The Lyttelton Times. FRIDAY, JAN. 17, 1879.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5584, 17 January 1879, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. FRIDAY, JAN. 17, 1879.

The report of Dr Skao on the condition of the Wellington Asylum contains the strongest language of condemnation that it is possible for a report to contain. It is with positive amazement that one roads the opening statement of the number of patients. In Dr Skae’s report for 1877, which is not yesterday, the Wellington Asylum is set down as having satisfactory accommodation for 40 patients, in equal proportions of sexes. A strong recommendation was made for an increase of accommodation, but nothing was done. In March of the following year, Dr Skae again drew attention to the over-crowded state of this Asylum, and again nothing was done. The annual report for 1878 was presented in due course to Parliament. It contained on urgent appeal for an immediate extension of accommodation at Wellington, Dr Skae specially took care to say that it was most unwise to wait at Wellington for the new asylum recommended, and urgently necessary to provide temporary accommodation at once for 100 patients. Again nothing was done. At last the appalling fact is announced in another report, of which we published a portion yesterday by telegraph from Dr Skae, that this Asylum at Wellington, capable of accommodating 40 people, is crowded with 112. It is the inevitable result of Government neglecting the warnings of an official expert. One wonders why an Inspector of Asylums is kept in New Zealand. Apparently, his functions are to amuse himself by writing reports which are pigeon-holed and forgotten, as regularly as they are presented. Eighteen months ago Dr Skae described accurately the state of things in every Lunatic Asylum in the Colony. Nearly every one, he said, was suffering from overcrowding, and he repeated the statement twelve months later. The most ordinary capacity could take in what this meant. The lowest order of brain could infer that the Lunatic Asylums of the Colony were going to ruin, which could only be averted by prompt measures. Tet there have been no measures at all, and one of the Asylums has reached the abyss of degradation which was predicted. The fall of the others into the same hideous abomination is only a matter of time. This state of things is a curious commentary on the theory of one Government that abolition was to regenerate everything, and on the profession by another Government of great care for social matters. The sufferings of these wretched creatures at Wellington can be readily imagined without the employment of any liveliness of fancy. Passages lavatories, and day-rooms used as sleeping rooms, dormitories carrying double their proper quota of sleepers, form a not prepossessing picture. For sane people such things could never be, because sane people would make a noise that would effectually keep the official sense of responsibility—and when we say official we mean Ministerial—awake. But for the insane, who are like the dumb animals, there is no responsibility. They can be herded together in the proportion of thirty in a room twenty feet by fifteen. And it is not the discomfort and the vile odour of the fetid atmosphere which are the worst evils. This place is, it is time to remember, an Asylum for the treatment and possible cure of the insane. Bach a place, as Dr Skae says, has lost all claim to be called a Lunatic Asylum. No system of treatment, no supervision, no management is possible. The taint of insanity sinks deeper into the brain with every day of such a horrible prison-house life. We have a Government that says that it delights in social questions, and we have a Lunatic Asylum which has become a place for the rapid propagation of every filthy habit and abominable vice into which insane humanity is prone to fall. We have a Government which, reading things backwards, allows a Lunatic Asylum to become a place for the fostering and perpetuation of insanity in all its most hideous forms. Brutus tells us that this Government is fond of doing good socially; “ and Brutus is an honourable man.” Perhaps, when murder and fire have been added to {the list of the practices fomented in part by the negligence of the Govcrnmfnt of which he is a member, that Government will commence the work of regeneration. When they have made it impossible for insane human nature to descend to greater depths of degradation, it will be easy to earn the title of social improvers by raising the lunatics to a level one degree higher than the lowest. This will be a feat for the Honorable Brutus to boast about in his next oration. We do not wish to bo misunderstood in these remarks. Wo believe the Government has a real interest in social questions ; we admire the care which the Attorney-General bestowed during last year’s recess upon the measures which he summed under the heading of law reform j we think the enthusiasm he devoted in his speech at Dunedin to the social of the lost session very creditable to him; and wo frankly admit that this portion of the Government programme has received scant justice at the hands of the public. At the same time wo cannot forgot that tho treatment of tho insano is too important a matter to bo ignored or postponed. Its postponement has lod to grave evils, which are a blot on tho administration,

The most serious aspect of the question is that nearly every Asylum in Now Zealand is running under full steam, dead on to the rocks on which the Wellington Asylum has wrecked every rag of a claim it ever had to bo considered a decently fit place for the reception of human beings. Man, who is made after the imago and likeness of his Maker, is, when bereft of the godlike attribute of

reason,entitled to the temleiat ciuc. and the most skilful mirture at tb bands of his fellow man. Is >t n< ? cc „ sitry to do more than Any arguments in support of tut modern view of insanity, would make the very paper on which they written blush for the necessity of dt feuding what has become on \ all men of right feeling and liberal ideas. Why then docs not man, when bereft of reason in New Zealand, obta always the treatment to which he is entitled P What the treatment he gets is may bo guessed from the following fact. According to Dr Shoe's for 1878, there are in New Zealand 8 insane patients distributed throughout the various Asylums. The amount of satisfactory accommodation now existing is for 270, so that there is a deficiency of accommodation for 628 of the patients now confined in the Asylums of Now Zealand. They are not all as badly off as the 112 whose awful condition at Wellington has just horrified the Colony beyond all bounds. At the same time, they are all worse off than they might be, and in the natural course of events they must be a great deal worse off yet. The reason assigned will probably be want of money. Last year many of the votes for additions to Lunatic Asylums lapsed, and this year the tenders are in some cases —that of Christchurch, for instance—so much above the sums voted, that nothing probably is contemplated till Parliament meets. The difficulty is in this country not a difficulty at all. Money can be got at will by Government; it has been got; and will be got again. It is the business of Government to find the money for certain services, and the treatment of the insane is one of them. A Government which can contract for a railway at Tapaaui without consulting Parliament, and which is fond —professedly—of doing good socially, should not shrink from contracting for decent Lunatic Asylums when urgent need arises. There are 628 insane patients in the Colony, who have not got the accommodation necessary for their successful or hopeful treatment. The provision of that accommodation will cost a large sum of money. The publication of Dr Skae’s report should call from tho Colony a unanimous and peremptory mandate for the immediate expenditure of that sum.