We cannot refrain from calling the attention of our readers to the continued postponement of measures for the safe custody and proper treatment of insane convicts. In the last report (January 1, 1852,) of the inspectors of the Eastern State Penitentiary, the following passage occurs:

If mental alienation in a prisoner renders his enlargement in society dangerous to its peace and safety, then that imprisonment is best which partakes of the nature rather of restraint, than punishment. There are in the Penitentiary some prisoners who, insane on admission, require now only restraints and proper treatment for their mental disease.

With these views, the Board of Inspectors would respectfully suggest that the legislature would provide by law for the removal of such cases to the State Lunatic Asylum. In that institution, established for the treatment of mental disease, the prisoner who ought from prudential reasons, to be restrained from society, could be subjected to remedial discipline, if not cure.

By the report of the warden it would appear, that he has no expectation of more than a partial relief from this quarter. His language is:

By information derived from the public prints and other sources, the State Asylum at Harrisburg would appear to be designed as a hospital for the cure of the insane, to the exclusion of the hopeless sufferers from this distressing malady, who may offend against the laws: thereby leaving us still to be the recipients and guardians of these unhappy people.

If such be the case, I would earnestly inquire whether the subject should not be at once so understood, and suitable arrangements for their comfort and security be immediately made, under the sanction of legislative aid and authority.

One of the physicians in allusion to this topic, calls attention to the fact that “much of the mortality is composed of prisoners, who, first go deranged, and then, like Bajazet, literally dash out their brains against the bars of their cage.”3

When will this terrible cruelty end? he asks. I had hoped that the remedy was at hand, but I regret to learn that the prospect of transferring our insane to the Stale Asylum seems as yet far distant. In their behalf, however, I shall make a last appeal. In the name of justice and mercy, let it be no longer necessary for the friends of the institution to deplore, or in the power of its opponents to boast that a number of helpless lunatics are immured within the cells of the Eastern Penitentiary.

And the other dilates upon the subject in the following terms:

For many years past, I find representations have been made to the Board by my predecessors, urging the propriety and the necessity almost, of removing the insane confined in this institution. I must record my testimony also.—The evil is unabated, and I cannot consistently with my duty as physician, nor with my own personal feelings, pass by this matter without at least doing the little I may be able to have it remedied. Heretofore there have been difficulties in the way, which happily exist no longer. The completion of a State Lunatic Asylum, it is to be hoped, has removed the last obstacle to a course already long approved of by every one, and urgently demanded by all the material and moral circumstances concerned in the case. For the object of prisons, if I understand it, is the punishment and prevention of crime, and, possibly the reformation of criminals. But the mischief that irresponsibles may do, is not crime, nor are they criminals: they may be restrained, but not punished. We punish and endeavor to reform the criminal, the imbecile and insane, we confine sometimes, but at all times, should endeavor to protect, to foster, to cure. It may often be very proper, in regard to these, to turn their hospital into a temporary prison, but it can hardly be deemed compatible with the objects and discipline, or the material arrangements and accommodations of penitentiaries, to make them serve the double purpose of prison and hospital—confounding in a common receptacle those that society ought to protect, and those it is obliged to punish.

At the present time, we have a number of these unfortunates in a truly pitiable condition; and it is not only with a painful, but also with a mortifying and humiliating feeling, that we are continually obliged to reflect, that it is not in our power to improve it.

Turning from the State Penitentiary to the State Hospital, we are met with the following passage in the first annual report of the trustees:

“There are at the present time in the State penitentiaries, and in the different jails of the commonwealth, a considerable number of insane,—alleged criminals—who ought to be transferred to the State hospital as soon as its buildings are completed. There are also in these institutions a few, who, from their peculiarly dangerous character, and the utter hopelessness of benefiting them by treatment, can never with propriety become inmates of the hospital. To protect the community and the ordinary insane from the dangerous propensities of these individuals, it would be necessary to introduce into our wards, intended for the treatment of disease, all the most repulsive features of a prison, or that a separate building, having strictly a prison character, should be erected upon the grounds. Some legislation will be required before any of these cases can be admitted, and some mode of proceeding should be adopted which will prevent any but proper cases being received from these sources.”

It is obvious that different constructions are put upon the language of the report of the trustees, by the different officers of the penitentiary. The inspectors evidently regard the State Lunatic Asylum as the proper place to which insane prisoners should be removed, whether for safe keeping or for treatment. The warden apprehends, that one class of the insane convicts would be received at the State Hospital, though the other may be excluded. Dr. Given regards the prospect of transferring any of them as far distant, while Dr. Lassiter thinks the completion of the hospital has disposed of the last obstacle to the removal of all.

If we understand the language of the trustees, it admits that a considerable number of “ordinarily” insane persons now in our State Penitentiary and in the different jails, ought to be transferred to the hospital as soon as it is so far completed as to secure them; while they maintain that there is another class of insane prisoners of “dangerous propensities,” who ought not to be received into any hospital, but for whom a separate building should be provided, on the grounds belonging to the State institution, entirely distinct from it, though doubtless under the same supervision and attendance with the main hospital.

In giving this construction to the passage, we assume that the phrase “any of these cases” in the last clause, is limited to the dangerous and hopeless class, who can never with propriety become inmates of a general hospital.

An insane man, whether a convict or not, must always be an object of deep sympathy. Whatever guilt attaches to him, we lose sight of it in the terrible calamity by which he is overwhelmed. The moment it becomes manifest that he has, through the visitation of God, lost the control of his intellectual faculties, so as to be exempt from the ordinary responsibilities of a reasonable being, all his relations to society are changed. The government which stood ready to charge home his guilt and demand his punishment as an offender, offers him protection and sympathy as a sufferer. The sword of justice is converted into a sceptre of mercy, and so long as this dark cloud overshadows him, the voice of the accuser is silent.

We apprehend there would be much difficulty in distinguishing practically between those insane convicts, who might be received into the State Hospital as ordinary patients, and those who would require to be kept by themselves. So far as the safe custody of the dangerous class is concerned, the number would seem to be too small to justify the expense of “a separate building, (having strictly a prison character,) erected upon the (hospital) grounds,” as the trustees suggest. No class of prisoners are more ingenious or more untiring in their efforts to escape than the insane; and hence their safe keeping would be the chief point of consideration in the construction of a building for their reception. If separate provision is not made for all classes of insane convicts, we should much question the expediency of making it simply for the safe keeping of the dangerous. We would rather ameliorate, as far as possible, their condition as convicts in the cell, affording them extra diet, appropriate association, amusement, &c. Nothing would be gained by transferring them from a cell in Philadelphia to a cell in Harrisburg, provided they are to be strictly confined to either; and any relaxation of this rigor which their convalescence might warrant, would be attended with much less hazard in the prison-yard, than on the hospital grounds.

But we have serious doubts, whether a general State Lunatic Hospital should receive convicts of any class. We are aware, that the practice obtains to some extent, but whether, in a majority of cases, the parties received can be properly called convicts, there is much ground to question.

In the report of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, for 1851, we notice ten cases returned under the head of “imprisonment,” eight of which are declared to be cases of “feigned insanity,” and of course though “convicts,” they were not “insane.” Of the other two, one became insane before trial, and was of course, though insane, never properly a “convict.” “Besides these ten,” says the report, “there have been sent to us from prisons and gaols several others, who were cases of genuine insanity, but who were doubtless insane when committed.” Then they were never proper subjects of penal suffering, and should not have been imprisoned, except for safe keeping. In most of our State hospitals pay-patients are received to some extent, and those who resort to them as institutions of charity, should not be forced into discreditable association. It is of great importance, that every thing attractive should be presented in them, and every thing repulsive avoided. The poverty-stricken are sometimes quite sensitive on these subjects, and it is as inhuman as it is impolitic to violate their feelings.

The attention of the British Parliament has been recently called to this subject by a proposition of the commissioners of lunacy, to establish a central asylum for “criminal lunatics” in England and Wales, similar in character to that for Ireland, at Dundrum, near Dublin. The commissioners say, that “it has been frequently brought under their notice, that the friends and relatives of patients, and also the patients themselves, when conscious of being associated with “criminal lunatics,” have considered such association a great and unnecessary aggravation of their calamity.” There is some doubt expressed, whether such feelings prevail to any considerable extent in institutions where convict-patients are received; and to the question, whether the dislike to the society of criminal lunatics ascribed to patients and their friends, exists generally or only in those cases which were brought specifically under the notice of the commissioners, one medical witness says, that his own experience is directly the reverse; that he has carefully watched, in order to detect any repugnance or unfriendly feeling among the inmates of a county asylum, of which he has charge, towards their fellow-patients, who were known to have committed offences against the laws, and had not only failed to do so, but had heard expressions of sympathy and pity. He thinks there is much more tenderness felt for them by their fellow sufferers, than by their sane neighbors.

There is also a considerable difference of opinion, not only as to the classes of lunatics which the proposed asylum should receive, but also as to the name both of place and patients. Some would call it the State asylum, and would open it to all criminal offenders of every station and degree, who are exempted from the penalties of the law on the ground of insanity. Of course it would have the character of a general, and not of a pauper asylum, so as to afford superior accommodation for those who could afford to pay. Others would confine the use of such an asylum to the detention and treatment of all lunatics of criminal disposition, whether they have actually committed a crime or not. Some would completely separate criminals who have become insane after conviction, from those who have committed crimes under the influence of insanity—the former, of whom only would be properly called insane convicts. The distinction is obvious, viz., that an insane person cannot become a convict, though a convict may become insane. Others would make no distinction, but would put “all lunatics detained under warrant from the government, on the same footing.”

The discussion of the matter has awakened parliamentary inquiry. On the 18th of March last, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Shaftsbury moved an address to the Crown, touching “the expediency of establishing a State asylum for the care and custody of those who are denominated criminal lunatics,” and he adduced several facts, to show the inexpediency of detaining criminal lunatics in the same asylum with other patients.

The Earl of Derby thought any movement in this direction would be premature, as a revision of the whole subject was needful, before it could be determined what new legislation would be expedient.

Lord Cranworth said, that nothing could be more mischievous than mixing criminal lunatics with other lunatics; and he also contended that the question of lunacy in criminal prosecutions, should not be determined by juries; but that the only point for them to decide, should be the fact—guilty, or not guilty—leaving the question of sanity to be inquired into before another tribunal, the constitution of which he was not then prepared to define.

On an assurance from Lord Derby that the subject should receive deliberate consideration, the motion was withdrawn.

As it seems unlikely that any provision will be presently made in our State Hospital, either for convicts who become insane, or who manifest insanity after they are received, or for those who were insane when received, but were committed as convicts, or for those who are committed for safe keeping merely, or as lunatics with criminal intentions, or propensities, we will venture to suggest a more minute classification of the register of prisoners, and some specific recognition of these classes in the arrangements of the Eastern Penitentiary.

If that institution is to serve the double purpose of a penitentiary for convicts, and a house of detention or hospital for lunatics of dangerous or criminal tendencies, let the departments be kept distinct, and each be furnished with such attendance, supervision, &c., as their circumstances require. This arrangement would very nearly resemble that at the Blockley Almshouse, under which the two thousand paupers are received and provided for in the appropriate wards of the house, while the two or three hundred lunatics of various classes have a distinct department, though all are under the same general superintendence.

So in the reports, the same distinction would be made between the convicts proper, who are undergoing the process of punishment, and those who from alienation of mind, antecedent or subsequent to their reception as prisoners, are not proper subjects of penal suffering, though they are proper subjects of personal restraint, and, as such, have a lodging within the prison walls. In a word, if our penitentiary must be used for the detention or custody of lunatics whatever their character or grade, let it have due credit as a hospital, and not suffer undeserved reproach as a penitentiary.