It would carry us too far to enter at length into this evidence. One or two facts must suffice as examples of the rest. At Wexford, where, in the cells for lunatics, there were two patients in restraint, one of whom was chained to a wall, Dr. White, the Inspector of Prisons, thus described the latter: "When I went to his cell with the keeper and the medical officer, I asked to go in. He was naked, with a parcel of loose straw about him. He darted forward at me, and were it not that he was checked by a chain round his leg, and was fastened by a hook to the wall, he would have caught hold of me, and probably used violence. I asked how it was possible they could allow a man to remain in such a state; they said they were obliged to do so, as the funds were so limited that they had not money to buy clothes for him, and that if they had clothes they would have let him out.... I went to another cell, and though the individual was not chained, he was nearly in as bad circumstances as the other. Altogether these two cases were the most frightful I ever witnessed. I could not describe the horror which seized me when I saw them. I went into a room, a very gloomy-looking room, very low, and in this room there was a fireplace, which was guarded by one of those large grate-protectors that are very high up; I looked around and heard some one moaning, and on the top of this screen I saw two unfortunate lunatics stretched out; they were trying to warm themselves through the bars of the grating; the room was so dark that I could not see them at first, and here they were allowed to creep about and to lie in this kind of unprotected manner." In reply to the question, "Was there any moral superintendence?" Dr. White said, "There was both a male and female keeper, but they appeared to me totally unfit for the discharge of their duties."
The number of lunatics confined in jails was found by the inquiry of 1843 to have increased, partly in consequence of the Act 1 and 2 Vict., c. 27, for the more effectual provision for the prevention of offences by insane persons. Two justices were authorized, acting with the advice of a medical man, to commit to jail any person apprehended under circumstances denoting derangement of mind and a purpose of committing crime. A subsequent clause authorized the Lord Lieutenant to transfer such person, as well as convicts, to a lunatic asylum. No steps had been taken to ascertain whether, on the one hand, the jails afforded any accommodation whatever for such lunatics, or whether, on the other, convict lunatics could be properly received into the district asylums. The statute operated widely. Previous to it, in 1837, there had been only thirty-seven lunatics in jails, while by the year 1840 they had augmented to one hundred and ten, of whom eighty-one were maniacs, seventeen were idiots, and twelve were epileptics; while by the 1st of January, 1843, the number amounted to two hundred and fourteen. Of these only forty had been convicted of any criminal offence, showing that the application of the Act had gone much beyond the intention of its framers. Thus it was that "the numbers crowding the county jails were truly distressing, and were made the subject of universal complaint by the local authorities."[266]
The Lords' Committee, of course, insisted on the necessity of discontinuing the committal of lunatics to jails and bridewells, and amending the Act 1 Vict., c. 27, which had led to such serious abuses; the inexpediency of appropriating the union workhouses or houses of industry to the custody or treatment of the insane; the necessity of providing one central establishment for criminal lunatics, under the immediate control and direction of the Government of Ireland, to be supported from the same funds and under the system adopted in respect to criminal lunatics in England; the necessity of increasing the accommodation for pauper lunatics in Ireland, and of providing for the cases of epilepsy, idiocy, and chronic disease by an increased number of the district asylums, by enlargement of these asylums, or by the erection of separate establishments, specially appropriated for these classes of patients.[267]
At this Committee Dr. Conolly gave the results of his non-restraint experience at Hanwell since September, 1839.
The following tabular statement, delivered in at the Committee by the Rev. E. M. Clarke, presents a valuable picture of the state of lunacy in Ireland on the 1st of January, 1843:—
| 1. | Population of Ireland in 1841 | 8,175,238 |
| 2. | Total insane confined January 1, 1843 | 3,529 |
| 3. | Total curable, comprised in No. 2 | 1,055 |
| 4. | Total incurable, ditto | 2,474 |
| 5. | Total curable (not including private asylums) confined January 1, 1843 | 848 |
| 6. | Number for which the district asylums were first built | 1,220 |
| 7. | Number confined in district asylums, January 1, 1843 | 2,061 |
| 8. | Confined in other than district asylums, January 1, 1843 | 1,468 |
| 9. | Number confined in thirty-two jails, January 1, 1843 | 211 |
| 10. | Number confined in workhouses, March 31, 1843 | 557 |
| 11. | Number of curable cases confined in thirty-two jails, January 1, 1843 | 78 |
| 12. | Number of curable cases in district asylums, January 1, 1843 | 698 |
| 13. | Number of incurable cases in district asylums, January 1, 1843 | 1,368 |
A correspondence took place between the Irish Government and the managers of the district asylums on the subject of the Report of the House of Lords' Committee on the state of the lunatic poor, commencing November, 1843, by a letter from Lord Elliott to the superintendents, asking for their opinion. These unanimously endorsed the conclusions arrived at by the Committee, and, in some instances entering into the mode of inspection of asylums by the two inspectors-general of prisons at their half-yearly visitation of gaols, asserted that "it must from a variety of causes be of no use whatever."
The Irish Government also opened a correspondence in 1844 with the grand juries of each county, and their opinion was asked as to the eligibility of the sites proposed for new asylums. As the Acts of Parliament limited the number of patients in any single asylum, it was sought to remove this obstacle by an Act in 1845, 8 and 9 Vict., c. 107. This Act also provided for the erection of a central asylum for criminal lunatics, which carried out one important recommendation of the Lords' Committee. The Cork Asylum was at the same time added to the district asylums.
In 1846 an Act (9 and 10 Vict., c. 115) was passed to amend the laws as to district asylums in Ireland, and to provide for the expenses of inspection of asylums.