CUTTACK ASYLUM.
43
in the average cost of each lunatic in these two asylums is caused by very nearly the
same establishment being required for an asylum containing a daily average of only
36.26 lunatics as for one with more than four times that number.
10. The profits from labor, as will be seen by table No. 11, amount to Rs. 1,135-8-9,
being an increase of Rs. 150-13-2 above that of last year.
11. A new building for European patients has been completed since my last report ;
but as it has not been required for lunatics, it has been occupied by the European overseer.
He has now been removed ; it is therefore available should it be required.
12. The wards are kept clean, are frequently fumigated, and there are earthen beds for
the patients to sleep on in nearly all of them. Dry-earth system of conservancy is strictly
attended to.
13. The establishment for the past year has consisted of superintendent, European
overseer, head-keeper, native doctor, compounder, seven under-keepers, one chuprasee, one
cook, one bheestee, one mehter, and one mehteranee, the annual cost of which, as has been
already stated, has been Rs. 3,743-6-11, and the total cost of the asylum for the year has
amounted to Rs. 5,079.
Mr. Nowlan, the European overseer, has now ceased to draw pay from this asylum.
This will reduce the cost of establishment for next year by Rs. 1,200.
I have the honor to be,
SIR,
Your most obedient servant,
J. MACDONALD,
Superintendent of Lunatic Asylum.
MR. G. SAUNDERS, the Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals of the circle, inspected
the asylum early in January 1870, and reports :—
THE lunatic asylum is situated close to the jail, and in a populous part of the town.
This is a mistake, and should be rectified if a suitable opportunity offers for removing this
institution to a better site ; and this I am inclined to think can be done profitably and
inexpensively. The jail would be glad to have more accommodation, and these asylum
buildings might be made over to the Jail department usefully, and the lunatics transferred to
the old cavalry lines, where there are old solid bomb-proof barracks and a large open space of
ground, which might be enclosed for a garden and recreation field. At present the police
have occupancy of the whole of this long building, but a division might be made of the
barrack,—one wing remaining with the police, as at present, and the other wing being
enclosed by a wall made over to the civil surgeon for his lunatics. The present asylum is
much two small for Orissa and the adjacent Hill Tracts, and must be added to, or a new
one built. The cost of that projected by the Department Public Works (on the Bhaugulpore
Asylum plan) will cost nearly half a lac of rupees. Surely it would be something if the
present public buildings at Cuttack could be so altered at a small expense, as (in these days
of retrenchment) to obviate the necessity for making so large an outlay. If the plan here
indicated is adopted, the present asylum will give the jail what it stands much in need
of, extra space and cell accommodation for first-class criminals, and those convicted of heinous
offences, without any cost, and this will provide accommodation for 100 lunatics at the cost
of building a wall and the necessary out-offices ; whilst it will place the insanes in a more