Lastly, if the remaining members of this class be considered, in whom the imbecility amounts to idiocy, the propriety of removing them from the workhouse will be questioned by few. Indeed, will any one now-a-days advocate the "_laissez faire_" system in the case of idiots? Experience has demonstrated that they are improveable, mentally, morally, and physically; and if so, it is the duty of a christian community to provide the means and opportunities for effecting such improvement. It cannot be contended that the workhouse furnishes them; on the contrary, it is thoroughly defective and objectionable by its character and arrangements, and, as the Commissioners report, (_op. cit._ p. 259) a very unfit abode for idiots.
On looking over the foregoing review of the several classes of lunatic inmates of workhouses distinguished by the Commissioners in Lunacy, the opinion to be collected clearly is, that only a very few partially imbecile individuals among them are admissible into workhouses, if their bodily health, their mental condition, their due supervision and their needful comforts and conveniences are to be duly attended to and provided for. In accordance with the views we entertain, as presently developed, of the advantages of instituting asylums for confirmed chronic, quiet, and imbecile patients, we should permit, if any at all, only such imbecile individuals as residents in workhouses, who could pass muster among the rest, without annoyance, prejudice or discomfort to themselves or others, and be employed in the routine occupations of the establishment.
So much is heard among poor-law guardians and magistrates about a class of "harmless patients" suitably disposed of in workhouses and rightly removeable from asylums, that a few remarks are called for concerning them. To the eye of a casual visitor of an asylum, there does certainly appear a large number of patients, so quiet, so orderly, so useful and industrious, that, although there is something evidently wrong about their heads, yet the question crosses the mind, whether asylum detention is called for in their case. The doubt is not entertained by the experienced observer, for he knows well that the quiet, order, and industry observable are the results of a well-organized system of management and control; and that if this fails, the goodly results quickly vanish to be replaced by the bitter fruits generated by disordered minds. The "harmless" patient of the asylum ward becomes out of it a mischievous, disorderly, and probably dangerous lunatic. In fact, the tranquillity of many asylum inmates is subject to rude shocks and disturbances, even under the care and discipline of the Institution; and the inoffensive-looking patient of to-day may, by his changed condition, be a source of anxiety, and a subject for all the special appliances it possesses, to-morrow.