HC Deb 06 June 1872 vol 211 cc1273-4
SIR JOSEPH BAILEY

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he would state to the House why the guardians of Crickhowell Union have not been relieved from the cost of maintaining John Gwynne, a criminal lunatic in Broadmoor Asylum, whose friends are incapable of defraying the cost of his maintenance, inasmuch as the guardians of Wells Union have been relieved from a similar charge?

MR. BRUCE

said, in reply, the cases to which the question referred were not analogous. In the one the lunatic was sentenced to penal servitude for life; in the other no sentence of penal servitude had been passed. By the law, therefore, the duty of supporting the lunatic in the latter case was cast upon the Union, and he saw no reason to relieve it.