It should be observed that Northampton was at this time essentially the pauper asylum for the county. * * * * * We have already referred to the paramount importance of reliable attendants. "Nothing is easier," the Commissioners observe, "for a man in such a position, with unrestricted and uncontrolled power over the habits and happiness of another, than to act cruelly without being cruel." So long ago as 1851 a check was given to the conduct of attendants by a decision of the courts in that year. An attendant had been convicted of manslaughter on the evidence of a patient. This was appealed against, but the conviction was sustained. Lord Campbell laid it down that the only thing needful was for the patient to understand the nature of an oath and what he was saying. "But although this ruling has never since been disputed, the many subsequent attempts of the Commissioners to exact a rigid responsibility for acts of violence or cruelty in asylums have, through the indisposition of juries[199] to accept the evidence principally available for proofs in such cases, more frequently failed than succeeded."[200] In each of the three previous years, proceedings had been taken against attendants, and with very limited success. In the beginning of 1870, however, a prosecution instituted by the magistrates of the Lancaster Asylum against two attendants for manslaughter on the evidence of a patient succeeded, and they were sentenced to seven years' penal servitude, a result which the Commissioners regarded as the most beneficial example within their experience. During the previous year, eighty-eight male attendants had been dismissed from service--fifty-three for drunkenness, insubordination, or neglect of duty, and thirty-five for assaults on patients; four only of these latter having had criminal prosecutions instituted against them, and of the former not one. Of the number dismissed, fifteen were in licensed houses, three in public hospitals, and the remaining seventy in county asylums. During the same period thirty-four female attendants were dismissed, of whom twenty-four were employed in county asylums. Eleven had been guilty of violence or rough usage to patients, there having been no prosecution in any instance. The Commissioners justly observe that, while "there has been no greater work of mercy and humanity than that which rescued the lunatic patients from stripes and filth, or continued restraint and isolation, yet it will remain to some degree still imperfect until he is also rescued from the possible chance of being subjected to the unwatched or unchecked humours and caprices of ignorant, careless, or cruel attendants."[201]