Relative Cost of Large and Small Asylums

Abstract

In support of the position that small asylums are, even from an economic point of view, better than very large ones, Dr. Hack Tuke, in his recent work on the “History of the Insane,” cites the opinions of the Lunacy Commissioners, as given in their Report for 1857. He also gives in the appendix some figures which the Commissioners prepared in regard to the weekly cost of patients in large and small asylums, and which were adduced by them to support the same view. He found, however, that on taking an average of the six largest and six smallest asylums in the list, the weekly expenses per head in the latter appeared to be really greater than in the former—a result different from that for which he had cited them from the Blue-book.