COMMITTAL AND TREATMENT OF LUNATICS.—OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 7 July 1876)

§ MR. DILLWYN,

in rising to call attention to the operation of the existing Laws relating to the committal and custody of lunatics; and to move— That, in the opinion of this House, those Laws do not afford sufficient safeguards against illegal incarceration and the maltreatment of lunatic patients, said, that last Session he called the attention of the Home Secretary to the case of a Miss Wood, who held peculiar religious views, and he took up her case on the ground that she had been incarcerated improperly and without the Lunacy Laws having been complied with. His right hon. Friend immediately directed inquiries to be made, and the result was that Miss Wood was liberated, it being proved that she had been improperly imprisoned. It seemed, however, that she was shortly afterwards again committed and imprisoned. That lady might have been a lunatic; but he was somewhat startled at the manner in which the laws affecting lunatics were in the instance of her first incarceration dispensed with, and he therefore had instituted inquiries in regard to the 1165 working of those laws. The result of his inquiries satisfied him of two things; first, that the law affecting the custody and treatment of lunatics was in general very loosely administered; and secondly, that the laws themselves were inherently bad. With regard to the lax administration of the law, hon. Members who were magistrates must have noticed in their several counties the great increase of lunatic patients which had led to great difficulty in making provision of county asylums and other accommodation for their reception. He believed a great deal of that increase was due to the extremely lax administration of the Lunacy Laws. From a Return, signed by the clerk of the St. George's Union, Middlesex, it appeared that through the exertions of one of the Guardians who had investigated the matter, the number of lunatics in that Union had been considerably reduced, it being found that a great number of them had been improperly sent there. He would also call the attention of hon. Members to the Reports of the Lunacy Commissioners in 1872 and 1873 to show the lax administration of the law. He found that in one asylum it had been the practice to call in the aid of men-servants to assist in restraining the violence of female patients, and that in another case a lunatic's death had been caused by violence, but he was not aware that there had been a prosecution in that case. What he desired was that the private lunatic should be placed in the same position as the pauper lunatic. The latter were placed under the care of public medical officers, and placed in a public institution subject to public inspection. The fact was, the Lunacy Law, instead of being strongly enforced, as it ought to be, was administered very laxly. That state of things, he believed, was mainly owing to the fact that, practically speaking, the prosecution of violations of the Lunacy Law rested with the Lunacy Commissioners alone, and to them was thus to be attributed in some measure the existing loose state of the administration of the law. He did not think that the power of prosecution ought to rest with those who might reasonably be expected to feel that such prosecutions would be virtually indictments against themselves, and he knew frequent instances in which those persons desirous of instituting these prose- 1166 cutions were not satisfied with the veto thus practically possessed by the Commissioners, as they believed, rightly or wrongly, that their disposition was rather to condone than to prosecute infringements of the Lunacy Laws in asylums, being supposed to be often on terms of friendly footing with the proprietors, being supposed to be hospitably received on the occasion of their visits to the asylums, and being themselves to some extent responsible for irregularities which occurred in establishments licensed and supervised by them. The question whether there should be a prosecution ought to rest, not with those who were mixed up more or less with the management of lunatic asylums, but either with the Law Officers or some competent independent authority who would not be under any suspicion of favouritism. Again, with regard to detention, he considered it most objectionable that the proprietors of private asylums, who had an interest in keeping the lunatics as long as possible, should have the power to decide whether a man should continue to be incarcerated. The medical man who was in constant attendance was the only person who could really decide whether a man was insane or not. The visiting magistrates were not competent to decide such a question. As to the necessity for an alteration of the law, he might call in aid Lord Shaftesbury, who was the head of the Lunacy Law Commission, and who said, in his evidence before the Select Committee, that the proprietors of asylums were under a severe temptation to detain patients, their object being to get as many patients as long as they can, and stint them in medicines, food, and comfort. Let the House contrast the position of a pauper lunatic sent to a public asylum presided over by the county magistrates, whose interest it was that the lunatic should not be detained a day longer than was necessary, with that of a lunatic confined in a private asylum, the proprietor of which, who had the most potential voice in determining whether the confinement should be prolonged, had a direct interest in keeping the lunatic in the asylum as long as possible. He was only astonished that the noble Lord should have consented to remain so long at the head of the Lunacy Law Commission, without endeavouring to procure an alteration of the law, so as to rectify the 1167 abuses he had described. As regarded the private patients, he would, in the first place, do away with the Lunacy Commissioners; and, in the next place, he should require that no person should be placed in a lunatic asylum without the warrant of some public authority. He further proposed that all private lunatic asylums should be abolished, and that all such places of confinement should be public institutions. He thought no lunatic should be. set at large without the most careful examination into his state of mind, because his own experience as a visiting magistrate had shown him the difficulty of determining whether or not a person who had once been a lunatic was sufficiently recovered to be released with safety; but he utterly denied that the person most competent to form a correct opinion in such cases, and who must therefore necessarily have a most potential voice in the decision arrived at, should have a direct pecuniary interest either one way or another in such decision. His first intention was to ask the House to appoint a Committee to inquire into the subject; but it was now too late for this purpose, and he had therefore preferred to bring the matter forward in its present form in the hope that the Government would consider the question in the Recess with a view to early legislation. The opinion of Lord Shaftesbury to some extent agreed with his own upon the subject, and he hoped it would be taken up by the Government. He would not move any Resolution on the subject. He would content himself, after the statement he had made, to leave the matter in the hands of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department.