

1827,] Pauper Lunatics. 453 



them, we confidently add, will have the audacity to charge the Committee 

 with misrepresenting them. All have had an opportunity of correcting 

 their testimony. The report comes, therefore, in the most unques- 

 tionable shape ;" and by this evidence ought the institution to be finally 

 judged. 



To go through the report seriatim our limits will not allow ; nor would 

 such a survey further our immediate purpose, which is simply to give the 

 results of the evidence as bearing against the propriety of continuing these 

 institutions, or at least of longer allowing paupers to be placed in them. These 

 results may be taken chiefly from Mr. Warburton's own statement, who 

 was allowed to look over the evidence of the parish officers, of the surgeon 

 of the parishes, of discharged lunatics, and of the College Commissioners. 

 The complaints he finds to be that the house is too crowded with patients 

 that no medical attention is paid that no curative process is used no 

 classification of patients no variation of food, according to the health and 

 state of the patients an insufficient number of keepers inhumanity and 

 neglect of superintendents and keepers towards the patients that conva- 

 lescent patients were made to act as keepers that the crib-rooms were wil- 

 fully concealed, and in a state of loathsome filth that the patients were 

 confined in their cribs on Sundays, to save trouble to the keepers that they 

 were washed with mops and cold water in the winter : with other parti- 

 culars, indicating gross mismanagement. 



The truth of these complaints, one and all, he peremptorily denies, and 

 desires leave to disprove them by the evidence he proposes, consisting 

 mainly of his own medical friends, superintendent, and keepers. He was 

 himself first examined, and his own evidence is detailed at great length' 

 memorable, the whole of it, for the confident and undoubting tone with 

 which it is delivered for the absence of all power of measuring probabilities, 

 or of judging of the effects on the minds of others likely to follow his hazard- 

 ous assertions for the direct testimony to facts, of which it is impossible 

 he could know any thing, and to the general conduct of persons he seldom 

 saw and, finally, the absurd degree of confidence he professes to place in 

 his superintendent. 



But, to come to particulars. Complaints, it appeared, were actually on 

 the books of the Medical Commission, of the " crowded state of the house/' 

 These complaints, Mr. W. recollects, were sometimes made, and, he admits, 

 not without reason ; but no attempt was ever made to remedy them ; 

 and, in point of fact, we may safely infer he never, on that ground, rejected 

 a patient. But other complaints stand on the books of the " blankets 

 and clothing.'' Of this he has no recollection. Again, of a " want of 

 keepers." On recollection, thinks there was such a complaint. What was 

 done in consequence ? Has no recollection ; but, no doubt, if patients 

 increased, keepers were proportionably so; not in consequence of any repre- 

 sentations on the part of the Commissioners, but by the rules of the insti- 

 tution. Again, of the " rooms being close and offensive." Has no recol- 

 lection. Of their being " still close and offensive, and no improvement 

 made." Recollects a statement of this kind. Of a " keeper being admo- 

 nished and censured for rough treatment to a particular pauper." Has no 

 recollection. When asked, after these remindings on the part of the 

 Committee and his own recollections, if he perseveres in his assertion of 

 the absence of all complaints ? Does not doubt the complaints were made 

 as they appear on the Commissioners' records, but still has no farther recol- 

 lections than what he admits. Of course, it may justly be concluded, no 



