-------------+------------------------------------------ | When first opened. Name of +-------+----------------------+----------- asylum. | | | Number of | Date. | Cost including site. | beds. -------------+-------+----------------------+----------- | | £ s. d. | Ennis | 1868 | 51,316 8 6 | 260 Letterkenny | 1866 | 37,887 5 3 | 300 Downpatrick | 1869 | 60,377 6 5 | 300 Castlebar | 1866 | 34,903 14 11 | 250 Monaghan | 1869 | 57,662 5 5 | 340 Enniscorthy | 1868 | 50,008 0 6 | 288 +-------+----------------------+----------- Total 292,155 1 0 | 1738 --------------------------------------------+----------- Returning to 1861, the tenth report of the Inspectors of Asylums, issued in that year, gives much important information on the state of lunacy in Ireland at that time, but there are only two points to which it is necessary to refer here. The writers, Drs. Nugent and Hatchell, speak indignantly of the shameful manner in which the friends of lunatics in confinement neglect them, "as if their malady entailed a disgrace on those connected with them ... months--nay, years--passing without an inquiry being made by a brother for a brother, or a child for a parent." After stating that during the previous ten years four new asylums had been licensed, the Inspectors recur to the importance of supplying asylums for patients who, unable to pay the ordinary charge of a private asylum, not being paupers, are ineligible for admission into public asylums. In 1874 a new code of rules, issued by the Privy Council, contained many important regulations. Of it, however, the late Dr. Robert Stewart[271] observed, "On the whole, we cannot speak very highly of the tact or wisdom shown by the Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council in the framing of the new code of regulations."[272] In this code the duties of the medical superintendents of Irish asylums are minutely laid down. In 1878 a Lunacy Inquiry Commission was appointed by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Report of which in the following year, after an examination of a large number of witnesses, contains much valuable information as to various questions connected with the asylums and the provision for the insane poor, present and future. The following "most distressing case," recorded by the Commission, speaks loudly of the need of increased provision for the insane poor in Ireland:--