Not only are idiots in the way in a lunatic asylum, and their ward an excrescence upon it, but the organization and arrangements are not adapted for them. Idiots require a schoolmaster as much as a doctor; the latter can see that all those means are provided for them to improve their habits and their physical condition; but it must devolve on a patient instructor to operate more immediately upon the relic of mental power which is accorded to them. The sooner they are brought under the teacher’s care the better: experience shows that much more may be effected with idiots during their childhood than when they have arrived at a more mature age, and the developmental changes in the brain have so far ceased, that an increased production of nervous power can be scarcely looked for.
This is a theme we cannot further enter upon; and to conclude this section, we may remark, that the number of idiots is so large as to justify the erection of several distinct institutions for their care and improvement. Several counties might unite in the establishment of an idiot asylum, the parishes being charged for the number belonging to them in it; an arrangement, which would no more complicate parochial accounts, than where one charge has to be met (as often is the case at present) for the maintenance of a certain number of lunatics in the county asylum; a second for that of another portion in a licensed house; and a third for some others in the workhouse wards.
There is another matter worth noting. The county asylums for the most part being filled to the exclusion of recent cases of insanity, and the condition of idiots being held in still less importance than that of the insane by workhouse authorities, it is not to be wondered at that, on the one hand, the admission of idiots into asylums is not promoted, and that, on the other, so many idiotic paupers are found in workhouses. To provide, therefore, cheaply for idiots in distinct institutions, and to facilitate and enforce their transfer to them, will be a means of ridding union-houses of a portion of their inmates, for which they are so entirely unfitted. To the genuine philanthropist and the truly humane, no hesitation would arise as to securing every necessary provision, and the best means for ameliorating the fate of any sufferers, and particularly that of the poor helpless idiots. But to the majority of mankind the question of cost is preliminary to the exercise of philanthropy; and some perhaps think it enough to feed and clothe, to watch and keep clean the miserable drivelling idiot, since all the money that could be spent upon one would only produce after all a poor, weak-minded creature, of little or no service in the world. This argument cannot be gain-said, though it must be condemned by every Christian animated by the leading principle of his religion, that of “love.”
To the sticklers for economy, the proposition may be propounded for consideration, whether, on the adoption of the plan of erecting distinct asylums for the chronic insane, the idiots could be less expensively provided for in a section or “quarter” of such an asylum, properly furnished with the means of improving their condition, than in an establishment reared specially for the purpose? We content ourselves with putting the question.
Chap. VIII.—Registration of Lunatics.
We are fain to look upon a complete registration as a remedy to many admitted evils affecting the welfare of lunatics, and we may add, of idiots also.
Lunacy may be regarded as a form of “civil death;” it deprives its sufferer of his rights as a citizen; subjects him to the loss or restriction of liberty; disqualifies him from many civil privileges, and invalidates his powers of dealing with property and of executing legal documents. Yet not unfrequently are lunatics, particularly among the more wealthy classes, placed under the penalties of their condition without the knowledge and authority of the Officers of the State, by whom alone can such penalties be legally enforced. An individual, we say, is often deprived of his liberty and of the control over his affairs, at the hands of relatives or friends, and often indeed transferred to the house of a stranger, and there subjected to surveillance and repression; and all this done against his will, and, what is more, against the principles of English law and English freedom.
Elaborate provision is made and still further attempted to prevent the unnecessary detention of persons in asylums, whose cases have been regularly reported to the public authorities; but no steps have as yet been taken to discover unreported cases of alleged lunacy or private cases treated singly; no enactment contrived to bring within the knowledge of any Government-board the number of persons, year by year attacked with insanity, and thereby, for a longer or shorter period, disqualified from the exercise of their civil rights. To our mind, this state of things proves a grievous defect in the law of lunacy. Every person has an inherent right to the protection of the law; yet practically, if insane, he does not at all, as a matter of course, obtain it: his malady and position may very probably be unknown, and he may be helpless, or otherwise debarred from making it known. Were a machinery contrived to report it to legally constituted authorities, the sufferer would have the satisfaction of feeling that he was dealt with according to law in the process of the treatment he was subjected to.
Were each case of lunacy systematically registered, it would, we believe, frequently save legal contests. Documents dealing with property are often matters of litigation, on the plea of the insanity of the person executing them, and enormous costs are incurred on the one side to substantiate, and on the other to overthrow the plea. Evidence collateral and direct is hunted up, probably years after the date of the alleged state of insanity; and often enough it comes out, or is decided by the jury, that the individual was once insane, or was so at the date of executing the document in dispute. Now, in such a case, had the insanity which has been so laboriously, tediously and expensively established as having occurred, been registered in a public office at the time of its occurrence, how great would have been the gain to the feelings, the interests, and the convenience of every person concerned in the suit! If the document had been executed during the period the individual was registered as of unsound mind, the production of the register alone would have availed in proof of its invalidity. The whole litigation, indeed, might have been prevented by a search of the register before the action was begun.