HC Deb 23 July 1867 vol 188 c2072
MR. BLAKE

said, he would beg to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, If there be any truth in the report very current in Dublin that some of the untried prisoners detained in Mountjoy Prison under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act have been removed to the District Lunatic Asylums?

LORD NAAS

said, it was quite true that two prisoners who were imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison, under the Lord Lieutenant's warrant, had been removed to the Richmond Lunatic Asylum. He had made very careful inquiry into both cases, and found in the case of one of them, that there was no doubt he was suffering under delusions, and in the case of the other, there was every reason to believe he had been feigning madness. In such cases it was the practice to hand the prisoners over to the custody of their friends; but in these two instances the men had been removed to the lunatic asylums because they had no friends capable of taking care of them.