THE ANARCHY IN BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL Noranto more pointedly illustrates the
fact which we lately no- ticed, that an idea lies_ negative and passive in the English mind long before it takes a positive and active shape, than the conduct of the public and the public servants in regard to the laws. re- lating to Lunacy. For nearly forty years the subject has been under investigation and discussion ; action in it has gradually taken place to a great extent, and the remedy for the most in- tolerable wrong has been found to be easy and effectual ; and yet we still find the intolerable wrong perpetrated. In 1816 a Com- mittee of the House of Commons tore the veil from the crime and misery created in madhouses. The investigators then found paupers sleeping together three in one crib : a colonel of the army in a cellar, with only a shirt, had been there for years, not a soul entering the place, his food thrown at him being the only communication between himself and the outer world. Twenty- nine years later, the present Commission in Lunacy was created to bring private madhouses under systematic vigilance; and now, seven years later still, we And a place, specially excluded from their inspection, where the same kind of wrongs-may still be in- flicted on the mostilrelpless of mortals.
The atrocities in 13ethlehem Hospital, indeed, are not so bad as those detected in 1816; thirty-six years of indignant discussion, examples of facile improvement, have extended their moral effect even to -the basement story of that great preserve of barbarism ; butthe injuries are exactly of the same kind. Here we find lu- natics sleeping naked, on straw ; laid upon the bare stones and washed with cold water and a mop ; and crammed with sopped food out of a bowl, given to them with the fingers. Miss Anne Morley was admitted to the hospital labouring under much de- bility and liable to a painful bodily infirmity ; within a fortnight she was found to be refractory, and sent to the basement story, where the patients slept with only a scanty blanket between their naked skin and the straw on which they lay, that blanket, of course, seldom remaining between. Not long after she "became a dirty patient." The causes are not difficult to be understood. She was now labouring under a distressing and humiliating aggrava- tion of her infirmity : the cold affected her, but her complaints brought no warmer clothing ; and the "night nurses' were occasionally heard in the passages of the ward, but, says one witness, they never unlocked the doors of the cells ! No wonder that poor Miss Morley grew madder, more infirm, and more odious to herself. For all this time she was more than sane enough to know how she was tortured and humiliated. Is it not horrible ? Rescued by her relatives, conveyed to an asylum at Northampton, treated as such patients are treated in properly-conducted places, she recovered in a month. Men were equally neglected, and worse handled, although the women seem to have been struck occasion- ally One man remained for hours lashed to a chair waiting to be fed ; another was strangled with a the stocking," " to exhaust him," and thus to render him tractable ; another, who needed a minor surgical operation for his natural relief; instead of being visited every six or, eight hours, would be left from the Saturday till Sunday night agony. The -strangled 'man was taken away, but he died in his !Pune. Fifteen patients seem to have been sub- jected to this kind of treatment; 'and of forty curable patients pre- maturely removed within the year, there is reason to suppose that the majority: were taken away because they were badly treated. The fact is not absolutely known, because, save in name, no re- cords are kept.
How is it that such scenes can happen in that basement story ? Because the matron, whose duty it is to watch over the female Ward, went there seldom—at night never : under inquiry, she said that these things did not happen, at least "not to my knowledge." The two visiting physicians found four hundred patients too many for their attention in a brief visit, and seem to have supposed all to be right ; the resident physician took his work easily, was "op- posed to non-restraint," and would not even reduce the coercion, until Sir Peter Laurie threatened exposure. Everybody seems tO baYe done or attempted those dirties which were not his, and to have left his own undone. The resident apothecary, whose duty it was to keep the records, looked after the patients ; who were too many, if not for his physical powers, at least for his zeal. The resident physician could not execute that minor surgical operation without which the patient must endure an agony terrible even to a man in health. The Treasurer, finding a revenue of 20,0001. a year, from various sources with various objects, too light for his hands, managed the hospital ; and it was he who, exceeding his au- thority, placed under the care of the matron those patients to whose peculiarly unfortunate case she did not attend. But how can this systematic anarchy go on, fifty years after Pinel and the Paris physicians have proved the possibility, nay the facility, of soothing the most refractory, and of nursing the most desperate lunatics into bearable existence if not to restored sanity— ten years and more after Hanwell and Conolly have proved that English lunatics are not more incorrigible than French? The rea- son is, that, for the dignity of the City, under whose jurisdiction Bethlehem is, that hospital was excepted from the operation of the general law. It is managed thus. The Corporation of the City of London appoints a Committee to manage Bridewell Prison and Bethlehem Hospital; that Committe appoints a Sub-Committee to manage the Hospital ; and the Sub-Committee leaves it to the Treasurer—whose fitness is illustrated in the results.
Lord Shaftesbury has invoked the authority of the Rome Secre- tary; the inspecting power of the Lunacy Commissioners has been turned even into that basement story; the utter disorder is ex- posed ; and some persons learn, for the first time, what their rela- tives have been subjected to. And if it is remembered that—save the criminal patients, maintained at the expense of Government, and not apparently subjected to these infamies—the patients are mostly drawn from persons in straitened circumstances, but be- longing to the educated classes, we shall not only see how their sufferings must have been aggravated, but how their 'relatives must share the blame of that apathy which has left them so-long without real visitation.
Let bygones be bygones. The system will inevitably be amend- ed. The report of the Commissioners was " confidential" ; but the Daily News obtained a copy, and has published it, piecemeal, day by day; so that henceforth the public would be an accomplice if the system were unaltered. Already minor changes have
The resident physician has taken his departure ; but his successor has not yet arrived. One of the inspecting physicians is in the country ; the other, who made light of the manner in which women had been treated in the basement story, is the only physician in attendance; and the hospital seems to be for the present left to its subordinates and nurses. But it is incredible that even the Sub- Committee should ncitbe looking better to its duties-; and of course next session will wipe out this disgrace from our code in Lunacy.
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