patients and private patients of the physician were admitted and on paying perquisites to the officials received careful attention to the neglect of the poorer patients, (3) that the asylum was in a state of extreme filth, and (4) that there was an entire absence of dis cipline." A few extracts from the report of this committee may be of interest. " No official visits were paid; no one except the governor could enter the asylum without per mission from the physician. The steward, a man of eighty-two years of age, who had full powers over every servant in the house, lived a quarter of a mile from the asylum and was often prevented by infirmity from visiting it in the winter time. An inferior male keeper was intrusted with the key of the beer and bread. The apothecary, Mr. Atkinson, claimed no authority, and the authority of his wife was partial and contested. The back door was never locked and the servants might and did go out night and day. They took the cast-off clothes of the patients when they considered them to have been worn a suffi cient time." " On the night of December 28, 1813, when a detached wing of the asylum was destroyed by fire, the physician was away attending a patient at a distance from York; the steward was in his house; the apothecary and his wife the housekeeper had gone out to spend the evening. Of the four servants left in charge of one hundred and twenty male patients one had left a fellow servant to lock them up, and was absent. His fellow servant had put his patients to bed a little before the usual hour of eight, that he might go to a dance; the third attendant was old and asthmatic, and the fourth alone was able to render any competent assistance." Again : "In the asylum investigations concealment appears at every step in our progress. Three hundred and sixty-five patients have died; the number is advertised two hundred and twenty-one; a patient disappears and is nevermore heard of— he is said to be 're moved '; a patient is killed, the body is hur ried away to prevent an inquest. The public
cry out that a patient has been neglected. There is a levy en masse of responsible gov ernors to quell the disturbance and to certify that the patient has been treated 'with all possible care, attention and humanity.'" A committee of investigation desire to be shown the house. Certain cells in an extreme state of filth and neglect are omitted to be pointed out to them. The governors exam ined the accounts. There are considerable sums of which neither the application nor the receipt appears. The servant's books are inquired for. In a moment of irritation (?) he selects for the flames such as he thinks it not expedient to produce. And yet every circumstance of concealment is imputed by some to mere accident, and every attempt to tear off the mask and exhibit the asylum in its true character is stigmatized as a libel or an indelicate disclosure. The last evidence as to the state of matters in York Lunatic Asylum with which we shall trouble our readers is contained in a speech delivered by Lord R. Seymour in the House of Commons on June 17, 1816. "Four cells," said his lordship, " each only eight feet square, were accidentally discovered though they had been some time concealed from the visitors. In. these four small cells thirteen females were obliged to sleep every night complete ly covered with filth and nastiness, and the very holes through which the air was ad mitted were nearly filled with filth which the unfortunate women had no other way of get ting rid of. In this house, too, it was dis covered that the male keepers had access to the female patients, the consequence of which was that two patients, who bore good char acters before they went into the asylum left it pregnant, the one by the principal keeper, the other by a patient." It appears, by the way, that this keeper was not only not dis missed, but continued to enjoy the confidence of the governors and on his ultimate resigna tion received from them a testimony of their "approbation of his conduct during a ser vice of twenty-six years."
