“No lunatic, or alleged lunatic, to be received into or detained in a workhouse, unless he shall have been duly taken before a justice or officiating clergyman, and adjudged by him as not proper to be sent to an asylum.
“In any case, however, wherein an order for a lunatic’s reception into an asylum shall be made by a justice or officiating clergyman, it shall be competent to him, if, for special reasons to be set forth in his order, he shall deem it expedient, to direct that such lunatic be taken, pro tempore, to the workhouse, and there detained for such limited period, not exceeding two clear days, as may be necessary, pending arrangements for his removal to the asylum.
“A list of all inmates of unsound mind to be kept by the medical officer of a workhouse, and left accessible to the Visiting Commissioners.
“The medical officer to specify, in such list, the forms of mental disorder, and to indicate the patients whom he may deem curable, or otherwise likely to benefit by, or in other respects proper for, removal to an asylum.
“The Visiting Commissioner, and the Poor-Law Inspector, to be empowered to order and direct the relieving officer to take any insane inmate before a justice, under the provisions of the 67th Section of the Lunatic Asylums’ Act, 1853.
“In all cases of inmates of unsound mind temporarily detained in workhouses, the medical officer to be invested with full powers as respects classification, diet, employment, and medical and moral treatment, and otherwise.”
Of some of these suggestions we shall take a future opportunity to speak, and at present pass from the consideration of the state and wants of lunatics in workhouses to notice, briefly, the condition of those living with their friends or elsewhere.
§ Pauper Lunatics living with their relatives or with strangers.
In the previous chapter “On the state of the present provision for the Insane,” some remarks have been made on the class of lunatic poor living with their relatives or strangers, calculated to arrest attention to their numbers and their neglected position. The Commissioners in Lunacy have as a rule, and in the absence of particular information, calculated that they are about equal in number to those resident in workhouses. Considering the imperfect nature of the statistical records of them, and the fact that they escape official observation and inquiry to a much greater extent than even the lunatic inmates of workhouses, we have assumed them to be more numerous, and that there are 8000 so distributed in the homes of our industrial classes.
Of these 8000, more or less, poor persons, dependent, on account of distinct imbecility or idiocy, upon others for protection and support, no one outside their abodes, it may be generally said, thoroughly knows their condition, although a partial knowledge may be possessed by the parochial authorities of the union or parish to which they are chargeable. To these authorities, however, they possess no interest; they are regarded as burdens upon the public purse, to be arranged for on the cheapest terms. The only person at all responsible for their condition is the parish medical officer, who is required by sect. 66 (16 & 17 Vic. cap. 97) to visit them quarterly, and to certify “whether such lunatics are or are not properly taken care of, and may or may not remain out of an asylum.”