LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
PRIVATE LUNATIC ASYLUMS.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sla,—Many besides myself will thank you for your article on this subject last week. It is not one which can long be sup- pressed. The trial of Nunn and Hemming the other day was another of the signs of the wind ; and I gather from the reports that the sympathies of the audience were with the plaintiff, though the Judge and jury favoured the "professional gentle- men," the first very markedly. I have seen enough of more phases of life than one to believe in the public, as the best critics in the end ; and I believe that the time must soon come when the professional gentlemen will have to submit to dis- agreeable questions, and to answer them. Law and Medicine are in a tale at present, and if they persist in so remaining, I, for one, must believe that they will have to stand hand-in-hand for it together before the Final Court of Appeal, where the number of "points reserved" may astonish many,—none more than the "professional gentlemen."
It is a very sad and grave question, yet so easy of solution, that the mere statement of the law and the facts should solve it, by the abolition of private asylums. Between public asylums and private care at home, there should stand no other alternative ; and no result of my enforced observation is more painful than this, that home-care is the one thing wanted for so large a proportion of the unhappy prisoners. Life at the mercy of these warders—ignorant fellows, at the best—is something too terrible. It is of the really mad that I am thinking most, when I feel that I should do absolute wrong if I consented to let this matter drop, as on my own account I willingly would, and not use my experience boldly. Cases like my own, I am glad to believe, are rare, though fearfully possible. And if your reviewer is able to speak of my book, as I am very glad he does, as free from bitterness or anger, it is perhaps because the indignation roused by such a wrong, so terrible in its results,. passes the power of words. Inexcusable,— unatonable,— monstrous. Let it rest. Though, under the inexorable law of Evil, the wrongers must needs make it worse afterwards, in nine cases out of ten, in self-excuse. The wronged may forgive— often easily—the wrongers rarely indeed, It is sad enough, bit it is so. Nor can one who has suffered as I have afford to b3 too angry. The lesson of self-restraint is taught to a pur- pose, in that fearful school.
The stories told by the plaintiff, in the case to which I have alluded, I grieve to say that I cannot wholly reject. They are quite possible, and only too probable. It was a point made against him that he did not complain till long afterwards. In an article on the subject, you made that comment on it yourself naturally. I did not suffer as he suffered, but I suffered enough ; and for months and months afterwards I never dared to speak of it, for I had been too much cowed. I remember my " attend- ants " one day, after some piece of brutality, saying to me, just before the doctor came to see me on his rounds, "Don't you tell_ Dr. So-and-so." Nor dared I. Should I have been more likely to complain to friends, upon any of their angels' visits P And would they have believed anything so inconvenient, if I had P I have seen a similar result in another, wrongfully a victim like myself. I doubt if he would speak out now. When he was trying all means to escape, he did all he could to get into a public asylum, for he knew it to be the road to escape, but the " feelings " of friends would have been lacerated by such vulgar publicity, and he was refused.
Is not all this beyond conception wicked ? Well may your reviewer say that he can get no satisfaction from his visits, except the conviction that the patients are well fed. I am sorry to assure him that he may even be wrong in such a trifle as that. As long as private asylums remain, these things will not mend. I represented £400 a year, and beyond that was dead to the world. Where were the chances of my escape P But for a Power in which I must perforce believe for ever and ever, had I been ten times an infidel, my days must have ended in that horrible imprisonment; for as I have stated in my book, I had absolutely lost all volition of my own, and scarcely wished to be removed. Yet I was freed. The Heaven which to some seem so far off, is only at the distance of one earnest prayer.—
I am, Sir, &c., THE AUTHOR OF "Mr EXPERIENCES IN A LUNATIC ASYLU3I."
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