HC Deb 19 March 1885 vol 295 cc1697-8
MR. J. G. TALBOT

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to a report of a case at the Westminster Police Court in The Times of March 17th, according to which an alleged lunatic was refused admission to the Workhouse— A course which was adopted, it was stated, in consequence of a recent legal decision; whether it is correct, according to the same report, that Mr. Partridge said— It would be very inconvenient to send lunacy cases to the House of Detention, even if it were legal to do so, which he very much doubted. Whereupon Inspector Chisholm said— It was even more inconvenient and apparently less justifiable to detain lunatics in the cells at Police Stations. And that Mr. Partridge remarked— That it was to be hoped there would be fresh legislation on the subject before long. There must be an altered state of things; whether eventually Mr. Partridge said he had not alternative but to send the man to the House of Detention, and said— Magistrates at present did not know what course to pursue; and, whether Her Majesty's Government propose to take immediate steps to prevent alleged lunatics being confined in prisons?

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I entirely agree with the purport of the remarks of the hon. Member, and I think that Mr. Partridge came ultimately to a proper conclusion in sending a wandering lunatic to the infirmary of the workhouse, and not to a police cell. My view is unquestionably that the proper treatment for a wandering lunatic is to send him to the workhouse, and not to the prison. To send a lunatic to the police cell or the prison is very likely to increase his malady and to lead to his death. I may state that this has been the view for the last 40 years with reference to lunatics either before or after trial. According to this view, power has been given by statute, and the duty has been imposed on the Secretary of State, on a certificate that a prisoner is insane, to send him to a lunatic asylum. To my great surprise, when a few weeks ago this power was exercised in the case of Frederick Marshall, there was a most extraordinary outcry in the Press, and even in quarters which ought to have been better informed, and it was said that it was an illegal power, or that if it was legal it was inexpedient. I would point out that nothing can be more undesirable than that a man who is a lunatic should be kept for two or three months awaiting his trial in prison, where there are no means whatever of taking proper care of him; and that ultimately a man who is a raving lunatic should be placed in the dock at the Sessions or the Assizes. The law provides that a man who is a lunatic should be sent to a lunatic asylum.

MR. J. G. TALBOT

asked whether the right hon. Gentleman was aware that a Board of Guardians in the West of London had come to the conclusion that they could not keep their lunatics in the workhouse, and that the consequence was that the lunatics were sent to prison?

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

was understood to reply that the Guardians referred to had acted in consequence of a supposed obscurity in the law. The statute to which the subject was referable was, however, sufficiently clear to make it obligatory upon them to admit lunatics. It was not that they could not admit them, but that they would not.

In answer to Mr. M'COAN,

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

was understood to reply that, under a statute which had existed for 40 years, when a lunatic was commited to prison he could rightly be sent to an asylum?