-------------------+--------+----------+----------+--------+--------- Location. | Males. | Females. | Total. |Private.| Paupers. -------------------+--------+----------+----------+--------+--------- In public asylums | 1226 | 1154 | 2380 | 786 | 1596 In private asylums | 330 | 415 | 745 | 219 | 526 In poor-houses | 352 | 487 | 839 | 6 | 833 In private houses | 810 | 974 | 1784 | -- | 1784 +--------+----------+----------+--------+--------- Total | 2718 | 3030 | 5748[244]| 1011 | 4739 -------------------+--------+----------+----------+--------+---------
The above table does not include private single patients; their number could not be accurately ascertained.
The Commissioners, as might be expected, report the state of the insane to have altered little since the Report of the Royal Commission. In the pauper licensed houses, if not in others, the overcrowding was great, though diminishing. "The patients, when within doors, are generally found sitting in cheerless rooms, ranged on benches, listless and without occupation; and when out of doors, they are usually lounging sluggishly about the airing-courts, or are crouching in corners." Among favourable indications noted by the Commissioners it is pleasant to read the following:--"Mechanical restraint has been entirely banished from the licensed houses, and patients who are recorded in the Report of the Royal Commissioners as almost always under restraint, are now habitually free from their bonds. The improvement in the condition of these cases under the more humane treatment now in use has been most remarkable, and is especially exemplified in the case of A. S----, a patient in M---- Asylum."
Subsequent Acts were passed, called for by the experience of the Commissioners in regard to the working of the Act of 1857, some imperfections in which were naturally discovered in the course of years.
The Lord Advocate and Sir George Grey brought in a Bill in 1862 to make further provision respecting lunacy in Scotland, which received the royal assent July 29 (25 and 26 Vict., c. 54).
By this Act, consisting of twenty-five sections, the Board was empowered to license lunatic wards of workhouses; to sanction the reception of pauper lunatics in workhouses; to grant special licences for reception in houses of not more than four lunatics; to grant licences to charitable institutions for imbecile children without fee; to sanction detention of pauper lunatics in asylums beyond the limits of their district; to take such steps as the Board may consider requisite towards providing accommodation for the district, etc., etc. Not to cite other sections, certain provisions of the recited Acts as were inconsistent with the Act were repealed, and the General Board of Commissioners was, of course, continued.