TO rue EDITOR OF TUE SPECTATOR.
Kensington ( iv, 7th February 189. Sin—Having perceived my conduct rather severeiy. animadverted on in your paper of Sunday last, for the part I recently took in the removal of a pauper to the Lunatic Asylum at Ihmwell, and that you ask "it' I am a proprietor of that establishment, as a severe penalty attaches to those who endeavour to obtain lodgers tiur an asylum under such circumstances?" I feel myself called upon to put you right on some points in which you appear to be in error.
In the lust place, Ibmwell is a public and not a private establishment. I could,- therefore, have no such interested motive as that you seem to infer, , being only a proprietor in having contributed as a country rate-payer towards the sum of 150,0001. for its erection, in addition to the necessary ;mould contri- butions for its maintenance ; consequently, the greater the number of its in- mates, the greater the demands for this purpose.
When you inform your readers that this case is of a mwe aggravated nature than that of Mr. PATERNOSTER, who appears to have been illegally removed from his own house to a private madhouse, 1 must also0.I 1 SPTVe, that this is HO one of that nature, but that of the removal of a pauper in the mode poinkd out by law, from confinement in a workhouse, to an establishment with a resident physician as well as a resident surgeon, containing upwards of fifty acres of land within its enclosures for the employment awl recreation of those whose mental infirmities require that degree of care and attention which they cannot
o btain in a parish workhouse, where there is no resident medical attendant. MN' gratuitous services in the execution of Magisterial duties and Guardian of time Poor having made me better acquainted with the nature of both those eAa- blishments, I may, perhaps, be allowed to form a more correct opinion of their -comparative advantages in a case of this nature than yourself; whose valuable exertions in the exposure and for the reform of what you conceive public abuses, w ill never, I trust, he interrupted by a more intimate acquaintance with the Asylum at !Unwell than you appear at present to possess. Peeling confident that you were misled by the noperfect report of this case which appeared in the daily papers, and trusting that you will be as anxious to remove the impressions occasioned by your comments on it, as you were to pro- mulgate the views you were thus induced to entertain, I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obedient servant,
301IN SCOTT LILLIE.
P.S. There is an establidiment, I understand, not for distant from Hanwell, for insane patients, of which certain County Magistrates are supposed to be proprietors, with which you may have confounded !Unwell ; but I do not think it likely you will have much occasion to censure any of those gentlemen for endeavouring to procure pauper lunatics as inmates of that establishment.
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