§ (10.) £1,000, to complete the sum for Pauper Lunatics, Scotland.
§ MR. HUNTER (Aberdeen, N.)said, he would only delay the Committee for 430 a moment to obtain an assurance in reference to a practice that had been brought to his notice. He understood it was the practice throughout Scotland, to some extent, to employ police officers to remove pauper lunatics to asylums—a course of proceeding that was naturally most painful to the relatives of those poor creatures who had to be removed. It was not a proper thing, and he hoped the practice was not so extensive as it had been represented, and that the Government would undertake to say that they would give directions that the Asylum attendants, and not policemen, should be employed in the conveyance of the patients.
§ SIR HERBERT MAXWELL (A LORD of the TREASURY) (Wigton)said, he admitted that the circumstances to which the hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Hunter) alluded would be deserving of serious attention, if they constituted a general practice throughout Scotland. But, in his (Sir Herbert Maxwell's) personal experience of some 15 years as Chairman of a Parochial Board, no such practice came to his knowledge. Only in such cases where, through the violence of the patient, assistance was required, the police were called in. He would take care that the attention of the proper authorities was called to the matter. Vote agreed to.