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head in asylums are charged to the “establishment” account of the workhouse, and are omitted in the calculation of the rate of maintenance. Reference to the Tables given in the Poor-Law Board Returns (Tenth Report, p. 61, sub-column e and a portion of f) will prove that the expenditure on account of those other items must be nearly or quite equal to that comprehended under the head of “in-maintenance” cost.

      We have no means at hand to calculate with sufficient precision what sum should be added to the “in-maintenance” cost of paupers per head in workhouses, but it is quite clear that the figures usually employed to represent it, cannot be rightly compared with those exhibiting the weekly charge of lunatics in asylums. At the very least half as much again must be added to a workhouse estimate before placing it in contrast with asylum cost.

      Since the preceding remarks were written, Dr. Bucknill has favoured us with the Thirteenth Report of the Devon Asylum, in which he has discussed this same question and illustrated it by a special instance. To arrive at the actual cost of an adult sane pauper in a union-house, he gathered “the following particulars relative to the house of the St. Thomas Union in which this asylum is placed; a union, the population of which is 49,000, and which has the reputation of being one of the best managed in the kingdom. The cost of the maintenance of paupers in this union-house is 2s. 6d. per head, per week, namely, 2s. 2d. for food and 4d. for clothing. The establishment charges are 1s. 0½d. per head, per week, making a total of 3s. 6½d. for each inmate. The total number of pauper inmates during the twelfth week of the present quarter was 246; and of these 116 were infants and children, and 130 youths above sixteen and adults. A gentleman intimately acquainted with these accounts, some time since calculated for me that each adult pauper in the St. Thomas’s Union-house cost 5s. a week. Now the average cost of all patients in the Devon Asylum at the present time is 7s. 7d., but of this at least 2s. must be set down to the extra wages, diet, and other expenses needful in the treatment of the sick, and of violent and acute cases, leaving the cost of the great body of chronic patients at not more than 5s. 7d. a week. Now if a sane adult pauper in a union-house costs even 4s. 6d. a week, is it probable that an insane one would cost less than 5s. 7d.? For either extra cost must be incurred in his care, or he must disturb the discipline of the establishment, and every such disturbance is a source of expense.”

      This quotation is really a reiteration of Dr. Bucknill’s conclusions as advanced in 1857, in an excellent paper in the ‘Asylum Journal’ (vol. iv. p. 460), and as a pendent to it the following extract from this paper is appropriate; viz. “that the cost of a chronic lunatic properly cared for, and supplied with a good dietary, in a County Asylum, is not greater than that of a chronic lunatic supplied with a coarse and scanty dietary, and detained in neglect and wretchedness as the inmate of a union workhouse.”

      Another most important circumstance to be borne in mind when the cost of workhouses and asylums is contrasted, is that in the former establishments more than two-thirds of the inmates are children. Thus the recipients of in-door relief on the 1st of January, 1858, consisted, according to the Poor-Law Returns, of 74,141 adults, and 50,836 children under sixteen years of age. Now as the rate of maintenance is calculated on the whole population of a workhouse, adults and children together, it necessarily follows that it falls much within that of asylums, in which almost the whole population is adult. This very material difference in the character of the inmates of the two institutions may fairly be valued as equivalent to a diminution of one-fourth of the expense of maintenance in favour of workhouses; and without some such allowance, the comparison of the cost per head in asylums and union-houses respectively is neither fair nor correct.

      Again, there is another difference between asylums and workhouses, which tells in favour of the latter in an economical point of view, whilst it proves that the expenditure of the two is not rightly comparable without making due allowance for it along with the foregoing considerations. This difference subsists in the character of the two institutions respectively; namely, that in the asylum the movements of the population are slight, whereas in the workhouse they are very considerable by the constant ingress and egress of paupers; driven to it by some passing misfortune or sickness, it may be for a week or two only or even less, and discharging themselves so soon as the temporary evil ceases to operate or the disorder is overcome: for the poor generally, except the old and decrepit who cannot help themselves, both dread a lodging in the workhouse, and escape from it as soon as possible; in fact, even when they have no roof of their own to shelter them, they will often use the union accommodation only partially, leaving it often by day and returning to it by night. All this implies a large fluctuation of inmates frequently only partially relieved, whether in the way of board or clothing; and consequently when the average cost per head of in-door paupers is struck, it appears in a greater or less degree lower than it would have done had the same constancy in numbers and in the duration and extent of the relief afforded prevailed as it does in asylums.

      The effect of the fluctuations in population in union-houses ought, we understand, to be slight, if the “Orders in Council” laid down to guide parochial authorities in the calculation of the cost of their paupers, were adhered to; viz. that for all those belonging to any one parish in union, who may have received in-door relief during the year or for any less period of time, an equivalent should be found representing the number who have been inmates throughout the year; or the total extent of relief be expressed by estimating it to be equal to the support of one hypothetical individual for any number of years equivalent to the sum of the portions of time the entire number of the paupers of the particular parish received the benefits of the establishment. We do not feel sure that these plans of calculating the cost per head are faithfully and fully executed; the rough method of doing so, viz. by taking the whole cost of “in-maintenance” at the end of the year and dividing it by the number of its recipients, and assuming the quotient to represent the expenditure for each. Whether this be the case or not, these daily changes among its inmates, the frequent absence of many for a great part of the day and the like, are to be enumerated among the circumstances which tend to keep down expenditure of workhouses; and which are not found in asylums.

      There is yet another feature about workhouses which distinguishes them from asylums, and is of considerable moment in the question of the comparative cost of maintenance in the two: this is, the circumstance of the population of workhouses being of a mixed character, of which the insane constitute merely a small section; while, on the contrary, that of asylums is entirely special, and each of its members to be considered a patient or invalid demanding particular care and special appliances. Therefore, a priori, no comparison as to their expenditure can justly be drawn between two institutions so dissimilar. Yet even this extent of dissimilarity between them is not all that exists; for the union-house is so constituted by law as to serve as a test of poverty; to offer no inducements to pauperism, and to curtail the cost of maintenance as far as possible. It has properly no organization for the detention, supervision, moral treatment and control, nor for the nursing or medical care of the insane; and when its establishment is attempted it is a step at variance with its primary intention, and involves an extra expenditure.

      Consequently, before overseers or guardians can with any propriety contrast the workhouse charges of maintenance with those of asylums, it is their business to estimate what an adult pauper lunatic costs them per week, instead of, as usual, quoting the cost per head calculated on the whole of the inmates, old and young, sane and insane.

      Once more, even after a fair estimate of the cost of an adult insane inmate of a workhouse is obtained, there is still another differential circumstance favourable to a less rate than can be anticipated in asylums; for this reason: – that in the former institutions the practice is to reject all violent cases, the major portion of recent ones, and, generally, all those who give particular annoyance and trouble; whilst the latter is, as it rightly should be, regarded as the fitting receptacle for all such patients; – that is, in other words, those classes of patients which entail the greatest expense are got rid of by the workhouses and undertaken by the asylums.

      Dr. Bucknill has well expressed the same circumstances we have reviewed, in the following paragraph (Report, Devon Asylum, 1858, p. 13): – “In estimating the cost of lunatic paupers in asylums, the important consideration must not be omitted, that the charge made for the care and maintenance of lunatics

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