LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

of the annual admissions; hence we do not possess the means of discovering what proportion of the growing increase observed is due year by year to the accession of fresh inmates. The advancing growth in numbers of those pauper insane receiving out-door relief is not clearly discoverable: from the few data in possession, as before quoted (p. 14), about 200 are annually added.

      It appears pretty clearly, then, that there are at least 1600 reported lunatics added to the insane population of the country yearly, and of this increase only 60, or 1 in 26·66, are supported out of their own resources in asylums; the remainder, with some few exceptions, falling upon the rates for their entire maintenance.

      It would therefore be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the question of the provision for the insane poor in this country, both to the political economist and to the legislator. There are certainly more than 1300 persons yearly so affected in mind as to be unfit or unable to take care of themselves, and to obtain their own livelihood, and who, under this distressing infliction of Providence, demand the care and charity of their neighbours, and the succour of the State, properly to protect and provide for them. To perform this duty at the least cost, compatible with justice to these afflicted individuals, involves a tax upon the community of which few persons have any adequate conception. Supposing, by way of illustration, that the number mentioned required the accommodation of an asylum, the cost of providing it, according to the system hitherto in vogue, would nearly equal that incurred in the establishment and maintenance of the Middlesex County Asylum at Colney Hatch, or a sum of £300,000 for land, buildings, and fittings (equal, at 5 per cent. to a yearly rental of £15,000), and an annual charge of £30,000 for maintenance. The example of Colney Hatch, chosen for illustration, is a very fair one, and the figures used in round numbers are actually within the average expenditure in and for the establishment of County Asylums in this country, as may be seen on reference to Appendix D. (Commissioners’ Report, 1854), and to the table of asylums in course of erection, printed at p. 2 of their Twelfth Report (1858).

      On applying these results to the total number of pauper lunatics in Asylums, which, according to the return on the 1st of January 1858, amounted to 15,000, the sum of £4,500,000 (not including interest) will have been expended in providing them accommodation, and an annual charge incurred of £450,000 for their care and maintenance. All this, too, is independent of the cost on account of those maintained in Licensed Houses, in workhouses, and in lodgings with friends or others, the amount of which we do not possess sufficient information to determine.

      The Commissioners in Lunacy, in their elaborate Report in 1844, took the population of England and Wales at 16,480,082, and reckoned on the existence of 20,893 lunatics on the 1st January of that year, of whom 16,542 were paupers. The latter, they calculated, stood in the proportion of 1 to 1000 in the population, or, more correctly, 1 in 997; and the total lunatics as 1 to 790. On the 1st of January 1857, they found the pauper lunatics to be in the proportion of 1 in 701; whilst pauper and private together equalled 1 in 600, to the estimated population, 19,408,364. Adopting the figures arrived at in the preceding discussion, viz. that there are 41,000 insane persons in this country, and assuming the population on the 1st of January, 1859, to have been 19,800,000, the proportion of the insane would be as high as 1 in 483 persons.

      This much-enlarged ratio of insanity to the population admits of several explanations, without a resort to the belief that the disease is actually and fearfully on the increase. As before said, we regard the accumulation of chronic and incurable lunatics to be the chief element in raising the total number, and this accumulation is favoured by all causes operating against the cure of insanity; by the increased attention to the disease, and by all those conditions improving the value of life of the insane, supplied, at the present day, in accordance with the improved views respecting their wants, and the necessity of placing them under conditions favourable for their health, care and protection. On the operation of these causes, favouring the multiplication of insane persons in the community, we shall, however, not at present further enter, but proceed to inquire how far the existing provision for the insane is adequate to their requirements.

      Before entering on this inquiry, a few words are wanting to convey a suggestion or two respecting the collection of the statistics of pauper lunatics. It is most desirable we should be able to discover, from the official returns of the public boards, with precision, what number of insane persons is wholly or partially chargeable to the Poor Rates, what to Borough, and what to County Rates. The returns of the Poor-Law Office ought not to be marred by the omission of the statistics of parishes, which by local or special acts escape the direct jurisdiction of the board. If the central board be denied a direct interference in their parochial administration, it ought to be informed of the number of their chargeable poor, including lunatics. It is equally unsatisfactory, that the pauper registry kept by the Poor-Law Board is not rendered complete by the record of all those chargeable to counties and boroughs, as this could be so readily done by the clerks of county and borough magistrates.

      An amendment, too, is desirable in the practice of the Poor-Law Office of reckoning together in their tables pauper lunatics in asylums among the recipients of out-door relief with those boarded with their friends or elsewhere, whence it is impossible to gather the proportion of such class. This technicality of considering workhouse inmates as the only recipients of in-door relief, to the exclusion of asylum patients who are in reality receiving it in an equal degree, although in another building than the workhouse, is an official peculiarity we can neither explain nor approve; and it appears to us most desirable that lunatic paupers in asylums should be arranged in a distinct column, and that the same should be done with those living with their friends or others. By the adoption of this plan the questions of the number of the pauper insane, of their increase and decrease, whether in asylums or elsewhere, and of the adequacy of accommodation for them, could be ascertained by a glance at the tables. We would likewise desire to see those paupers belonging to parishes not in union and under Local Acts, and those chargeable to Counties and Boroughs, tabulated in a similar manner.

      A practical suggestion, connected with the statistics of insanity, we owe to Mr. Purdy, viz. that section 64 of the “Lunatic Asylums’ Act, 1853” (16 & 17 Vict. cap. 97) should be amended by the insertion of a few words requiring the clerks of unions to make the returns of the number of chargeable lunatics on a specified day, as on the first of January in each year. This practice was formerly enjoined, and probably its omission from the Act now in force was accidental. The present enactment requires that the clerks of unions “shall, on the first day of January in every year, or as soon after as may be, make out and sign a true and faithful list of all lunatics chargeable to the union or parish;” and the only alteration required is the addition of two or three words at the end of this paragraph, such as: – ‘on the first day of January of that year.’ The want of a fixed date of this kind, Mr. Purdy says, imposes great trouble in getting the clerks to make their returns with reference to the same day in the several unions and parishes.

      Chap. III. – state of the present provision for the insane in asylums. – its inadequacy

      In their Report for 1857, the Commissioners in Lunacy have presented us with a memorandum of the present accommodation afforded in County Asylums, and of that in course of being supplied, and have attempted further a calculation of the probable requirements on the 1st of January 1860. The former may be accepted as nearly correct, but the latter affords, as before noticed, a rough, and not sufficiently accurate, estimate.

      Their statement is, that on the 1st of January, 1858, 16,231 beds were provided in public asylums; that, by the projected enlargement of existing institutions, 2481 others would be obtained, and, by the completion of eight asylums in course of erection, there would be added 2336 more – a total of 4817, on or before January 1860. Of the increase in additional buildings, 1000 beds, or thereabouts, would not be ready at so early a date as that named; and in calculating existing provision, need be deducted from the total of 2,336; consequently the accommodation in County Asylums would, according to the Commissioners, in this year, 1859, reach 20,000, and in 1860, 21,048.

      The County Asylum accommodation on January 1st, 1858, expressed by the sum of 16,231, exceeded the total of pauper lunatics returned as actually partaking its advantages at that date, viz. 14,931, by the large number of 1300; showing a surplus to that amount, including beds, in infirmary wards. What may be the precise number of the last, or,

Скачать книгу