even should the convulsive affection have so seriously damaged the nervous centres that no violence need be dreaded, yet the peril of the fits to the patient himself, and their painful features, render him an unfit inmate of any other than an establishment provided with proper appliances and proper attendants. As to the paralytic insane, none call for more commiseration, or more careful tending and nursing--conditions not commonly to be found in workhouses.

The Commissioners in Lunacy have not omitted the consideration of workhouses as receptacles for epileptics and paralytics, and have arrived at the following conclusions:--After treating, in the first place, of epileptics whose fits are slight and infrequent, and the mental disturbance mild and of short duration, they observe that, as such persons "always require a certain amount of supervision, and as they are quite incompetent, when the fits are upon them, to take care of themselves, and generally become violent and dangerous, it would seem that the workhouse can seldom be a suitable place for their reception, and that their treatment and care would be more properly provided for in a chronic hospital especially appropriated to the purpose."

Concerning paralytics, they state that they are far less numerous than epileptics, and being for the most part helpless and bedridden, are treated as sick patients in the infirmary of the workhouse. Their opinion is, however, that a chronic hospital would be a more appropriate receptacle for them,--a conclusion in which all must coincide, who know how much can be done to prolong and render more tolerable their frail and painful existence, by good diet and by assiduous and gentle nursing,--by such means, in short, as are not to be looked for in establishments where rigid economy must be enforced, and pauper life weighed against its cost.

To turn now to the second class of workhouse Lunatic Inmates, the demented from age, accident, or disease: these, we do not hesitate to say, are not suitably accommodated in workhouses, for, like the paralytic, they require careful supervision, good diet and kind nursing; they are full-grown children, unable to help or protect themselves, to control their habits and tendencies; often feeble and tottering, irritable and foolish, and, without the protection and kindness of others, the helpless subjects of many ills. For such, the whole organization of the workhouse is unsuited; even the infirmary is not a fitting refuge; for, on the one hand, they are an annoyance to the other inmates, and, on the other, pauper nurses--whose office is often thrust upon them without regard to their fitness for it,--are not fitting guardians for them. In fine, where age, accident or disease has so deteriorated the mental faculties, we have a complication of physical and mental injury to disqualify the patient from partaking with his fellow-paupers in the common accommodation, diet, and nursing.

In the reverse order which we have pursued, the first class of congenital, imbecile, and idiotic inmates comes to be considered last. This happens by the method of exclusion adopted in the argument; for the second and third classes have been set aside as proper inmates of some other institution than a workhouse, and it now remains to inquire, who among the representatives of the first class are not improperly detained in workhouses. This class includes, as already seen, some two-thirds of the whole number of inmates mentally disordered; and among whom, we presume, are to be found those individuals who may, in the Commissioners' opinion, mix advantageously with the general residents of the establishment. The number of the last cannot, we believe, be otherwise than very small; for the very supposition that there is imbecility of mind, is a reason of greater or less force, according to circumstances, for not exposing them to the contact of an indiscriminate group of individuals, more especially of that sort to be generally found in workhouses. The evils of mingling the sane and insane in such establishments have already been insisted upon; and besides these, such imbecile patients as are under review, lack in workhouses those means of employment and diversion which modern philanthropy has suggested to ameliorate and elevate their physical and moral condition.

Lastly, if the remaining members of this class be considered, in whom the imbecility amounts to idiocy, the propriety of removing them from the workhouse will be questioned by few. Indeed, will any one now-a-days advocate the "_laissez faire_" system in the case of idiots? Experience has demonstrated that they are improveable, mentally, morally, and physically; and if so, it is the duty of a christian community to provide the means and opportunities for effecting such improvement. It cannot be contended that the workhouse furnishes them; on the contrary, it is thoroughly defective and objectionable by its character and arrangements, and, as the Commissioners report, (_op. cit._ p. 259) a very unfit abode for idiots.

On looking over the foregoing review of the several classes of lunatic inmates of workhouses distinguished by the Commissioners in Lunacy, the opinion to be collected clearly is, that only a very few partially imbecile individuals among them are admissible into workhouses, if their bodily health, their mental condition, their due supervision and their needful comforts and conveniences are to be duly attended to and provided for. In accordance with the views we entertain, as presently developed, of the advantages of instituting asylums for confirmed chronic, quiet, and imbecile patients, we should permit, if any at all, only such imbecile individuals as residents in workhouses, who could pass muster among the rest, without annoyance, prejudice or discomfort to themselves or others, and be employed in the routine occupations of the establishment.

So much is heard among poor-law guardians and magistrates about a class of "harmless patients" suitably disposed of in workhouses and rightly removeable from asylums, that a few remarks are called for concerning them. To the eye of a casual visitor of an asylum, there does certainly appear a large number of patients, so quiet, so orderly, so useful and industrious, that, although there is something evidently wrong about their heads, yet the question crosses the mind, whether asylum detention is called for in their case. The doubt is not entertained by the experienced observer, for he knows well that the quiet, order, and industry observable are the results of a well-organized system of management and control; and that if this fails, the goodly results quickly vanish to be replaced by the bitter fruits generated by disordered minds. The "harmless" patient of the asylum ward becomes out of it a mischievous, disorderly, and probably dangerous lunatic. In fact, the tranquillity of many asylum inmates is subject to rude shocks and disturbances, even under the care and discipline of the Institution; and the inoffensive-looking patient of to-day may, by his changed condition, be a source of anxiety, and a subject for all the special appliances it possesses, to-morrow.

Any Asylum Superintendent would be embarrassed to select a score of patients from several hundred under his care whom he could deliberately pronounce to be literally "harmless" if transferred to the workhouse. He might be well able to certify that for months or years they have gone on quietly and well under the surrounding influences and arrangements of the asylum, but he could not guarantee that this tranquillity should be undisturbed by the change to the wards of the workhouse; that untrained attendants and undesirable associates should not rekindle the latent tendency to injure and destroy; that defective organization and the absence of regular and regulated means of employment and recreation should not revive habits of idleness and disorder; or that a less ample dietary, less watchfulness and less attention to the physical health, should not aggravate the mental condition and engender those disgusting habits, which a good diet and assiduous watching are known to be the best expedients to remedy.

Dr. Bucknill has some very cogent remarks on this subject in his last Report of the Devon Asylum (p. 6). "The term 'harmless patients,' or in the words of the statute, those 'not dangerous to themselves or others' (he writes), I believe to be inapplicable to any insane person who is not helpless from bodily infirmity or total loss of mind: it can only with propriety be used as a relative term, meaning that the patient is not so dangerous as others are, or that he is not known to be refractory or suicidal. It should not be forgotten, that the great majority of homicides and suicides, committed by insane persons, have been committed by those who had previously been considered harmless; and this is readily explained by the fact, that those known to be dangerous or suicidal are usually guarded in such a manner as to prevent the indulgence of their propensities; whilst the so-called harmless lunatic or idiot has often been left without the care which all lunatics require, until some mental change has taken place, or some unusual source of irritation has been experienced, causing a sudden and lamentable event. In an asylum such patients may truly be described as not dangerous to themselves or others, because they are constantly seen by medical men experienced in observing the first symptoms of mental change or excitement, and in allaying them by appropriate remedies; they are also placed under the constant watchfulness and care of skilful attendants, and they are removed from many causes of irritation and annoyance to which they would be exposed if at large, in villages or union houses.

"It not unfrequently happens that idiots who have lived for many years in union houses, and have always been considered harmless and docile, under the influence of some sudden excitement, commit a serious overt act, and are then sent to an asylum. One of the most placid and harmless patients in this asylum, who is habitually entrusted with working tools, is a criminal lunatic, of weak intellect, who committed a homicide on a boy, who teased him while he was breaking stones on the road. If this is the case with those suffering only from mental deficiency, it is evidently more likely to occur in those suffering from any form of mental disease, which is often liable to change its character, and to pass from the form of depression to one of excitement. For these reasons I am convinced that all lunatics, and many strong idiots, can only be considered as 'not dangerous to themselves or others,' when they are placed under that amount of superintendence and care which it has been found most desirable and economical to provide for them in centralized establishments for the purpose.

"For the above reasons, I am unable to express the opinion that any insane patients who are not helpless from bodily infirmity or total loss of mind are _unconditionally_ harmless to themselves and others. I have, however, made out a list of sixty patients who are incurable, and who are likely, _under proper care_, to be harmless to themselves and others.

"Of the patients in this list who are lunatic, only nine have sufficient bodily strength to be engaged in industrial pursuits. The remaining twenty-three are so far incapacitated by the infirmities of old age, or by bodily disease, or by loss of mental power, that they are unable to be employed, and require careful nursing and frequent medical attendance. The patients who have sufficient bodily strength to be employed, are also with the least degree of certainty to be pronounced harmless to themselves and others. As the result of long training, they willingly and quietly discharge certain routine employments under proper watch; but it is probable, that if removed from their present position, any attempts made to employ them by persons unaccustomed to the peculiarities of the insane, will be the occasion of mental excitement and danger.

"The twenty-eight idiots have, with few exceptions, been sent to the asylum from union houses, where it has been found undesirable to detain them, on account either of their violent conduct, or of their dirty habits, or some other peculiarity connected with their state of mental deficiency; habits of noise or indecency for instance."

Probably the following extract from the Report of the Committee of the Surrey Asylum (1856) may have more weight with some minds than any of the arguments and illustrations previously adduced, to prove that the detention of presumed "harmless patients" in workhouses will not answer. The declaration against the plan on the part of the Surrey magistrates is the more important, because they put it into practice with the persuasion that it would work well. But to let them speak for themselves, they write,--"The committee adverted at considerable length in their last Annual Report to the circumstance of the asylum being frequently unequal to the requirements of the County, and of their intention to attempt to remedy the defect by discharging all those patients, who, being harmless and inoffensive, it was considered might be properly taken care of in their respective union houses.

"The plan has been tried, and has not been successful. Patients who, under the liberal and gentle treatment they experience in the asylum, are quiet and tractable, are not necessarily so under the stricter regulations of a workhouse; indeed, so far as the experiment has been tried, the reverse has been found to be the case; most of the patients so discharged having been shortly afterwards returned to the asylum, or placed in some other institution for the insane, in consequence of their having become, with the inmates of the workhouse, 'a mutual annoyance to each other.' Any arrangement, short of an entire separation from the other inmates of the workhouse, will be found to be inefficient." This is the same as saying that if lunatics are to reside in workhouses, a special asylum must be instituted in the establishment for their care, and the comfort and safety of the other inmates.

If the well-being of the insane were the only question to be settled, no difficulty would attend the solution, for experience has most clearly evidenced the vast advantages of asylums over workhouses as receptacles for insane patients, whatever the form or degree of their malady. Dr. Bucknill has some very forcible remarks in his paper on "The Custody of the Insane Poor" (Asylum Journal, vol. iv. p. 460), with illustrative cases; and in his Report last quoted, reverts to this subject of the relative advantages of asylums and workhouses; but we forbear to quote, if only from fear of being thought to enlarge unduly upon a question which has been decided long ago by the observation and experience of all those concerned in the management of the pauper insane; viz. that whatever the type and degree of mental disorder and of fatuity, its sufferers become improved in properly managed asylums, as intellectual, moral, and social beings upon removal from workhouses; and by a reverse transfer, are deteriorated in mind, and rendered more troublesome and more costly. To the workhouse the lunatic ward is an excrescence, and its inmates an annoyance: in its organization, there is an absence or deficiency of almost all those means conducive to remedy or remove the mental infirmity, and the very want of which contributes as much as positive neglect and maltreatment to render the patient's condition worse, by lowering his mental and moral character. But such deterioration or degradation is not an isolated evil, or the mere negation of a better state; for it acts as a positive energy in developing moral evil, and brings in its train perverseness, destructiveness, loss of natural decency in habits, conversation and conduct, and many other ills which render their subjects painfully humiliating as human beings, and a source of trouble, annoyance, and expense to all those concerned with them.

In a previous page we have sought to determine what was the proportion of lunatic inmates found by the Lunacy Commissioners in workhouses considered to be not improperly detained in them, and have estimated it at one-half of the whole number. The foregoing examination, however, of the adaptation of workhouses for the several classes of lunatics distinguishable, leads to the conviction that a very much less proportion than one-half ought to be found in those establishments. For our own part, we would wish to see the proportion reduced by the exclusion of most of its component members, reckoned as "harmless" patients; a reduction which would well nigh make the proportion vanish altogether. What is to be done with the lunatics removed from workhouses, is a question to be presently investigated.

But before proceeding further, some consideration of the legal bearings of workhouse detention of lunatics is wanting, for it has been advanced by some writers that such detention is illegal.

Now, in the first place, it must be admitted that a workhouse is not by law, nor in its intent and purpose, a place of imprisonment or detention. Its inmates are free to discharge themselves, and to leave it at will when they no longer stand in need of its shelter and maintenance. Whilst in it, they are subject to the general rules of workhouse-government, and to a superior authority, empowered, if not by statute, yet by orders of the Poor-Law Board, or by Bye-Laws of the Guardians, to exercise discipline by the enforcement of penalties involving a certain measure of punishment. Temporary seclusion in a room may be countenanced, although not positively permitted by law; but prolonged confinement, the deprivation of liberty, and a persistent denial of free egress from the house, are proceedings opposed to the true principles of English law.

Yet it may be that a plea for their detention might be sustained in the case of sick or invalid patients (with whom the insane would be numbered) under certificate of the parochial medical officer, provided no friend came forward to guarantee their proper care, or that they could not show satisfactorily the means of obtaining it; for, of such cases, the workhouse authorities may be considered the rightful and responsible guardians, required in the absence of friends to undertake their charge and maintenance. Upon such grounds, probably, cause might be shown for the detention of the greater part of workhouse lunatic inmates, although there is no Act of Parliament explicitly to sanction it. Should such a plea be admitted, the notion, entertained by Dr. Bucknill, that an action would lie for false imprisonment against the Master and Guardians of the workhouse, would be found erroneous.

The Lunacy Commissioners presented some remarks on this question, indicating a similar view to that just advanced in their 'Further Report,' 1847. For instance (p. 287, _op. cit._), they observed:--

"How far a system of this kind, which virtually places in the hands of the masters, many of whom are ignorant, and some of whom maybe capricious and tyrannical, an almost absolute control over the personal liberty of so many of their fellow men, is either warranted by law, or can be wholesome in itself, are questions which seem open to considerable doubt. Probably if the legality of the detention came to be contested before a judicial tribunal in any individual case, the same considerations of necessity or expediency which originally led to the practice, might be held to justify the particular act, provided it were shown that the party complaining of illegal detention could not be safely trusted at large, and that his detention, therefore, though compulsory, instead of being a grievance, was really for his benefit as well as that of the community."

Again, in the second place, the law, without direct legislation to that effect, yet admits,--by the provisions it makes for pauper lunatics not in asylums or licensed houses, and by the distinction it establishes between persons proper to be sent to an asylum, and lunatics generally so-called,--that insane patients may be detained elsewhere than in asylums. For instance, by _sect._ lxvi. 16 & 17 Vict. cap. 97, 1853, provision is made for a quarterly visit by the Union or Parish Medical Officer to any Pauper Lunatic _not being_ in a Workhouse, Asylum, Registered Hospital, or Licensed House, in order that he may ascertain how the lunatic is treated, and whether he "may or may not properly remain out of an asylum." So likewise by _sect._ lxiv. of the same Act, the clerk or overseers are required to "make out and sign a true and faithful list of all lunatics chargeable to the Union or Parish in the form in schedule (D)." This form is tabular, and presents five columns, under the heading of "where maintained," of which three are intended for the registry of the numbers not confined in Asylums, Hospitals, and Licensed Houses, but who are (1) in workhouses, (2) in lodgings, or boarding out, or (3) residing with relatives.

Further, the law distinguishes, by implication, a class of lunatics as specially standing in need of Asylum care, and as distinct from others. By the Poor-Law Amendment Act (4 & 5 Will. IV. cap. 76. sect. 45), it is ordered that nothing in that Act "shall authorize the detention in any workhouse of any dangerous lunatic, insane person, or idiot for any longer period than fourteen days; and every person wilfully detaining in any workhouse any such lunatic, insane person, or idiot for more than fourteen days, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanour." This section is still in force, is constantly acted upon by the Poor-Law Board, and is legally so read as if the word 'dangerous' were repeated before the three divisions of mentally-disordered persons referred to, viz. lunatics, insane persons, and idiots. So, likewise, by _sect._ lxvii. (16 & 17 Vict. cap. 97)--the "Lunatic Asylums' Act, 1853," now in operation,--the transmission of an insane individual to an asylum is contingent on the declaration that he is "a lunatic and a _proper person to be sent to an asylum_."

Moreover, by _sect._ lxxix. of the same Act, it is competent to any three Visitors of an asylum, or to any two in conjunction with the Medical Officer of the asylum, to discharge on trial for a specified time "any person detained in such asylum, whether such person be recovered or not;" and by the following section (lxxx.) it is ordered, that, upon receipt of the notice of such discharge, "the Overseers or Relieving Officers respectively shall cause such lunatic to be forthwith _removed to_ their parish, or to the _workhouse of the Union_." By the 79th section it is further provided, that "in case any person so allowed to be absent on trial for any period do not return at the expiration of such period, and a medical certificate as to his state of mind, certifying that his detention in an Asylum is no longer necessary, be not sent to the Visitors, he may, at any time, within fourteen days after the expiration of such period, be retaken, as herein provided in the case of an escape."

On the other hand, simple removal from an asylum is by the 77th section, curiously enough interdicted except to another asylum, a Registered Hospital, or a Licensed House. This intent, too, of the section is not changed by the amendment, _sect._ viii. 18 & 19 Vict. cap. 105. Lastly, no other place than an Asylum, Registered Hospital, or Licensed House, is constituted lawful by _sect._ lxxii. for the reception of any person found lunatic and under "order by a Justice or Justices, or by a Clergyman and Overseer or Relieving Officer, to be dealt with as such." But this section has to be read in connexion with preceding ones, for instance, with _sect._ lvii., by which it is laid down that the Justices or other legal authority must satisfy themselves not only that the individual is a lunatic, but also that he is "a proper person to be sent to an asylum."

These quotations indicate the state of the law respecting the detention of lunatics elsewhere than in asylums. This state cannot be held to be satisfactory: it evidently allows the detention of lunatics in workhouses, while at the same time it affords them little protection against false imprisonment, and makes no arrangement for their due supervision and care, except by means of the visits of the Lunacy Commissioners, which are only made from time to time, not oftener than once a year, and rarely so often. The alleged lunatics are for the most part placed and kept in confinement without any legal document to sanction the proceeding; without a certificate of their mental alienation, and without an order from a magistrate. Within the workhouse, they are, unless infirm or sick, treated like ordinary paupers, save in the deprivation of their liberty of exit; they may be mechanically restrained, or placed in close seclusion by the order of the master, who is likely enough to appreciate the sterner means of discipline and repression, but not the moral treatment as pursued in asylums; and, lastly, they live deprived of all those medical and general measures of amelioration and recovery as here before sketched.

An extract from the 'Further Report' of the Commissioners in Lunacy will form a fitting appendix to the observations just made. It occurs at p. 287 (_op. cit._), and stands thus:--

"It certainly appears to be a great anomaly, that while the law, in its anxiety to guard the liberty of the subject, insists that no persons who are insane--not even dangerous pauper lunatics--shall be placed or kept in confinement in a lunatic asylum without orders and medical certificates in a certain form, it should at the same time be permitted to the master of a workhouse forcibly to detain in the house, and thus to deprive of personal liberty, any inmate whom, upon his own sole judgment and responsibility, he may pronounce to be a person of unsound mind, and therefore unfit to be at large."

It is unsatisfactory that the law recognizes the distinction between dangerous and other lunatics, designated as "harmless;" for we have pointed out that no such rigid separation can be made; that it is with very few exceptions impracticable to say with certainty what patients are harmless and what not, inasmuch as their state is chiefly determined by surrounding conditions, by the presence or absence of moral control and treatment. It is likewise to be regretted that so much is left to the discretion of relieving officers and overseers, in the determination of the lunatics "proper to be sent to an asylum;" for those parish functionaries nearly always display a proclivity, where relief is to be afforded, to any plan which at first sight promises to be the most cheap; and hence it is, as remarked in previous pages, they think to serve the rate-payers best by keeping, if practicable, the insane in workhouses. The expediency of asylum treatment for those who claim it, is surely not a question to be determined by such officers. Yet the wording of the Act (_sect._ lxvii.), that, if they have notice from the parish medical officer of any pauper who "is, or is deemed to be a lunatic, and a proper person to be sent to an asylum," or if they in any other manner gain knowledge of a pauper "who is, or is deemed to be a lunatic, and a proper person to be sent to an asylum, they shall within three days" give notice thereof to a magistrate,--seems to put the solution of the question pretty much in their hands. Although when they receive a notice of a pauper lunatic from the union medical officer, they would appear by _sect._ lxx. to be bound to apprise a Justice of the matter, yet, in the absence of such a notice, an equal power in determining on the case is lodged in their hands as in those of the medical officer, by the phrase "is, or is deemed to be a lunatic, and a proper person to be sent to an asylum;" for this clause respecting the fitness of the case, reads with the parts of the sentence as though it stood thus in full--'is a lunatic and a proper person to be sent to an asylum, or is deemed a lunatic and a proper person to be sent to an asylum;' and there is nothing in _sect._ lxx. to enforce, under these circumstances, a notice being sent to a Justice. It is, indeed, evidently left to the discretion of the overseer or relieving officer to report a case of lunacy falling within his own knowledge to a Justice, for he is empowered to assume the function of deciding whether it is or is not a proper one for an asylum. Moreover, we cannot refrain from thinking that a parochial medical officer is not always sufficiently independent, as a paid _employé_, to certify to the propriety of asylum care so often as he might do, where the guardians or other directors of parish affairs are imbued with rigid notions of economy, and hold the asylum cost for paupers in righteous abhorrence. In fine, were this enactment for reporting pauper lunatics to County and Borough Justices, in order to obtain a legal sanction for their detention, sufficiently clear and rigidly enforced, there would not be so many lunatics in workhouses, and none of those very unfit ones animadverted upon by the Commissioners in Lunacy (see p. 25, and 11th Rep. C. L. 1857).

The first clause of _sect._ lxvii. is ambiguous; for though it is evidently intended primarily to make the Union medical officer the vehicle of communicating the knowledge of the existence of pauper lunatics in his parish, yet it is neither made his business to inquire after such persons, nor when he knows of their existence, to visit and ascertain their condition. It is left open for him to act upon a report that such a pauper "is deemed to be a lunatic, and a proper person to be sent to an asylum," without seeing the individual; but generally he will officially hear first of such patients through the channel of the relieving officer, by receiving an order to visit them. Indeed, the relieving officer is legally the first person to be informed of a pauper requiring medical or other relief; and, as we have seen, it is competent for him to decide on the question of asylum transmission or not for any case coming directly to his knowledge. Hence, in the exercise of his wisdom, he may order the lunatic forthwith into the Union-house, and call upon the medical officer there to visit him. The consignment of the lunatic to the workhouse being now an accomplished fact, it becomes a hazardous enterprise, and a gratuitous task on the part of the medical officer (for no remuneration is offered for his report), to give the relieving officer or overseer a written notice that the poor patient should rightly be sent to the asylum, when he knows that those parish authorities have made up their minds that it is not a proper case to be sent there. In fact, the law makes no demand of a notice from the medical officer of the Union necessary where the knowledge of a lunatic pauper first reaches the relieving officer or overseer, or where the patient is already in the workhouse; and no report will be sought from him under such circumstances, unless the parochial authorities decide that they will not take charge of the case in the workhouse.

The object of the 67th and five following sections is evidently to promote the discovery of pauper lunatics, and to ensure the early transmission of all those amenable to treatment to County Asylums; but these advantages are not attained, the legal machinery being defective. To fulfil the intention, it should be made imperative on the part of the relatives or friends to make known the occurrence of a case of lunacy at its first appearance to a duly-appointed medical man, who should visit and register it, and, with the concurrence of a magistrate, order detention in a properly-constituted asylum. Such a medical officer would have a district assigned to him; of his duties at large we shall have occasion hereafter to speak; to allude further to them in this place will cause us to diverge too widely from the subject under consideration.

The 67th section of the "Lunatic Asylums' Act," which has above been submitted to criticism, we find referred to in the Lunacy Commissioners' Eleventh Report, wherein it is spoken of as disregarded by parochial authorities; its ambiguity and the loophole to a contravention of its meaning being, however, unnoticed. The reference occurs in the following passage (_op. cit._ p. 16), which censures a practice we have already animadverted upon:--