Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/531

force. Under its first and second sections, standing that the government would defray persons acquitted on the ground of insanity, the annual charge of maintaining such luna or found insane upon arraignment, may be tics as might be kept there, but that their ordered by the court to be kept in strict control and management should be under custody until the sovereign's pleasure is the superintendence of the governors of known — hence the origin of the phrase, Bethlem, and that they should be attended "Queen's pleasure lunatics." The fourth to by the medical and other officers of that section contained a provision (which curi establishment. This constituted, however, a ously enough has not yet been repealed or i beginning, A few years later it was found adjusted to modern necessary to double conditions) that in the accommodations at Bethlem Hospital. sane persons by Afterwards, still fur whom the sovereign's ther provision was life is endangered required and, accord may be kept in safe custody by order of ingly, in 1849 an ar rangement was enter the privy council or ed into between the secretary of state, pending further in secretary of state and quiry; and the de the proprietors of tention of such per Fisherton House, near sons in confinement Salisbury, for the erection of detached rests with the lord chancellor, lord keep wards in connection er, or lords commis with that asylum, for ' the accommodation sioners for the custo dy of the great seal.. of those criminal lunatics who were in We shall find later on, however, that the leg excess of the number for whom provision islature has discov ered a more effective existed at Bethlem. mode of treating per In the meantime a 1)R. R. SWAV.NK TAYLOR. sons who are seized select committee, ap with an itching desire pointed by the House to harass the sovereign than cither prose of Lords in 1835, strongly recommended cution for high treason or detention under that " persons whose trials have been an order of the privy council. postponed, or who, having been tried, In 1807 a select committee on criminal have been acquitted on the ground of insan and pauper lunatics recommended " that a ity, shall not be confined in the prisons or building should be erected for the separate houses of correction." The wards provided confinement of all persons detained under in 1849 at Fisherton House, as well as those previously provided at Bethlem, having be the above-mentioned Act for offenses com mitted during a state of insanity; but the come filled and further accommodations be hour of Broadmoor was not yet. Nothing ing still required, instructions were given by was done except, six years later, to attach to the secretary of state, in 1856, for the erection Bethlem Hospital wards for criminal luna of the Broadmoor Asylum. In 1860, an Act tics, at a cost of .£25,144, upon the under- of Parliament known as the Broadmoor Act