We have not a shadow of evidence, nor even an intimation that the supposed increase of insanity was in the slightest degree the result of severe discipline; nor have we any report from the medical officer, visiting or resident, as to the existence of such “an unusually large number of cases of mental affection.” But whether they existed or not, “they were believed to exist,” and the Board of Commissioners directed the changes to which we have above adverted. In the progress of the inquiries on the subject, it was suggested to the visiting director, that he should obtain the joint opinion of the Governor, Chaplain and Medical Officer on sundry points, among which were the following:
1. Whether it appears necessary to reject any particular description of prisoners as being unfit subjects for separate confinement, such, for instance, as those of dull intellect, or others who do not speak the language, and are, therefore, less capable of instruction.
2. Whether the arrangements at Wakefield and Leicester, with regard to assembling for public worship, school instruction, exercise in association, &c., are likely to be the cause of a more favorable effect of separate (?) confinement on apparently the same class of prisoners.
3. Whether a greater stimulus or a greater degree of vigor cannot be imparted to the trades and occupations in the cells.
4. Whether it will be necessary and desirable, after a certain period of confinement, to exercise all prisoners in association, and whether the removal of both the long ranges of exercising-yards will be sufficient for such purpose.
5. Whether the garden at the back of the prison might not be advantageously cultivated by prisoners selected from those who may have been a certain period in confinement.
6. Whether dispensing with the mask would be likely to be attended with a beneficial effect.
We should have been gratified to know the answers which were returned to these pertinent and important inquiries. We think the second question would puzzle the wisest commissioner that could be found, whether association will be the cause of a more favorable effect of separate confinement on apparently the same class of prisoners! Or to vary the phraseology, what is likely to be the effect of association upon separation! In the absence of any report from the medical officer, and with the health report of the preceding twelvemonth before us, we cannot doubt that some misapprehension has arisen from exaggerated and possibly fictitious representations.
A new chapter of observations and conclusions is opened to us at Millbank by Dr. Baly, the visiting physician. It will be remembered that no little discrepancy of opinion occurred a short time since between the resident and visiting physician of the penitentiary at Pentonville,[A] and hence we should feel disposed to suspend full confidence in the present statement, till we know what the other doctor has to say. But one or two facts may be safely cited, which will serve to show how entirely irreconcilable some theories on this subject are with each other, and with the actual phenomena. Of eight insane convicts transferred during the year 1851 from Millbank to the Lunatic Hospital, five were decidedly insane when received into the prison. The aggregate of eight years gives us sixty-five cases of insanity among 7,393 convicts, of whom thirty-five were insane when received, and nine of the remainder were of very low intellect, and only twenty-one were of sound mind; of these twenty-one, thirteen recovered in the prison, leaving only eight all told, or about one in 1,000 as sufferers, in this form, from their incarceration! What prison or what mode of discipline can show a better result than this?