4
ANNUAL REPORT ON LUNATIC ASYLUMS.
(6) Religions, Races and Castes-
Asylums.
Remained on 1st January 189G.
Admitted during 1890.
Hindus.
Muham-
madans. Christians.
Other
castes.
Hindus.
Muham-
madaus.
Christians. Other
castes.
Madras ...
Vizagapatam ...
Calicut ...
Total ...
209
49
56
52
5
28
10G
3
16
20
3
1
61
15
14
11
2
7
23
1
5
15
1
1
374
85
125
24
90
20
29
17
(7) Sexes.—Of the 608 patients that remained on the 1st January 1896, 462
were males and 146 were females. Of the 156 admitted during the year, 128 were
males and 28 were females.
(8) Occupation.—Of the 156 admissions, the occupations of 152 were known
and of 4 were unknown. The largest number of admissions was from the cooly class
in Madras and from the cultivating classes in Calicut and Vizagapatam. These are
fully dealt with in Statement IV.
(9) Ages.—The details are given in Statement V. The largest number of
admissions in all the asylums were, as usual, between the ages of 20 and 40—being
109 out of 156.
(10) Types of insanity.—Of the 156 admissions, 135 were admitted for mania,
10 for melancholia, 4 for idiocy, and 7 for all other types—vide Statement VI.
(11) Causes of insanity.—Of the admissions during the year, 103 were due to
physical causes and 30 to moral causes, the cause in the remaining 23 being
unknown.—vide Statement VII.
(12) Criminal population and their sub-divisions.—In the Madras Asylum
160 criminal lunatics remained on the 1st January 1896 and 32 were admitted
during the } 7 ear, making a total of 192. There were fewer admissions and more
discharges than in the previous year, while the mortality was less than half of that
of 1895. Of the 32 admissions under this class, 10 were tried and acquitted pri-
soners, 14 were under-trial prisoners incapable of making a defence, and 8 were
cases that became insane during confinement in jail.
One criminal lunatic was transferred from the Asylum at Madras to that at
Vizagapatam and was detained there till his friends took charge of him on security
bond. There was no criminal insane during the year in the Calicut Asylum.
(b) Accommodation—
(1) There was no overcrowding in any of the asylums. In the Madras
Asylum there was accommodation for 689, while the largest number confined on
any one night was 447.
With an accommodation for 91 patients in the Asylum at Vizagapatam, the
highest number on any one night was 73.
In Calicut the greatest number confined on any one night was 106, while
there was accommodation for 135.
The insufficiency of special accommodation in the Madras Asylum, referred
to by the Superintendent in his last year's report, will not, he thinks, weigh so
heavily in future, in consequence of the new scale of stoppages for patients in the
• special wards' as fixed by Government in its order, No. 434, Public, dated 31st
March 1896, which the Superintendent considers as prohibitive. No admissions
have occurred in the ' special wards' during the past year.
(2) New constructions.—The only new works in the Madras Asylum were the
sinking of a well in the criminal enclosure and the construction of a masonry drain
in the native attendants' lines (sanctioned in G.O., No. 883, Judicial, dated 19th
May 1896). Additions and improvements to the criminal enclosures, male and
female hospitals and to the isolation enclosure have been sanctioned for execution
when funds are available.