§ MR. RAMSAY (for Mr. ANDERSON)asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If it be the fact that the Scotch Lunacy Act (25 and 26 Vic. c. 54,) by section 23, empowers the Governor of Perth Prison to send prisoners who have become insane back to the prison where they were committed, but that this must be "within fourteen days" of the expiry of the sentence; if the Governor of Perth Prison or the Prison Commissioners were entitled to interpret this power as extending to any period subsequent to the expiry of the sentence, in some cases even twenty years after; if the authorities at Broadmoor have legal power to send prisoners to Perth Prison for the purpose of being disposed of as above; and, if he is aware that within a few months back four prisoners under such circumstances have been sent to Glasgow to be supported, though having no claim of settlement there; and, if so, what redress he proposes?
THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR)I do not think that the power given by the section of the Statute referred to requires to be exercised within 14 days of the expiry of the sentence. My hon. Friend has overlooked the words "or otherwise," which follow those he has quoted, and in my opinion the Prison Commissioners were justified in their action. The prisoners were removed from the convict prison at Broadmoor to the convict prison at Perth under the authority of the Secretary of State, and I think their removal was quite within his powers. I am aware that four prisoners were recently removed to Glasgow in the manner described, and I am afraid that if there was any hardship in this particular case it is not in our power to redress it. The law is that when the period expires during which the State has undertaken to detain a 785 prisoner he is no longer maintained, whether sane or insane, at the public expense, but when taken back to the place whore he was first committed to prison, then, if ho is insane, the parochial authorities are bound to take care of him like any other pauper lunatic until they discover his settlement. The case of the four prisoners who were kept at Broad-moor at the public expense for a long period is a very exceptional one not likely to occur again. But the fact of their having been so long long supported by the State does not afford a good reason for their not being now treated like all other criminal lunatics, who are invariably sent to the prison of commitment. In some cases this involves a hardship to the parochial authorities, and it is under consideration whether some better means of imposing the chargeability can be devised; but the problem is a very difficult one.