LUNATIC ASYLUMS.

Evening Star, Issue 4192, 3 August 1876, Page 3

LUNATIC ASYLUMS.

To the Editor. Sir, —A few evenings ago a paragraph appeared in one of the columns of your Eaper stating that the Melbourne "new lunatic Asvlum Board had not even reported yet, after taking mountains of evidence on all sorts of charges by all sorts of people, and that they have got hopelessly bogged (at least so it would seem). Now, sir, why should the Board of Inquiry find the subject such a difficult one ? Your Melbourne correspondent seems to think it is very little use inquiring into lunatic asylum affairs, as there is no chance of getting a correct statement. Would it not be possible to get the evidence of others than ex-warders ? If ever an institution existed which required the inspection of outsiders, it is a lunatic asylum. The poor inmates are not insane all the time of their imprisonment. They are generally detained a few weeks after their reeovery in case of a relapse.- Surely their evidence during those few weeks is worth something. I, an ex-patient, consider that such a board of inquiry would be a God-send to the inmates of the Dunedin Lunatic Asylum. If Bome of the kind-hearted ladies who take such an interest in the Hospital, Refuge, and other public institutions would devote a little of their time and attention to the Lunatic Asylum, if they would visit it —not to walk through it with the Matron or Superintendent in order to comment on the well-scrubbed flows or neatly-made beds), but to go into their dining-rooma or their prison-like courts, where the poor things are usually allowed to take exercise and enjoy the beauties of nature within high stone walls and iron barred windows—l say if these ladies would devote a little of their time and attention in trying to get the patients to talk about the life they lead there (not in the presence of attendants but by themselves) and would afterwards hand their information over to a board of inquiry, I hardly think such a board would have any difficulty in making up their report. Tiusting that some humane person will take the matter up, I am, &c., Dolly V . Dmipdin, August 1. [VYc; have no doubt Mr Hume would willingly afford every opportunity for ladies who might desire to become acquainted with the treatment of patients in our asylum.— E.D. E.S.] J