found representing the number who have been inmates throughout the year; or the total extent of relief be expressed by estimating it to be equal to the support of one hypothetical individual for any number of years equivalent to the sum of the portions of time the entire number of the paupers of the particular parish received the benefits of the establishment. We do not feel sure that these plans of calculating the cost per head are faithfully and fully executed; the rough method of doing so, viz. by taking the whole cost of “in-maintenance” at the end of the year and dividing it by the number of its recipients, and assuming the quotient to represent the expenditure for each. Whether this be the case or not, these daily changes among its inmates, the frequent absence of many for a great part of the day and the like, are to be enumerated among the circumstances which tend to keep down expenditure of workhouses; and which are not found in asylums.
There is yet another feature about workhouses which distinguishes them from asylums, and is of considerable moment in the question of the comparative cost of maintenance in the two: this is, the circumstance of the population of workhouses being of a mixed character, of which the insane constitute merely a small section; while, on the contrary, that of asylums is entirely special, and each of its members to be considered a patient or invalid demanding particular care and special appliances. Therefore, a priori, no comparison as to their expenditure can justly be drawn between two institutions so dissimilar. Yet even this extent of dissimilarity between them is not all that exists; for the union-house is so constituted by law as to serve as a test of poverty; to offer no inducements to pauperism, and to curtail the cost of maintenance as far as possible. It has properly no organization for the detention, supervision, moral treatment and control, nor for the nursing or medical care of the insane; and when its establishment is attempted it is a step at variance with its primary intention, and involves an extra expenditure.
Consequently, before overseers or guardians can with any propriety contrast the workhouse charges of maintenance with those of asylums, it is their business to estimate what an adult pauper lunatic costs them per week, instead of, as usual, quoting the cost per head calculated on the whole of the inmates, old and young, sane and insane.
Once more, even after a fair estimate of the cost of an adult insane inmate of a workhouse is obtained, there is still another differential circumstance favourable to a less rate than can be anticipated in asylums; for this reason: – that in the former institutions the practice is to reject all violent cases, the major portion of recent ones, and, generally, all those who give particular annoyance and trouble; whilst the latter is, as it rightly should be, regarded as the fitting receptacle for all such patients; – that is, in other words, those classes of patients which entail the greatest expense are got rid of by the workhouses and undertaken by the asylums.
Dr. Bucknill has well expressed the same circumstances we have reviewed, in the following paragraph (Report, Devon Asylum, 1858, p. 13): – “In estimating the cost of lunatic paupers in asylums, the important consideration must not be omitted, that the charge made for the care and maintenance of lunatics in County Asylums is averaged upon those whose actual cost is much greater, and those whose actual cost is less than the mean; so that it would be unfair for the overseers of a parish to say of any single patient that he could be maintained for a smaller sum than that charged, when the probability is that there are or have been patients in the asylum from the same parish, whose actual cost to the asylum has been much greater than that charged to the parish. I have shown, that the actual cost of chronic patients in an asylum exceeds that of adult paupers in union-houses to a much smaller extent than has been stated: but if all patients of this description were removed from the asylum, the inevitable result must be that the average cost of those who remained would be augmented, so that the pecuniary result to the parishes in the county would be much the same. The actual cost of an individual patient, if all things are taken into calculation, is often three or four times greater than the average. Leaving out of consideration the welfare of the patients, it would be obviously unfair to the community, that a parish having four patients in the asylum, the actual cost of two of whom was 12s. a week, and of the other two only 4s. a week, should be allowed to remove the two who cost the smaller sum, and be still permitted to leave the other two at the average charge of 8s.”
The conclusion of the whole matter is, that cæteris paribus, i. e. supposing workhouses to be equally fitting receptacles for the insane as asylums, the differential cost of the two can only be estimated when it is ascertained that the items of maintenance are alike in the two, and after that an allowance is made for the different characters of their population and of their original purpose; that is, in the instance of workhouses, for the very large number of juvenile paupers; for the great fluctuations in the residents; for the mixed character of their inmates, of sane and insane together, and the small proportion of insane, and for the exclusion of the most expensive classes of such patients. Let these matters be fairly estimated, and we doubt much if, even primâ facie, it can be shown that the workhouse detention of pauper lunatics is more economical than that of properly constructed and organized asylums.
Should we even be so far successful as to make Poor-Law Guardians and Overseers perceive that the common rough-and-ready mode of settling the question of relative cost in asylums and workhouses, by contrasting the calculated rate per head for in-door relief with that for asylum care, is not satisfactory; we cannot cherish the flattering hope that they will be brought to perceive that, simply in an economical point of view, no saving at all is gained by the detention of the insane in workhouses. Those Poor-Law officials generally are so accustomed to haggle about fractional parts of a penny in voting relief, to look at an outlay of money only with reference to the moment, forgetful of future retribution for false economy, and to handle the figures representing in their estimate the economical superiority of the workhouse for the insane, when they desire to silence an opponent; – that the task of proving to them that their theory and practice are wrong, is equivalent to the infelicitous endeavour to convince men against their will.
Still, however unpromising our attempt may appear, it is not right to yield whilst any legitimate arguments are at hand; and our repertory of them, even of those suited to a contest concerning the pounds, shillings, and pence of the matter, is not quite exhausted; for we are prepared to prove, that asylum accommodation can be furnished to the lunatic poor at an outlay little or not at all exceeding that for workhouses.
Now this point to be argued, the cost of asylum construction, is not, like the foregoing considerations, chiefly the affair of Poor-Law Guardians and Overseers, but concerns more particularly the County Magistrates, inasmuch as it is defrayed out of the County instead of the Poor Rate. But although this is the case, there is no doubt that the very great expense of existing asylums has acted as an impediment to the construction of others, and has seemed to justify, to a certain extent, the improper detention of many insane persons in workhouses: for, on one side, asylums are found to have cost for their construction and fittings, £150, £200, and upwards per head, whilst on the other, workhouses are built at the small outlay, on an average, of eighty-six such establishments, of £22 per head. The “Return” made to the House of Commons, June 15, 1857, “of the cost of building Workhouses in England and Wales, erected since 1840,” shows indeed a very wide variation of cost in different places, from £13 per head for the Congleton Union House; £14 for the Erpingham; £16 for the Stockton and Tenterden, to £47 for the Kensington; £50 for the Dulverton; £59 for the City of London; £60 for St. Margaret Westminster; and £113 for the Paddington. This enormous difference of expenditure on workhouse lodging, – for, unlike asylum costs, it does not include fittings, extending from £13 to £113 per inmate, – is really inexplicable, after allowing for the varying ideas of parish authorities as to what a workhouse should be, and for the slight differences in the cost of building materials and labour in some parts of the country than in others. Either some workhouses must be most miserable and defective habitations even for paupers, or others must be very extravagant and needlessly expensive in their structure.
There is this much to be said in explanation of the contrast of cost in different workhouses, that in those belonging to large town populations, infirmary accommodation becomes an item of importance and involves increased expenditure, whilst in
