THE CARE OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED.
W-E earnestly hope that the Government will take note of the remarkable appeals which have appeared in successive issues of the Times for immediate legislation to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Care of the Feeble-Minded.
These appeals were signed by the Lord Mayors of Birmingham, Liverpool, and Leeds, by numerous University and education authorities, by prominent medical officers of health, and by the Chairmen of various Asylums Boards. No Government ought to disregard such a petition as this on a matter which everybody who has given any attention to the question admits to be of national importance. We have now in England and Wales alone, according to the Report of the Royal Commission, a population of mentally defective persons estimated at two hundred and seventy- one thousand six hundred, or .83 per cent. of the total population of England and Wales. With comparatively rare exceptions, all these persons are incapable of earning their own living, or even taking care of themselves, and many of them are dangerous lunatics. But while they are thus a charge and a danger to the community, many of them are under no effective restraint, and are in no way prevented from multiplying their numbers. There is, indeed, conclusive evidence that the birth-rate among mentally defective persons is above the average. This latter is perhaps the most important aspect of the whole problem. The Royal Commission went very carefully into the causes of mental deficiency, and, after collecting all the most important facts and best opinions available, came emphatically to the conclusion that mental disease was mainly hereditary. Some of the witnesses went far beyond this cautious judgment, and facts were produced which are startling in their seriousness. For example, the Director of Education in Bolton stated that in almost every case where parents of mentally defective children appeared before the Committee or before Magistrates, it was found that the parents themselves were similarly afflicted. Thus by neglecting this problem we are pre- paring further trouble for future generations, and every year's delay is a. serious national evil. For even if we adopt the view taken by one or two exceptional witnesses that heredity has nothing to do with insanity, there still remains the absolutely indisputable fact that feeble- minded parents cannot bring up their children to be satis- factory members of the community. In the words of the Report, the children of such parents " are often familiar from infancy with drink, crime, and all sorts of sexual vice. Neglect and ill-treatment often render them physically infirm, and eventually, either as criminals or as paupers, they have to he supported by the community." The Royal Commission lay down in their Report the sound principle "that persons who cannot take a part in the struggle of life owing to mental defect, whether they are described as lunatics or as persons of unsound mind, idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded, or otherwise, should be afforded by the State such special protection as may be suited to their needs." They lay down the further pro- position " that the mental condition of these persons, and neither their poverty nor their crime, is the real ground of their claim for help from the State." Both these pro- positions ought to command a universal assent. Lunacy in its various forms is not only a terrible individual calamity, but it also involves a danger to the community minds were either never complete or have become unhinged Both the pauperism and the crime are due to one cause—mental deficiency--and that being so, it is obviously convenient that people suffering from this calamity should be specially dealt with. Certain classes of bthe mentally deficient—as, for example, criminal lunatics— are already dealt with specially. There is also, of course, special provision for dealing with the property of lunatics, and we have all over the country idiot asylums, lunatic asylums, and private institutions for the reception of mental patients. There is, however, no general system of dealing with the mentally deficient as a class apart, and no general power vested in the State to compel their segregation.
The Commission proposes that " the State should have authority to segregate and to detain mentally defective persons under proper conditions and limitations, and on their behalf to compel the payment of contributions from relations who are able to pay for their support." In order to carry out this recommendation it is proposed to create a central authority to be called the Board of Control, which would. exercise a general supervision over the local authorities. These local authorities would be statutory Committees of County Councils, who would deal with all classes of the mentally defective.
A study of the Report of the Royal Commission will convince any careful reader that if these recommendations were carried out there would be a very appreciable reduc- tion both in our prison and in our workhouse population. It is therefore quite conceivable that the cost of the machinery proposed by the Royal Commission would be more than paid for by the saving effected in the upkeep of prisons and workhouses. Even if this were not so, a, duty rests upon this generation to face without flinching what- ever expenditure may have to be incurred in order to relieve future generations from a recurring and extending evil. By suitable methods it ought to be possible in a few generations to get rid almost entirely of our mentally defective population. By neglecting these precautions we are permitting it to expand.
It is worth while to note that both the Majority and the Minority of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law heartily endorse the recommendations of the Royal Com- mission on the Feeble-Minded. We therefore earnestly join in the appeal which has been made to the Government to deal in the present Session of Parliament with this nationally important subject.
There is one other matter equally non-controversial with which Parliament might also deal during the present Session,—namely, the vagrancy problem. The Depart- mental Committee on Vagrancy, which reported in 1906, recommended that labour colonies should be established. where the habitual vagrant can be detained and compelled. to work. Vagrants are almost as much a class apart as the mentally deficient. They cannot be cured of their tramping propensities either by the whippings or brandings which were common in the Elizabethan period, or by the milder methods more suites to the feelings of the present generation. The only possible way of dealing with them is to place them under detention, and insist upon their working steadily. By establishing labour colonies we should relieve the country of the nuisance caused by the vagrant class, and should relieve our prisons and work- houses of a considerable fraction of their present population. The principle of labour colonies has now been fully accepted by public opinion, and there is no reason why Parliament should not deal with this matter without further delay. Our workhouses and gaols are filled with people whose
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