§ MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR (Donegal, E.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has yet had an opportunity of considering the representations of the Lunacy Commissioners with regard to the increasing numbers of criminal lunatics in county and borough asylums, and to the hardship which the practice inflicts upon the ordinary patients, and the indiscipline and danger which it involves; whether Broadmoor is fully occupied; and whether further accommodation could be furnished so as to enable criminal lunatics to be treated elsewhere than in ordinary asylums.
§ * SIR M. WHITE RIDLEYThe question of providing additional accommoda- 1475 tion for criminal lunatics is engaging my serious attention, and inquiries are now in progress with a view to obtaining a site for the building of a new criminal lunatic asylum. I propose, in the course of the autumn, to make the necessary application to the Treasury. The male accommodation at Broadmoor is fully occupied, but there are still vacancies for females at that establishment. It is intended that accommodation in the new asylum shall be provided both for male convicts becoming insane as well as the other more serious cases of criminal lunatics, but, of course, it will in no case be possible to relieve altogether county and borough asylums from their statutory obligation to receive criminal lunatics.