England was the first country to provide asylums for the criminal insane. In 1840 a portion of Bedlam was set aside for this purpose. Fisherton House, a special private asylum of this kind, was opened in 1844, and later others were instituted at Dundrum (Ireland) in 1850, at Broadmoor in 1863, and at Perth (Scotland) in 1858, to receive criminals who commit crimes in a state of insanity, or become insane during their trial, and all prisoners whose state of lunacy or imbecility renders them unable to conform to the discipline of a prison. Of course sanguinary and violent scenes often occur in these asylums, where the pernicious influence this type of lunatic exercises over his surroundings in ordinary asylums or prisons is multiplied and intensified a hundred-fold. Conspiracies, almost unknown in common asylums, and the murder of warders or officials are very common. Despairing of release and conscious of their irresponsibility, these wretched beings attack the warders, destroy the walls which confine them, murder and wound others and themselves; but at any rate the injury is limited to a small circle, and both harmless lunatics and common criminals are not contaminated. Moreover, even in criminal asylums, long experience with these strange pathological types and the adoption of subdivisions like those recently introduced into Broadmoor by Orange have done much towards improving the general condition and eliminating many drawbacks. According to this classification insane criminals are divided into two classes, _unconvicted_ and _convicted_, the former class being subdivided into _untried_ and _tried_. Untried offenders, those who are considered to have been insane before committing the crime, are sent to a common county asylum, where are also confined persons convicted of minor offences and declared insane (the percentage of cures in this class is considerable) and others suspected of shamming insanity. In this way, the better elements are eliminated and the inmates of the criminal insane asylum reduced to the worst and most dangerous types only. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT When, notwithstanding prisons, deportation, and criminal asylums, individuals of ineradicable anti-social instincts make repeated attempts on the lives of others, whether honest men or their own companions in evil-doing, the only remedy is the application of the extreme penalty--death. Amongst barbarous peoples, on whom prison makes but slight impression, or in primitive communities that do not possess criminal asylums, penitentiaries, and other means of social defence and redemption, the death penalty has always been considered the most certain and at the same time the most economical means of common protection. But criminal anthropologists realise that the desire to abolish this penalty, which so often finds expression in civilised countries, arises from a noble sentiment and one they have no wish to destroy.