Mt. Ida Chronicle AND ST. BATHANS WEEKLY NEWS. NASEBY, SATURDAY, AUG. 29th, 1891. THE SEACLIFF ASYLUM.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 1134, 29 August 1891, Page 2

Mt. Ida Chronicle AND ST. BATHANS WEEKLY NEWS. NASEBY, SATURDAY, AUG. 29th, 1891. THE SEACLIFF ASYLUM.

The judicial mind gleams out of Sir. ; Laurence Simpson's report on the last Seacliff Asylum enquiry to an extent highly creditable to Mr. Simpson but perhaps a trifle irritating to the ordinary observer. There could, of course, have been no possible doubt, as to what the nature of the. verdict would be. Although the public do not hear the evidence as the presiding official does, they can arrive at a perfectly clear estimate of the facts, when the testimony is as unmistakeable as it was in this matter, from a perusal of the summaries in the newspapers. Mr. Simpson gives the same verdict as everyone else who had attended to the matter had previously arrived at; but he does not add the emphatic condemnation of the whole its authors, promoters, and abettors, which we fancy was expected of him by the general public. In this, no doubt, he was strictly and correctly following the lines of duty; and yet if the country is to be put to all this expense whenever complaints as trivial, and, indeedj disgraceful, as in the present instance.are brought forward and " run " by unscrupulous nobodies for purposes purely mischievous, there will certainly be no end to the waste of time and money. It certainly seems as though there room for a change of practice of the officers who hold these enquiries. Let them, by all means, afford every possible i assistance for the proper statement and proof of any complaint having [ a prima facie appearance of good faith ; and even if such proof fails, let them continue the practice of judicially and briefly chronicling the fact, wherever the complainant appears to have been simply mistaken or misinformed. But in cases such as the complaint of the? man Emerson, it seems desirable that something more than this should be done, or, at any rate, said. "We fail to to see why, where a complaint has been shewn to be trivial, mischievous, and prompted by extremely questionable motives, " the magistrate so deciding should not state the fact emphatically in his judgment, and award costs against the complainant. It is notorious that in the present instance the man was egged on and patronised by people who should have known bstter, and whom there seems to be no means of making sorry for the wanton waste of time and money which they have brought about. The conduct of our public institutions is a matter of vital interest in the country districts, where afflicted relatives havo frequently to lose sight for many months together of unfortunate members of their household whom these institutions shelter. We are therefore far from desiring to impose undue limits on the valuable public right of complaint and enquiry, or to offer to those in charge of asylums of any kind the opportunities of mismanagement or oppression which might result from a too exclusive reliance on the efficac) of the official inspections. We cannot, however, see why it should not be part of the duty of the Inspector-General to hold such enquiries, which could be conducted in public if need be, and would thus be effectually guarded from any suspicion of favouritism. This would at any rate get rid of the expense which at present attaches to all such enquiries ; and provision might be made for the right of appeal from the decision to an independent court, wherever a judge of the Supreme Court, on reading the depositions and judgment given at the first enquiry, should certify such to be desirable.

There has been a unanimous expression of opinion in favour of that clause in Mr. Simpson's report which finds fault with the system r>f imposing on the Superintendent of an Asylum the duty of collecting the enforced contributions of relatives to the maintenance of patients. There is plenty of official machinery at hand for such duties without niakingthempartof the Asylum work, and we trust that steps will be at once taknn in the direction reconir mended by Mr. Simpson. '