It has been asserted that we did not correctly state
last week the grounds on which the Commissioners in Lunacy ordered the discharge of Miss Wood, the lady whose soul cleaves unto the New Forest Shakers, but whose kelations will have it that she is mad. We had no means of knowing what the Commissioners in Lunacy had done except through the Home Secretary's statement in the House of Commons, and certainly what he said distinctly implied that Miss Wood was discharged because the Commissioners saw "no necessity" for detaining her, not merely because there had been an inaccuracy of form in the certificates put in to justify her arrest and detention. "I directed that an inquiry should be made, in order that Miss Wood should be released, if they [the Lunacy Commissioners] found no necessity for her detention. I am happy to say that this afternoon I have received a note, saying that she had been discharged." It appears now, however, that Mr. Cross used misleading language on Monday week, for he corrected it on Thursday by saying that Miss Wood had been discharged only because the certificate authorising her detention was informal, and that a formal certificate had been since made out under which she is now under care. "But," he added, "the attention of the Commissioners in Lunacy has been specially called to her case, and I am promised that a report respecting it will be made in a few days. As to the question whether I consider the law which authorised her re-arrest satisfactory, I should like to reserve my opinion." We suspect a great many Spiritualists,— some of them eminent scientific men,—could be shut up on the same grounds as those on which the medical certificates in Miss Wood's case proceed.
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