Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. Appendix.
- Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.
- Date:
- 1909-1913
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. Appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.
143/646 (page 133)
![wnatics a work- ouses not ecessarily bjectionable. -roposal to nake county ouncils esponsible or all unatics. Access of Local Government Board inspectors to asylums. snardians’ visits to asylums. £28 a year. It has often been done within my own knowledge for the express purpose of providing this or that union with additional accommodation. Whether the man is better off in the asylum or in the work- house, I do not know; personally I should prefer the country workhouse. 2373. (Mr. Patten-MacDougall.) Ti he goes to the asylum, he has much less chance of employment after- wards if he recovers, has he not ?—Much less. 2374. (Mr. Russell Wakefield.) Would these imbeciles be kept in the infirmary part of the workhouse ?—Some would be in the infirmary, and some would not be in the infirmary. 1 should like to say that I rather think that this question of the separation of lunatics has been just a little exaggerated. 1 know that you can easily instance cases where a noisy lunatic or a lunatic who is offensive to the eye may be a real grievance to other persons in the workhouse; but there are lots of lunatics who are not anything of the sort. I have some lunatics in work- houses who are very old acquaintances of mine, and I cannot help remembering a case where the life of an infant was absolutely saved by the care which an imbecile girl bestowed upon her. So that if there are exceptional] instances one way, there are exceptional instances the other way, and I do not myself believe that in a very large number of cases there was very much grievance amongst the old people. I have often asked them about it, and they have said: “We don’t mind poor Mrs. So-and-so, she does not do any harm.” Still what my board have got to do—they have been instructed to do it, and their inspectors’ reports in some instances point to the necessity of doing it—is to devise and recommend some means whereby lunatics shall be taken out of workhouses altogether ; and if the Commission will permit me, I should like to say, speaking entirely for myself, my own view of what the procedure ought to be. 1 think the matter might be settled once for all if all lunatics were made a county charge. The county council would then ke responsible for lunatics in workhouses, for lunatics in asylums, and, 1 should hope, for certain classes of the feeble-minded and epileptics who are not sufficiently provided for under the existing law. They would then be able to make, as they can under the existing law, bargains with certain of the unions (which have separate accommodation for them) to take in lunatics; or they might, with the consent of my board, pay for individual lunatics, or they might remove the lunatics to the asylum, or they might classify them ; and if they had to build they would surely build not on the asylum scale, but on the workhouse scale for these people. 1t may be that an expenditure of £500 or £600 a bed is justifiable for lunatics who are either curable or dangerous; but it cannot be that such an expenditure is justifiable for people who are harmless and incurable. Lunatics in asylums must— and we know they must—contain a great number of persons who are perfectly harmless and quite incurable ; what the exact proportion is we do not know, because you must remember that the pauper in the lunatic asylum is not under the same inspection as a pauper anywhere else. He is under the inspection of the Commissioners in Lunacy, and we have nothing to do with asylums. I venture to think that the true remedy is the centralisation of the administration, koth in the county, and in the central administration. 1 think the bodies who look after the lunatics in workhouses and in asylums shculd be the same bodies both locally and centrally. 2375. Then that would necessitate the inspectors of the county authorities having access to workhouses in which there were any lunatics ?—Or the inspectors of workhouses having access to the lunatic asylums for the purpose of inspecting the pauper lunatics there, and bringing the classiftcation into line. 2376. Have they not access now to the county asylums ? —No. 2377. Then when a lunatic is transferred to an asylum is the Poor Law authority no longer responsible ?—That is so. Every board of guardians visit the asylum from time to time and look at their own patients, that is, the patients for whom they pay ; but that is all that they do. 2378. (Mr. Loch.) Would not the bulk of the persons transferred be classed as harmless senile dements ?—They are not altogether senile dements. and they vary from the senile dement to the half-baked youth. 133 2379. The larger clearance, as it were, from the work- houses, would be rather of the aged infirm, 1 take it ?—1 do not think so. As the 4s. removes most of the financial objections to the transfer, the moment the pauper becomes ; old and troublesome, the master or the medical officer find 29 J@n- 1906. very good reasons for taking him before a magistrate. p...edure Since the Lunacy Act, 1890, the certificates for removal and f+ detention for retention in workhouses have been given with a great and removal deal more formality than was formerly the case, and now a of lunatics. man cannot be detained in a workhouse without a certifi- cate of the justices; whereas, formerly he could be detained on the certificate of the medical officer. Here, 1 am anticipating my evidence again, but I should like to point out, as showing the importance of this question, that in the year 1894 the maintenance of lunatics in county and borough asylums and registered hospitals cost £1,466,185, and in the year 1904, that is, only ten years later, the cost of maintenance amounted to £2,286,652, which shows a most ominous increase. (See Appendix Vol. I (A), No. V. (18).) 2380. (The O’Coxror Don.) Is not the certificate of the magistrates rather a matter of form, once the medical certificate has been given ?—I should not like to say it is a matter of form, because I have known many cases where a man has been remanded for a further period. Increase in 2381. (Mr. Russell Wakefield.) Has the increase in the nubeoee number of individual lunatics in asylums Reet Why BTO= | natics and portion to the increase in cost ?—No, it has not been their cost. proportionate at all; the cost has gone up faster than the numbers. Mr. James Stewart Davy, CB. : F _. Reports of 2382. (Chairman.) Have you anything to say with Aged Poor regard to the recommendations of the Aged Poor Com- Commission mission, and the Cottage Homes Committee of 1899 ?— and Cottage I cannot, at the moment, find my reterence to the report Hay, ar of the Aged Poor Commission. I think I have already na oe eee 3 : : : unatics in said that the Cottage Homes Committee in 1899 recom- yorkhouses. mended the removal of all lunatics from workhouses ; and the Commission did so, too, I think. Combraticn 2383. Will you now kindly tell us your views about of unions for workhouse classification ?—It has often been suggested, Workhouse with a view to the classification of inmates and the securing ©!#8ification. of better nursing for the sick, that rural unions should be grouped. That is a point that is very often discussed, and the suggestion that it should be done was definitely made in a speech by Mr. Walter Long. The matter was considered by the Cottage Homes Committee in 1899, who Views of were rather opposed to it on the ground that such a classi- Cottage tication of rural unions would separate poor folk from their Homes” friends. Tomy mind that is an objection which undoubt- Committee. edly prevails to a certain extent ; it may be, perhaps, that it is a little exaggerated, but still, it is a pot against the proposal. What is more against the propcsal, from my Objections to point of view, is the absolute want of local support combinations. which schemes of that sort get. There is nothing on which the average guardian is more sensitive than any change in his area. He looks upon it as his right, and he does not like to be mixed up with the neighbours at all. It is quite impossible, except by general legislation, to get over that prejudice. I have had a hand on several occasions in amalgamations of this sort. They are the most invidious and difficult things which a general in- spector has to do. Quite old friends would make it a personal matter with you if they think you have been concerned in altering their landmarks—even in the strongest possible cases. I have one in my mind now, where the proposal was to amalgamate two unions, one of which had a workhouse with eleven inhabitants in it! There was absolutely no objection to the amalgamation that any reasonable man, as I thought, could see; but the opposition, the fighting, the influencing of Members of Parliament, was perfectly extraordinary. In another case where there were two unions, both with very bad workhouses, both with the same sort of popu- lation and in the same county, where it was suggested that they should be amalgamated and a joint workhouse built in a far more convenient spot than either of their present ones, there was absolutely no local support whatever for it. I held the inquiry, and I think there was one man only in the room who was in favour of the amalgamation. I was obliged to report to my board that the change was out of the question, because there was no local support. Iam perfectly certain that there is not a Commissioner in this room who would go down and see these unions, and look into the circumstances, and would not at once say, ob- viously, the thing to do is to have an amalgamation ; that](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32184335_0143.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
