For the paupers of unsound mind in the Metropolis there was even a fourth alternative, namely, the "district asylums" of the Metropolitan Asylum Board. On the opening of the Darenth Asylum, the Central Authority quoted, without disapproval, the following remarks of the Lunacy Commissioners: "The withdrawal, for proper care, of helpless children of this kind [idiots] from the households of many of the industrious and deserving poor is a frequent means of _warding off pauperism in the parents_."[723] We do not find, however, any more explicit statement on this point. What the Central Authority continued to press on the Boards of Guardians was, not so much the importance of relieving the struggling poor from the burden of their insane or idiotic dependants, nor yet the freeing of the workhouses from the presence of persons of unsound mind; but rather of appropriate discrimination. "It is of great importance not merely to exclude from the [district] asylums those who, by reason of violence or irritability, are proper subjects for the county asylum, but also those who, from old age or disease, are unfit for the journey to the asylum, or who, from the slight degree to which their mind is affected, might more properly remain in the workhouse."[724] "The removal of helpless, bedridden persons, whose mental weakness is, in many cases, the result of old age, to asylums situated a considerable distance from the Metropolis, is calculated, on the one hand, to be injurious to the persons thus removed, and, on the other, to occupy the district asylums with a different class of persons from that for which they were constructed."[725] Imbecile children are to be kept in the workhouse till they are five years old, and may then be sent to the asylum at Darenth.[726] Outside the Metropolis there is no specialised Poor Law provision for idiots, who, if not received into the county asylum, must either be placed in non-Poor-Law institutions at considerable expense, or detained in the workhouse. In 1885 the Central Authority even suggested that harmless and aged lunatics had, on grounds of economy, better be retained in the workhouse, rather than removed to an asylum.[727] We hear incidentally of a Special Order in 1900 under which certain chronic lunatics were actually transferred from the Suffolk County Asylum to the workhouse of the Mildenhall Union.[728] As late as 1905 we find the Central Authority expressing regret that so many cases of senile imbecility were removed from the workhouses to asylums.[729] [723] Eighth Annual Report, 1878-9, p. xli. [724] First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. xxix. [725] Circular Letter, "Metropolitan Asylums for Imbeciles," 12th February 1875, in Fifth Annual Report, 1875-6, p. 3. [726] Circular Letter, "Age of Children sent to Imbecile Asylums," 24th July 1882, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1882-3, p. 17.