Remarks upon the report of the Metropolitan Commissioners on Lunatic Asylums.

Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks upon the report of the Metropolitan Commissioners on Lunatic Asylums. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    house, at the upper end of the male pauper’s yard. These places had not been laid down in the plan of the house, and they had never been shown either to the Visiting Justices or to the Metropolitan Commissioners, who had previously visited the asylum. They were wooden closets, six feet long, six feet high, and three feet two inches wide; three being on each side of the passage, which was between two and three feet wide. These places had a raised floor, upon which the bedding was placed. They were all extremely close, but the two centre ones had no means of ventilation. They had been regularly used, and were occupied by five males on the night before they were discovered, and were made up for use when first seen. They were, of course, quite unfit for sleeping places.” * In our county and other asylums are to be found a class of patients denominated criminal, amounting at present in England to as many as 224. On this head, the Commissioners state that— u It has been matter of frequent complaint that asylums are made receptacles for criminal lunatics, including all those who are confined under orders from the Secretary of State or Royal warrants. The objections urged to their detention in lunatic asylums, and to the county asylums being required to receive them, apply principally to those who have perpetrated atrocious crimes, and who are dangerous and a source of annoyance to the other inmates, whose liberty is in some cases abridged, in consequence of the necessity of providing for the safe custody of the criminal lunatics. (( We entertain a strong opinion that it is highly desirable arrangements should be made for the separate care and custody of criminal lunatics; and we would submit to your lordship, that, as respects all criminal lunatics who have been charged with serious offences, and whom it is necessary to detain in custody, it is desirable that arrangements should be made with one or more public insti¬ tutions, as Bethlem Hospital, or that a separate class should be formed in some convenient prison.” With these suggestions we heartily concur, and we consider it wise to discriminate between those who have committed atrocious crimes and those found guilty of minor offences. A large pro¬ portion of this description of patients, we have reason to think, are by mere accident very improperly placed in the criminal class. It not unfrequently happens that an individual attacked with insanity commits an act which, in the eye of the law, comes under the charge of a breach of the peace or a misdemeanour, and the insanity of the party, at the time of his examination be¬ fore the magistrate, remaining undiscovered, he is sent to prison, and from thence, on the discovery of his insanity, removed to an asylum by warrant of the Secretary of State. Now it is clear * These closets have since been pulled down, and the building shut up.
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