Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry on the state of Lunatic Asylums and other Institutions for the Custody and Treatment of the Insane in Ireland, with Minutes of Evidence, and Appendices. (State Paper, pp. 718.)

Abstract

The report of the Royal Commission into the state of the Irish Lunatic Asylums has at length been presented and printed, two years from the date of the commission, and after the period fixed for the report has been extended (as we have been informed) three times by letters patent. We hear that this delay has been occasioned, partly by the inability of the English Commissioners in Lunacy (who were most unadvisedly placed on this commission,) to devote their time to these foreign duties, to the neglect of their own urgent duties at home; and partly to the absence of unanimity in the views of the Commissioners, and especially to the opinion entertained by Dr. Corrigan, in opposition to that of all his colleagues, that Visiting Physicians are a necessary appendage to Lunatic Asylums. The Commissioners assembled in Dublin, October 16th, 1856. From the public institutions and the Constabulary they obtained returns of the number of the poor insane, giving the total number maintained at the public charge in asylums, workhouses, and prisons, 5,934; the number of insane poor at large and unprovided for, 3,352; total, 9,286. The census returns of 1851, give the number of the insane in Ireland, 9,980; while the Inspectors of Lunatics, in their last report, fix the number at 11,452.