The Committee reports that the defects and abuses in the management of houses for the reception of lunatics, to which the Select Committee of 1815 called the attention of the House of Commons, still exist in licensed houses where paupers are received in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and that similar abuses elsewhere prevail. The evidence established that there was no due precaution with respect to the certificate of admission, the consideration of discharge, or the application of any curative process to the mental malady. The Committee therefore repeated the recommendations of the Committees of 1807 and 1815, and prepared a series of propositions as the basis of future legislation, repealing a number of Acts and recommending the consolidation, into one Act of Parliament, of the provisions for the insane, as well as further facilitating the erection of county asylums, and improving the treatment of pauper and criminal lunatics. Dr. John Bright, secretary to the Commissioners, read from their records one entry, describing the condition of Holt's house, Lewisham, in Kent. In the year 1820, "in a close room in the yard, two men were shut by an external bolt, and the room was remarkably close and offensive. In an outhouse at the bottom of the yard, ventilated only by cracks in the wall, were enclosed three females. The door was padlocked; upon an open rail-bottomed crib herein, without straw, was chained a female by the wrists, arms, and legs, and fixed also by chains to the crib. Her wrists were blistered by the handcuffs; she was covered only by a rug. The only attendant upon all the lunatics appeared to be one female servant, who stated that she was helped by the patients." Subsequent entries did not show any material improvement in the condition of the house. Dr. Bright summarized the defects in the Lunacy Laws at that period, as regards the power vested in the Commissioners, as follows:--