We can advert to but a few of the curious particulars which the inquiries of the Committee brought to light.-An advertisement was annually published in the newspapers, under the direction of the apothecary, in which the number of admissions, cures, deaths, &c. was inserted. In this the number of deaths was habitually falsified, a portion being taken away from the amount of the deaths, and added to that of the cures. asked the apothecary," says Mr. Higgins, "who made out these accounts; and he told me that he did; but that it was his practice to send them to the physician and to the steward for examination previous to their publication." "I In consequence of the inquiry, visitors, after a lapse of twentyeight years, were appointed. They discovered the existence of an old rule, that the steward should not send bills of charges to the friends of the patients, till signed by the visitors. When the obedience of the old steward to this rule was demanded, he plainly told the visitors he would not pay it obedience. It impeached his honour. At a meeting of Governors, which was held to consider some new rules which were proposed by the Committee of inquiry, Earl Fitzwilliam expressed great surprise at learning from that Committee's report, that the highest sum paid to the institution by any patient was only fourteen shillings per week, when it was known there were in the Asylum persons who paid much more. "These,” says our History, " it was answered, were Dr. Best's private patients, for whom he received what he thought fit; and paid the house only fourteen shillings. Earl Fitzwilliam declared his astonishment. He had been a governor for a long period of years, and regularly attended the annual meetings; but he never before heard of any private patients of the physician." The following is a fact of too much importance not to be produced: "The most extraordinary circumstance reported by the Committee, as connected with the old system, was the conduct of Mr. Surr, the late steward. The Committee being in want of his quarterly books of account as to the patients, on the Monday before the Quarterly Court, Mr. Pyemont, the new steward, was dispatched to apply to Mr. Surr for these books-he returned twice without them-Mr. Surr did not know what books the Committee wanted. The Committee waited on him in person. He peremptorily refused to deliver them up, or to give any account of them. The Committee, therefore, reported to the Quarterly Court, that they conceived these books to be the property of the Institution, and submitted that Mr. Surr should be required to deliver them up. In consequence of this report of the Committee, Mr. Brook, the treasurer, was deputed by the Quarterly Court to demand the books-be returned with an answer, that Mr. Surr, after the Committee left him on Monday night, had, in a moment of irritation, BURNT THE WHOLE OF THE BOOKS-except the book for the quarter just expiring. "The following resolution was then passed: ""That the conduct of Mr. Surr, in withholding from the Committee several account books belonging to this Institution, and destroying them, deserves the severest reprehension of this Court, and is a most ungrateful return for the indulgence shown him by the last Annual Court, in allowing him to reside in the steward's house until the 6th of April next.' " A no less extraordinary circumstance occurred at the next meeting of the Committee, sufficiently proving that if the burning of the books really took place, it was not a sally of passion, but a deliberate act of selection. Mr. Surr produced to the Committee those quarterly books which tally with his accounts, and are so contrived, that whilst the physician was receiving considerable sums out of the weekly payments of the patients, he does not appear to receive a single shilling-the other set of books, which would have disclosed the steward's actual receipts, he still declared he had destroyed." (History, p. 89, 90.) Mr. Gray sums up his account of the York Lunatic Asylum in the following words: " In the Asylum Investigations, CONCEALMENT appears at every step of our progress: 365 patients have died-the number is advertised 221. A patient disappears, and is never more heard of, he is said to be 'REMOVED.' A patient is killed-his body is hurried away to prevent an inquest. He is cured, but it is by some medicine, the composition of which is known only to the Doctor. The public cry out, that a patient has been neglected; there is a levy en masse of respectable Governors to quell the disturbance, and to certify that the patient has been treated with all possible care, attention, and humanity.' A Committee of Investigation desires to be shown the house; certain cells ' in an extreme state of filth and neglect' are omitted to be pointed out to them. The Governors examine the accounts; there are considerable sums, of which neither the receipt nor the application appears. They inspect the Physician's Report ;-it only aids the concealment. The steward's books are inquired for;-in a moment of irritation he selects for the flames such of them as he thought it not adviseable to produce. And yet every circumstance of concealment is imputed by some to mere accident; and every attempt to tear off the mask, and exhibit the Asylum in its true character, is stigmatized as a libel, or an indelicate disclosure!" (History, p. 90, 91.) The effect of the inquiries was, that all the servants and officers of the house were dismissed, except the Doctor. He alone was retained. This was celebrated, in his behalf, as a complete victory, and triumph was performed. The public were congratulated in the newspapers on the result of the inquiry, by which it had appeared, that "the conduct of the physician had been peçuliarly correct." In cool and impartial judgment, however, it must appear that the Doctor was condemned in the condemnation of the servants, who were made the scape-goats to carry the sins of the establishment into the wilderness. If the conduct of the servants and other officers had been allowed to be habitually bad, the doctor alone was to blame, who possessed consigned to him all the powers of government in the Institution, and was, therefore, justly responsible for every thing which occurred. Mr. Higgins, in giving his evidence before the House of Commons Committee, having been asked, was there any committee or visitors who looked after the affairs of the asylum, answered-" No; the physician had for many years past been the sole physician, sole visitor, and sole committee, and had the whole management of the Institution." And this testimony is confirmed, if such confirmation were necessary, by the evidence of Dr. Best himself. But further, the condemnation of all the servants and officers, except Dr. Best, was not only the condemnation of Dr. Best, but the condemnation of the Institution; because, whatsoever was the conduct of the servants and officers of such a place, such exactly was the management. The conduct of these persons was declared to be eminently bad: by the same act the state of the house was declared to have been eminently bad, since the state of the house was created by their conduct. They were necessary causes and effects, and the one was the measure of the other. If the state of the house was good, the conduct of the managers within it could not be bad; if their conduct was bad, the state of the house must exactly correspond with it. Dr. Best, however, requested to appear before the Committee of the House of Commons to give evidence in his own vindication. It appears, that he attempted to deny scarcely any of the facts which had been stated. What he chiefly endeavoured to do was to explain them, and show that no criminality attached to them. For example, he did not deny that the rooms which Mr. Higgins discovered were in the state which Mr. Higgins described. But he said they were in that state, only because the patients were more than usually crowded, by the loss of the wing of the building which had been destroyed by fire. He did not deny that William Vicars was carried home in the miserable condition described by Mr. Higgins. He only said, that he had suffered an apoplectic attack while in the house, had fallen into bad health, lost the command over the natural discharges, could with great difficulty be kept clean, and was removed when convalescence had just begun. He did not deny that the statement of deaths made by the apothecary in the newspapers was false; but he denied that he knew of their falsehood, and denied also that the apothecary had any interest in falsifying. He also did not deny that two sets of books were kept; and that the set which showed what the patients really paid was burnt. He only denied that any fraud or concealment was meant, as he himself had explained the modes of payment to the Committee, who also saw both sets of books. As these are the few important facts which we have been able to mention, these are the only answers which we can afford to insert. With respect to his plea, from the burning of the wing, this fact is stated, that an offer was made, by the persons who had the government of the Retreat, as well as of the Asylum at Nottingham, to accommodate, in that exigency, as many of the patients as possible; and that Dr. Best induced the Governors of the York Asylum to decline the offer in both instances. The reply which is made by the Doctor is, that the numbers which they could ac commodate were so very small, that it would have made no considerable difference in the state of the Asylum to have sent them, We regret the space which the statement of these particulars has required; but to ourselves they appear to be highly instructive, and we could not have made the case intelligible without them. Dr. Best, after these inquiries, resigned his office in the Institution, and assigned the badness of his health as the reason. We proceed next to a subject which occupied so much of the attention of the Committee, that the evidence relating to it amounts to one-third of the minutes annexed to their Report-we mean the state of Bethlem Hopital. On this, however, we are compelled to be very short. The first thing which strikes the inquirer with regard to this place is, the difficulties thrown in the way of inspection, Mr. Wakefield was asked by the Committee, "Had you any difficulty in obtaining an entrance into the hospital? -I originally went to Bethlem Hospital with a written order from a governor. Mr. Alavoine the then steward said, he was extremely sorry that he could not show me the hospital, as he could have done the week before; but that a resolution of twenty years standing had been revived, to prevent any persons seeing that hospital but in company with a governor; and that in consequence of something which had been publicly said at a meeting, which had been held at the City of London Tavern. I asked Mr. Alavoine who were the governors; he said it was more than his place was worth to tell. He held in his hand a printed list of the governors; I requested permission to look at it; he said he could not allow me to do so; that Mr. Poynder, the secretary, who lived at Bridewell Hospital, would furnish me with a copy of the list of governors. In consequence of which I sent two persons on Friday the 22d of April, 1814, to the office of Mr. Poynder, clerk of Bethlem Hospital, who asked his clerk for a list of the governors of Bethlem Hospital; the clerk said, I cannot give a list; Mr. Poynder is below stairs. On furnishing a list, the fee charged by Mr. Poynder must be paid. What is the fee?" 'One guinea.' Mr. Poynder now entered from below stairs, and finally refused to give the person I sent a list of the gover nors. He, however, forwarded me a list in the course of a few days." (Report, p. 13.) Mr. Wakefield states, that the first time he endeavoured to see Bethlem, the Governor, on whom he had prevailed to accompany him, Mr. Alderman Cox, whose feelings were overpowered before they had seen one half of the house, being unable to attend him, he was not allowed to proceed, even while the Alderman remained in the steward's room. Introduced on a subsequent day by another governor, "At this visit," says the witness, "attended by the steward of the hospital, and likewise by a female keeper, we first proceeded to visit the women's galleries: one of the side rooms contained about ten patients, each chained by one arm or leg to the wall; the chain allowing them merely to stand up by the bench or form fixed to the wall, or to sit down on it. The nakedness of each patient was covered by a blanket-gown only; the blanket-gown is a blanket formed something like a dressing-gown, with nothing to fasten it with in front; this constitutes the whole covering; the feet even were naked. One female in this side room, thus chained, was an object remarkably striking; she mentioned her maiden and married names, and stated that she had been a teacher of languages; the keepers described her as a very accomplished lady, mistress of many languages, and corroborated her account of herself. The Committee can hardly imagine a human being in a more degraded and brutalizing situation than that in which I found this female, who held a coherent conversation with us, and was of course fully sensible of the mental and bodily condition of those wretched beings, who, equally without clothing, were closely chained to the same wall with herself. Unaware of the necessities of nature, some of them, though they contained life, appeared totally inanimate and unconscious of existence. The few minutes which we passed with this lady did not permit us to form a judgment of the degree of restraint to which she ought to be subject; but I unhesitatingly affirm, that her confinement with patients in whom she was compelled to witness the most disgusting idiotcy, and the most terrifying distraction of the human intellect, was injudicious and improper. She intreated to be allowed pencil and paper, for the purpose of amusing herself with drawing, which were given to her by one of the gentlemen with me. Many of these unfortunate women were locked up in their cells, naked and chained on straw, with only one blanket for a covering." (Report, p. 11.) "In the men's wing in the side room, six patients were chained close to the wall, five handcuffed, and one locked to the wall by the right arm as well as by the right leg; he was very noisy; all were naked, except as to the blanket gown or a small rug on his shoulders, and without shoes; one complained much of the coldness of his feet; one of us felt them, they were very cold. The patients in this room, except the noisy one, and the poor lad with cold feet, who was lucid when we saw him, were dreadful idiots their nakedness and their mode of confinement gave this room the complete appearance of a dog-kennel. From ; |