In the first place, the Commissioners resort to some recent corrected returns of the Poor-Law Board, and discover that the number of pauper lunatics in workhouses was, on the 1st of January, 1858, 7555, _i. e._ upwards of 500 above that returned in the Tenth Report of the same Board, and referred to in the foregoing pages; and on the 1st of July in that same year it amounted to 7666. They then proceed to describe the "character and forms of insanity most prevalent in workhouses," and show that their insane inmates all require protection and control; that "some, reduced to poverty by their disease, are of superior habits to those of ordinary paupers, and require better accommodation than a workhouse affords. Many are weak in body, and require better diet. Many require better nursing, better clothing, and better bedding; almost all (and particularly those who are excitable) require more healthful exercise, and, with rare exceptions, all require more tender care and more vigilant superintendence than is given to them in any workhouse whatsoever."
On turning to the "Design and Construction of Union Buildings," they rightly point out that the stringent conditions to ensure economy, and to check imposition and abuse, the "reduced diet, task labour, confinement within the narrow limits of the workhouse premises," the plan of separating the inmates into classes, the scanty means of out-door exercise, &c., are inimical to the well-being of the insane residents. In the "Modes of Workhouse Direction and Administration" there is great unfitness. The rules under which the officers act "are mainly devised to check disorderly conduct in ordinary paupers; and it is needless to say with how much impropriety they are extended to the insane. Any increase of excitement, or outbreak of violence, occurring in the cases of such patients, instead of being regarded as a manifestation of diseased action requiring medical or soothing treatment, has subjected the individual to punishment, and in several instances led to his imprisonment in a jail. In addition to these hardships, the lunatic patient is for the most part precluded from leaving the workhouse at his own will. In effect he becomes a prisoner there for life, incapable of asserting his rights, often of signifying his wants, yet amenable to as much punishment as if he were perfectly sane, and a willing offender against the laws or regulations of the place. Nor, as will hereafter be seen, is his lot much bettered in the particular cases where it is found convenient to the authorities to relax those restrictions, and give him the power at will to discharge himself."
