Hospital. There are citizens of that time still to the fore who will remember the entertainment given by a Frenchman, an insane inmate of the Hospital. He was an excellent vocalist and had a superb voice of great volume, and was wont daily to walk the grounds and ring out his melodies in his own language to the pleasure of passers by. The unsuitability of both the Hospital and the Gaol, however, and the impossibility of ensuring in these places the proper treatment of the mentally afflicted, forced the question of the establishment of a Lunatic Asylum upon the authorities, and it was decided to erect a temporary home on the ground now occupied by the Boys' High School, the intention being to build the Asylum proper on the site at Look-out Point, upon which the Industrial School now stands.
The first Asylum, or rather the nucleus of the first Asylum, was an unpretentious one-storied wooden building. Dr. Hulme, in his capacity of Provincial Surgeon, was its first medical attendant, and Mr. and Mrs. Robert Drysdale the first keeper and matron, but a year afterwards they were succeeded by Mr. and Mrs. James Hume, and to Mr. Hume was given the title of Superintendent. During his eighteen years' service the Asylum was extended to the right and to the left and far backward on to the Town Belt. The site chosen for the temporary Asylum consisted of eight or nine acres, minus the portion of the Belt encroached upon, and it was added to by the purchase of the adjoining property (one acre) of the late Mr. George Smith, with the building upon it called Park House. In the latter paying patients were located. With the exception of the Park House block, the ground was a wild and rough waste, and it was only by dint of eighteen years' steady, plodding labour that it was brought, into the condition in which the Boys' High School authorities found it when they placed the school there.
Though a layman, Mr. Hume, who from his youth had acquired an extensive experience among the insane in the Home country, was well fitted for the work entrusted to him. He retired in 1882, when the Lunacy Act then passed made it imperative that large asylums should be under the control of Resident Medical Superintendents. Under his rule the institution grew piecemeal until it reached the dimensions it assumed at the
