The Times publishes a non-official report upon Broadmoor, the great
asylum where criminal lunatics are detained. The wretched inmates, it appears, are treated with every care and kindness, can write to their friends, see them, take exercise, and do almost any- thing except quit the place, it being now a fixed rule that no one once committed to Broadmoor shall ever emerge. Among the prisoners are some of the most dangerous lunatics in the world, men who can hardly be kept from murdeling the warders or each other by excessive and most watchful care. Others are comparatively sane, and a few, as, for instance, Oxford, who attacked the Queen, and who now passes his life as " grainer " to the establishment. Townley is not there, Government having found law sufficient to condemn him to penal servitude for life, a doom we should almost think lighter than incarceration as a sane man among the insane. There is a want both of logic and of justice in holding a lunatic irresponsible during lunacy, yet locking him up for life when cured, but the visitor was assured that when a contrary practice prevailed the apparently sane went out only to be brought back for new offences.
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