The number of lunatics confined in jails was found by the inquiry of 1843 to have increased, partly in consequence of the Act 1 and 2 Vict., c. 27, for the more effectual provision for the prevention of offences by insane persons. Two justices were authorized, acting with the advice of a medical man, to commit to jail any person apprehended under circumstances denoting derangement of mind and a purpose of committing crime. A subsequent clause authorized the Lord Lieutenant to transfer such person, as well as convicts, to a lunatic asylum. No steps had been taken to ascertain whether, on the one hand, the jails afforded any accommodation whatever for such lunatics, or whether, on the other, convict lunatics could be properly received into the district asylums. The statute operated widely. Previous to it, in 1837, there had been only thirty-seven lunatics in jails, while by the year 1840 they had augmented to one hundred and ten, of whom eighty-one were maniacs, seventeen were idiots, and twelve were epileptics; while by the 1st of January, 1843, the number amounted to two hundred and fourteen. Of these only forty had been convicted of any criminal offence, showing that the application of the Act had gone much beyond the intention of its framers. Thus it was that "the numbers crowding the county jails were truly distressing, and were made the subject of universal complaint by the local authorities."[266] The Lords' Committee, of course, insisted on the necessity of discontinuing the committal of lunatics to jails and bridewells, and amending the Act 1 Vict., c. 27, which had led to such serious abuses; the inexpediency of appropriating the union workhouses or houses of industry to the custody or treatment of the insane; the necessity of providing one central establishment for criminal lunatics, under the immediate control and direction of the Government of Ireland, to be supported from the same funds and under the system adopted in respect to criminal lunatics in England; the necessity of increasing the accommodation for pauper lunatics in Ireland, and of providing for the cases of epilepsy, idiocy, and chronic disease by an increased number of the district asylums, by enlargement of these asylums, or by the erection of separate establishments, specially appropriated for these classes of patients.[267] At this Committee Dr. Conolly gave the results of his non-restraint experience at Hanwell since September, 1839. The following tabular statement, delivered in at the Committee by the Rev. E. M. Clarke, presents a valuable picture of the state of lunacy in Ireland on the 1st of January, 1843:--