Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1890-09-13 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

HOW MADMEN ARE TREATED. UNEXPLAINED DEATHS OF LUNATICS FROM VIOLENCE. There is come sad reading (the London Star says) in the last report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor. The inmates of the asylums, who are, not a few of them, intelligent and highly sensitive, are the victims of a ciseaso perhaps more terrible in its consequences than any, and one contributed to by more causes, perhaps, than any. Yet these poor, helpless people are sometimes treated with ' the grossest negligence and even brutality. Bur, let the Commissioners themselves be heard, or maybe we shall be accused of exaggeration. First of all, however, some figures from one of the tables presented by them will prove interesting During the year 1888 the number of insane patients admitted into the asylums, hospitals, and licensed houses in England and Wales was 11,886. Domestic trouble, including loss of relatives and friends, was responsible for 1037 cases;  caused 248; and .other —caileetl- claimed victims as follows Adverse circumstances (including business anxieties and pecuniary di+culties), 200; mental anxiety, worry, and overwork, 833; religious excite. meet, 334; fright and nervous shock, 200; intemperance in drink, 2056; sexual intemperance, 155; physical over-exertion, 57 ; sunstroke, 157; accident or injury, 411 ; pregnancy, Cl; fevers, 53 ; privation and starvation, 262; old age, 701; bodily disease and disorders, 1691; previous attacks, 2700; hereditary influence, 3159; unknown, 2780. These causes are not taken from the statements in the Papers of admission of the patients, but are those which have been verified by the medical officers of the asylums. The deaths in the asylums during 1889 were 5251 in number. Of these 18 were suicides. One woman killed herself by swallowing needles; and at Devon Asylum,C. E., aged 22, as to whom instructions were issued that she was to have continuous supervision, I got unobserved into an empty room, and although TOE WINDOW WAS BLOCKED,.  -. squeezed herself through the open part, It inches only in width, and threw herself from it into the airing-court below, receiving injuries from which she died almost immediately. At the Cane-hill (London) Asylum, E. S , aged 30, slipped off unnoticed into a store cupboard, and hung herself with some tape binding she had concealed abut herself. The visiting committee dismissed the two nurses, whom they regarded guilty of greatest neglect, and severely reprimanded the charge nurse, but did not consider the evidence of wilful neglect sufficient to justify prosecution. At the Middlesex County Asylum, near Tooting, late Surrey Asylum, Wandsworth, W. B. was found to have sustained fractures of two ribs. It was suggested by the asylum authorities that he must somehow have come into sharp contact with the wooden sides of his bed. Three days subsequently the patient died, but the post-mortem revealed a condition of affairs, on amount of separation of the fractured ends of the bones, baring of the periosteum, evidence of old pleurisy, adherence of lung to the chest wall, and gangrene of the surrounding tissues, quite inconsistent with the idea of injuries received only at so recent a date as three days before his death. At the inquest held upon the body, tho verdict returned was "Death from injury to thelung from fractured ribs, but how the said fractures were caused there is not sufficient evidence to show." In this most unsatisfactory case no degenerative brittleness of other ribs is noticed or pleaded in extenuation of the fact, and, the Commissioners report, while we think that • blow, or a kick, or a fall on the wooden edge of a bed are more likely to have caused those fractures of ribs than compression of the sternum, we regret that none of the attendants of No. 9 Ward, in wbich this patient was I from the date of his admission, were able to throw any light upon the cause of the injuries sustained, • and we are forced to remember A PEEN lOUS CA. IN THE SAME WARD, that, namely, of J. S., who died within the previous I twelvemonths, on 15 June, 1889, alao in consequence , of fractured ribs, Without any evidence to show or , explain how these were caused. At the Bicton-heath , Asylum, B. L. died on 17 May last, with eight frac- I tured rib/. At the inquest it was stated that he was knocked down by another patient. "The case," report the Commissioners, ...mains • very unsatisfactory one, however brittle the ribs may have been, as so many of them are not likely to have been broken, and in such a situation as these were broken, except by pressure applied by weight upon the sternum. Further, the absence of external bruising is against these injuries having been due to any fall or blow, , and suggest compression '' The Commissioners " think the employment of mechanical restraint at Bedlam might be further reduced if proper observation dormitories were provided. A lady patient, who, before admission into this hospital, had cut off her right hand and had tried to pluck out her sight eye under religious delusion, finally succeeded in removing that eye. Her only hand had been placed in a canvass-locked glove, and she was in bed and constantly visited, but with her teeth she so tore the glove as to free the hand, and with the lingers of that hand she gouged out the eye. There arenas to have been no negligence on the part of the hospital staff. The patient is still insane, though the immediate effect of the injury was to produce a feeling of calm and hap. piness from her belief that she had obeyed a biblical command. When visiting Holloway Sanatorium, members of our Board inquired into a charge of illtreatment of a patient by his attendants. They came to the conclusion that the charge was evaggerated, but were disposed to suspect _  -AANDLIN,  ..... They. therefore, cautioned the accused. A death occurred at Northumberland House a metropolitan licensed house). The patient was very violent. and Brollies had taken place between him and his attendants on more than one occasion. There was reason to suspect that on one occasion undue force had been used by one or more of the attendants, but neither on this inquiry nor again On an inquiry held by one of the legal advisers to our board, could evidence be obtained sufficient to justify us in instituting a prosecution. The attendants chiefly concerned in the matter were, however, removed from the service of the asylum. Racovery took place from the injury, but the patient died very soon afterwards of general paralysis ; his death did not seem, however, to have been due in any Way to the previous injury. No Inquest was thought necessary. "John Lock, an attendant at the Littlemom Asylum, for the county of Oxford, was on 17th August dismissed for assaulting a male patient. Lock was seen to hold the patient. H. H., and strike him with his right hand in the pit of the stomach, then