PROTECTION FOR LUNATICS.
Tun unusual verdict of the Jury under a commission de lunatico inguirendo, by which Mr. THOMAS TELFORD CAMPBELL was re- leased from confinement in Dr. ALLEN'S Asylum at Highbeach, has revived much attention to the subject of lunacy and the rights of supposed lunatics. Looking back to the horror which was created by the disclosures of 1816, and surveying the subsequent progress of improvement, we deem it disgraceful to the Government and to the country that the law on the subject has not been put in a more complete state—that occurrences so very like what were then de- tected should still be alleged, and not disproved. True, we do not now hear of veteran officers of high rank in the Army turned loose, in their shirts, into a cellar, raving mad, and left there to have food thrown to them, with less care than wild beasts receive. But we still bear of pauper lunatics sleeping together in cribs, in a state of neglect and corruption that makes humanity shudder. And per- sons who have been confined under suspicion of lunacy still com- plain of oppression and indignities scarcely less revolting ; the effort at disproof being, to point at the madness, which is assumed to disqualify them from giving credible evidence. We have before us a pamphlet by Mr. JOHN PERCEVAL, who has himself, we be- lieve, been in that unhappy predicament, relating the case of a gentleman who has been confined for years, transferred from one asylum to another, perpetually challenging inquiry into his case, but not obtaining it, until at length released by the Magistrates visiting a country asylum to which he happened to be sent. In the long interval, as he and Mr. PERCEVAL allege, be was debarred from communication with his friends, or at least with such as took a favourable view of his case; a main part of the evidence against his sanity was asserted but not produced ; and he was subjected to the most tyrannical treatment—" punished " for trying to send letters, for uttering a few words of remonstrance when he saw a fellow-prisoner ill-used, and for pressing the per- formance of a promise to convey a letter to his brother. The punishments consisted of being sent, for periods of fourteen, twenty- one, and sixty-five days, to dwell among pauper lunatics, in damp comfortless rooms, without fire even in the depth of winter ; and of being chained to the floor, for twenty hours on two successive days in December, part of the time without fire or candle ; the ne- cessities of human nature being made the subject of bestial derision. The main point of evidence against his sanity was a check which he was charged with having given for 5,0001., proving an extravagance which, be admitted, would have been insane ; but when he and his friends demanded a sight of this check, it was constantly refused. Bad food, insufficient attendance, (entailing in such places even dangerous consequences,) and bad lodging, are also charged against some establishments, and ascribed to a cruel parsimony. Now it is well known that similar complaints are made on all sides by per- sons who have been in confinement, and made in such manner, we know, as to enforce conviction among great numbers. By great num- bers of persons lunatic asylums are believed to be prisons, in which people may be and often are unjustly immured, and left there the forgotten victims of secret cruelties. With a proper state of the law, such suspicions should not only be in particular cases im- probable, but nearly impossible.
The case of the lunatic, supposed or really so, is quite peculiar, and should be made the subject of special law. Granting that every thing should be sacrificed to the good of the community, (a position by no means indisputable,) still society is bound to make the sacrifices it exacts as little painful as possible, and to use all its resources in order to that mitigation. Allowing that the supposed lunatic should be confined for the good of society, on the other hand every security ought to be given to him that be will not be confined except upon the clearest evidence of necessity ; that his state of health and consequent deprivation of liberty shall undergo constant revision ; that his friends—not merely relations, who are not always friends, but his chosen friends—shall have the freest possible access to him ; and that his treatment shall be constantly overlooked by competent authorities. No trouble, no expense, ought to be spared to mitigate the unavoidably cruel fate of the being whose liberty, for no fault of his, is to be sacrificed. No possible neglect or tyranny of unfit, corrupt, ignorant, and coarse attendants, should visit his sad abode. No private interests should be suffered to oppose ample justice to his personal rights. Instead of diminished comforts, bodily luxuries, recreations, or other solaces, which being free he could procure for himself, they ought to be freely augmented, as some set-off against the injury inflicted. All these moral obligations towards the supposed lunatic will not be questioned ; yet they point, not merely at petty improvements of the Jaw, but at a thorough remodelling. It is very doubtful wheth...r the custody of lunatics ought under any circumstances to be made a subject of private speculation ; but in any case, private or public, it ought to be undertaken subject to an unceasing sur- veillance on the part of those who have no interest in the detention of the prisoner or in stinting him. The law should not be one for the ease of commissioners or keepers of lunatic asylums, but solely of justice to them, if you will, and of ample protection to the lunatic. If trouble a hundredfold must be thrown upon com- missioners, let it be liberally compensated; if the keeping of lunatics be made so troublesome and unprofitable by needful regu- lations that private speculators must abandon the trade, so be it—let the state, without heed of lucre, undertake it. It is, we re- peat, a case in which the state should spare no trouble or expense. The custody of lunatics ought to be like that of children—of sick children; and the guardians, who stand to those adult in body but infantile in mind in the place of parents, should be at all times
open to their applications—ready to aid, comfort, and Booth. Less than that amount of care is injustice and cruelty ; and the question should be, not how some slight temporizing improvements can be made compatible with existing "interests" or "gradual ameliora- tions "—imagine a tyrannically-treated lunatic told that his relief is to be "gradual " !—but how that absolutely necessary state of things is to be attained; not whether it is to be attained, but how, and at once ? The whole subject of treating madness has to re- ceive thorough and more intelligent investigation than it has yet received : in spite of the "march of mind," indeed, the science of the discipline of mind, in all its branches, has advanced but little since the days of SOCRATES: but, apart from the scientific treat- ment of insanity, the legal treatment of the assumed lunatic may at once be placed on a footing of thorough and open justice. It is a disgrace to the country that such a task should remain to do.
We have not entered at all upon the hideous topic of pauper lunacy—upon the sights which are described in Mr. PERCEVAL'S pamphlet, of pauper lunatics driven out naked, into a yard, to be mopped down like beasts, while icicles hung by the water—of the paupers who have been carried about the country, from workhouse to workhouse, in carts or wheelbarrows—of the lunatics improperly confined at home by parents too humane to send them to suspected prisonhouses, or too cruel to care what becomes of a caged idiot. But that is a part of the question that cannot rest. This verdict, too, in Mr. CAMPBELL'S case, shows that the public is beginning to demand some real stir in the matter. Some support the ver- dict, others question its correctness : in either case, it shows the peremptory need of change. If Mr. CAMPBELL, after an incarce- ration of fourteen years, can be rightly pronounced sane, the fact shows that this practice of incarcerating men under despotic gaolers, for eccentricity, extravagance, "wildness," or even—such things have been—for nonconformity in religious or political opi- nions, must be stopped. If he is insane, then must those dark suspicions overhanging all madhouses, which could make a jury rather leave a madman at large than send him back to them—then must that want of perpetual revision, which makes the lunatic's confinement hopeless of termination, be removed. The public will not much longer consent that cruelties shall go on for want of boldness in bringing up the disgraceful arrears of legislation in this behalf.
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