The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, APRIL 1, 1889.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 8756, 1 April 1889, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, APRIL 1, 1889.

The more we hear of the proposal to turn Addington Gaol into a receptacle for the Colony’s worst cases of criminal insanity, the more unreasonable does it seem. In the first place there is the obvious objection of the unfitness of the locality. The site is the heart of an already very thickly peopled suburb, inhabited by a class of men who, fully occupied all day, have to leave their wives and children unprotected. Conceive the howl of indignation which would certainly be raised were it suggested that a mass of criminal lunacy should be collected in the very centre of Christchurch city. Yet we do not hesitate to say that, abominable as such a nuisance would be in a town, it is distinctly more dangerous in a suburb. A town is filled with ablebodied men day and night, and, moreover, has a respectable, though by no means excessive, amount of police protection. Portions of our suburbs, on the other hand, are almost emptied of men during certain hours of the day, and as for the police protection enjoyed by their helpless women and children, suburban residents know what that amounts to. One policeman to three or four thousand people seems to be thought quite enough. The wooden cottages again, in which our suburban people for the most part live, are not fitted to shut out a resolute, ablebodied criminal for five minutes. Taken all through, the suburb of a Colonial town such as this affords about as excellent opportunities for a madman’s freaks and crimes as any sort of place that could be thought of. Hence the natural disgust and alarm so keenly felt by the inhabitants of Addington and Sydenham, at the plan which certain very injudicious persons have been endeavouring to induce the Government to adopt. It may be urged that a properlybuilt, completely - guarded asylum would be a source of no danger whatever to any neighbourhood. But, to begin with, Addington Gaol is not properly built to act as an asylum. It is not even well constructed for its present purposes, much less for the secure confinement of the desperate and cunning class of wild beasts in human shape which it is proposed to place there. Murray’s escape is not so old as to enable us to forget how easy escape from Addington gaol has been proved to be. We have the testimony of Mr F. Jones that the impression left on his mind, after a careful examination of the prison, was that its cells and walls seemed peculiarly well adapted to promote social intercourse between its inmates and the outside world. But we are told, this defect could easily be remedied. At very considerable expense no doubt it might. If, however, an outlay has to be incurred, why choose Addington ? Better face the cost of going further afield at once, since Mr Hislop, states that, if used as an asylum at all, Addington would only he used for a time. Moreover, to keep such a place secure a large and highly efficient staff would be necessary. Such a staff may easily enough be got and maintained in England, where public servants are not exposed to the constant risk of ruinous retrenchment in their salaries, or sudden dismissal altogether. But no such permanence is enjoyed by Government employees in this part of the world. On the contrary, if we are to judge of the extraordinary list of changes and dismissals which has of late taken place at Sunnyside, employment in a lunatic asylum in New Zealand is about the most uncertain and unstable post to be found in the Colony. We should have no confidence whatever in the lasting efficiency of any staff employed to restrain the inmates of a criminal asylum here. So much for the plan from the point of view of the dwellers in the neighbourhood. As for the suitability of the site for an asylum, we should think that medical opinion would be against it on several grounds. We presume that even criminal lunatics are the better for pure air, and as much exercise and recreation and surroundings as cheerful as can be given them. Can it he said that a strengthened gaol, with no open spaces, nothing cheerful, nothing beautiful in or around it, fulfils the requirements of modern curative science? That, however, is more a matter for experts to decide upon. If the Colony is to have a central criminal asylum, there ought to be no difficulty in getting plenty of scientific opinion on its place and nature.- What the residents of the Addington, Sydenham ami Lower Eiccarton suburbs have to think of is the moral nuisance and actual bodily danger to themselves and their families to be feared from such an institution. To our thinking no authorities have any right to locate a collection of howling, raving, blaspheming, murderous maniacs in the midst of a numerous community of quiet decent people. We are convinced that the Colonial Secretary cannot, before yesterday, have had the residents’ views on the matter properly laid before him. We hope that Mr Hislop will, in re- considering the matter, give due weight to the undoubted right of those who dwell in the neighbourhood of Addington to object to have an asylum inflicted upon them against their strong wish and protest.

We see with some pleasure that a well organised attempt is being made in Dunedin to start a light readable tfiagazine for New Zealand readers. True it is that there is no novelty about the starting of a New Zealand magazine—or about the ending thereof. One after another a dozen or so of well meaning period icals have spread their paper wings and fluttered through their little day, resembling the butterfly in the brevity if not the brightness of their career. The coming southern effort has this much to be said for it, that its promoters, warned by the sad fate of those before them, are resolutely purposed to make their magazine light and cheap. It will not be devoted to tho discussion of esoteric Buddhism, solar myths, political economy, or the ; structure of the rarer specieSijoLon^

Colonial coleoptera. It will modestly aim at giving its readers an hour or two’s pleasant, and by no means fatiguing, reading for sixpence. Its editor, Mr Freeman Kitchen, has already proved himsolf a capable writer of light fiction, and we are assured that he is anxious to secure good contributors in all parts of New Zealand. Its hopes of patronage must to some considerable extent be based on the desire now assuredly growing among young New Zealanders, to see the beginnings of a native literature attempted and fostered. To the English settler this cannot bo a matter of so much .concern. He looks across the ocean for his reading matter, and only notices local efforts for the purpose of drawing disdainful comparisons. But the born Colonial very rightly and properly takes an interest in all work that takes its colour and character from his birth land. Moreover, among an educated population, there must always be a certain amount of fair literary ability seeking an outlet. To those who have, or hope they have, this ability, we would point out that a wellcirculated magazine is just what they want, and that if they wish it to serve them they must begin by helping it on to its legs.