Taking the numbers under training in these three divisions, the charitable or voluntary institutions, the private institution, and that for paupers, we find the total to be somewhat about eighteen hundred.
Scotland and Ireland have various institutions for idiots and imbeciles, which may be briefly enumerated. In the former an idiot school was established at Baldovan, near Dundee, in 1853. It was on the estate of Sir John Ogilvie. There are forty-seven inmates. In 1862 an institution was opened at Larbert, Stirlingshire, by a society formed for that object, called the "Scottish National Institution for the Education of Imbecile Children." Dr. Brodie, who now, we believe, has a private institution at Liberton, near Edinburgh, for ten pupils, was the first superintendent. It was superintended by Dr. Ireland from 1870 to 1881. In January, 1881, there were one hundred and twenty-four inmates.[226]
Thus only about a hundred and eighty idiots and imbeciles are in training institutions in Scotland.
In Ireland the only institution for training idiots was founded in 1868, in consequence of Dr. Henry Stewart handing over his asylum at Lucan, together with a donation (payable under certain conditions) of £5000, to certain trustees. It is called the "Stewart Institution for the Training, Education, and Maintenance of Idiotic and Imbecile Children."
A large mansion at Palmerston, in the neighbourhood of Dublin, was in 1875, when we visited it, being adapted to the requirements of an asylum, and to it the idiots have been removed from Lucan. It was recently stated that in Ireland seventy per cent. of the idiots and imbeciles are at large, twenty-one per cent. in workhouses, and only seven per cent. in asylums.
We are now in a position to estimate the opportunities afforded in England for the systematic training of a class of unhappy beings, unable to help themselves and calling loudly for help from both men of science, philanthropists, and legislators. Let us see how far these opportunities meet the want, and what becomes of those idiots and imbeciles for whom no distinct provision is made. Unfortunately, the statistics of idiocy are very imperfect, partly owing to the reluctance of their relatives to acknowledge such a defect in the family, and partly from there being no distinction made in the annual Report of the Lunacy Commissioners between idiots and lunatics.