laziness, absence of forethought or provision, want of moral sense, cunning, dirt, and instances may be found in which their physical characteristics approach those of the lower animals so that they seem to be going back to the type of what Professor Darwin calls our arboreal ancestors.' One man, now a prisoner, seems actually to have got back very close to that type, as is illustrated by his likeness, which bears an extraordinary resemblance to that class of animal. 6 Crime therefore, being to a large extent connected with mental inferiority of some kind, whether as cause and effect, or as accompanying one another, the question may arise how far punishment is applicable to such people; whether, in fact, they should not rather be dealt with simply as lunatics? I venture to think that erroneous opinions have often been, and are frequently, acted on on this point. It is not the case that because prisoners are mentally defective in some degree that they are necessarily so utterly incapable of appreciating cause and effect that they cannot be made to understand that certain acts will be followed by punishment, and thus be induced to abstain from these acts. A vast deal of crime is due to this very absence of self-control which the fear of punishment is intended to supply, and although in dealing with a criminal who is not perfectly rational very great care and discrimination are necessary—just as caution and discretion and the employment only of suitable punishments are necessary with children-it is not necessary to abandon the ordinary treatment which is applied to beings of even the lowest intelligence, for this is to degrade them down lower even than the animals, and to look upon them as no higher in the scale of creation than vegetables. Experience has shown that mental diseases are encouraged and developed by allowing those who are subject to them to take advantage of them, and to abandon all attempt to control them. It may readily be understood that there are numbers of prisoners who, in order to evade hard work and live in greater comfort than the cells of a prison afford, will create or increase any malady which may lead to their being placed in the comfort and idleness of a hospital or lunatic asylum, and cases are well established of prisoners who may almost be said to have become epileptic by continually imitating that malady, or perhaps by exaggerating some slight tendency to it. Some few years ago the convicts at one of our convict prisons took a curious fancy of mutilating themselves. The common way of doing it was to place their hands or legs in the way of the engines and cars used on the works, and several severe injuries took place in consequence. There was no particular reason for the outbreak of this practice at that particular time or at that particular prison, but having been once set going it became a kind of epidemic, just as it is recorded in France that at one time in certain garrisons suicide became a kind of epidemic. The probable object of those who began self-mutilations, and of most of those who followed them, was to evade labour, but this motive would not account for all cases; and the entire disproportion between the injury self-inflicted and the object gained, together with the spread of the practice, showed, I think, that it was with many a kind of uncontrollable (or rather uncontrolled) impulse, such as is often held to exonerate people from the consequences of their acts. Various expedients to check it were tried, but at last the prisoners were made to understand unmistakably that such acts would be visited by the severest form of punishment, in addition to that which they inflicted on themselves. From that moment the practice almost entirely ceased as if by magic. If a person is intelligent enough to understand and to argue that the fact of his being mentally affected exonerates him from the consequences of his acts, he clearly must be able to appreciate what those consequences are, and the best chance of getting him, and others like him, to abstain from such acts in future, is to let him know that he will endure those consequences, certainly not to remove the only motive for abstaining from them—namely, fear of the consequences. A change in our manner of dealing with prisoners who develop insanity during the course of their sentences has lately been introduced. They are not now sent to separate lunatic asylums, but are retained in one of our invalid prison establishments as a separate class. I have inquired of Dr. Campbell, a very experienced officer, who has charge of them, what has been the result as yet, and have received from him the following observations: The few months' experience we have had of the criminal lunatics enables me to report very favourably on the new system, as the improvement in the conduct and behaviour of these men has exceeded my expectations. The greater number throughout their prison career appears to have been very intractable, and many of them extremely insubordinate, destructive, filthy in their habits, violent and dangerous; some of them pursued the same line of conduct after reception here, but they generally settled down, and are now for the most part comparatively quiet and tractable, the strong and padded cells not having been required. This satisfactory change is the more gratifying, as it has been effected without pampering and indulging them in extra articles of food or beer, which, they say, they were formerly allowed, with the exception of a few labouring under bodily ailments. At present, out of the fifty-four in West Wing, thirtyeight are employed oakum-picking and knitting, six in sick room, six cleaners, and the other four refuse to work. I can therefore see no objection to keeping this class of lunatics here as long as they are kept strictly apart from other prisoners. 'I may, however, at the same time mention that no reliance can be placed in these men from day to day, as they are often seized with violent fits of excitement without any apparent cause. In most instances there are well-marked indications of unsoundness of mind, both in their appearance and behaviour. At the same time, they are capable of reasoning, especially when their own interests are concerned. Their removal hither, instead of to Broadmoor or an asylum, is undoubtedly a great disappointment to some of them, as they have complained of it; and one man, who appears to have been in several asylums, was so determined in his refusal of food, because his wishes with respect to diet were not gratified, that he required to be fed by force for thirty days before he gave in. The resolute scheming sometimes resorted to by prisoners in their attempts to feign bodily and mental disease is often surprising, and sometimes so cleverly carried out as to escape detection for months, and even years, as we have witnessed in cases sent here. When insanity is feigned with the view of obtaining asylum comforts, and perhaps a better prospect of liberty, the inducement to persevere with the deception is no doubt very great. In fact, I believe it will be found that the plan of sending lunatic convicts to a separate portion of this prison, instead of sending them to an asylum, will have the effect of checking much malingering that is supposed to take place. As I have often observed a great amount of brain disease, particularly in the case of incorrigible convicts, I am quite of opinion that crime may frequently be due to that cause by impairing or deranging the intellect so as to blunt the feeling and lessen the controlling power of the mind. I may also observe that the brains of the criminal class are smaller than those of ordinary adults, which average upwards of 3 lbs., as I find that in fifty of lately deceased prisoners it only averaged 2 lbs 144 oz. Even in educated prisoners, who may have occupied good positions in life, we often observe some peculiarity in manner or appearance to indicate mental weak X ness. Lieutenant Pate, who was transported for striking the Queen with a switch, was a case in point, and as he was one of our prisoners I took out to Tasmania, I had a good opportunity of watching him, and could only look upon him as a man of weak intellect.' These are the observations of a medical man, who has had a very long experience in connection with convicts. If it is the case that the unhealthy mode of living which promotes disease also promotes crime, then the opposite result should be attained by the exceedingly favourable sanitary condition of our prisons. I believe that in sanitary construction and in elaborate attention to the laws of ventilation, drainage, cleanliness, &c., the prisons of England certainly led the way. Sir Humphrey Davy was employed in the ventilation of Millbank Prison some sixty years ago. In no other buildings, I believe, for several years after the general reconstruction of prisons on the model of Pentonville, were such pains taken to supply to every inmate his due proportion of air at the proper temperature, to carry off the consumed air, and to remove from the site anything which could breed or encourage disease. The result is almost absolute immunity from disease such as is attributable to bad sanitary arrangements, there being on the average only one death in three years from typhoid or enteric fever in the whole of the Government prisons -i.e. in a population of about 9,500 prisoners. As another illustration of the result of the great attention paid to sanitary arrangements, I may mention the immunity of the prisons from the epidemic small-pox, which prevailed in London in 1871, for though the disease did get into the prisons it did not spread, as it undoubtedly would have done if their sanitary condition had been less favourable than it was, but was instantly checked. It requires some little consideration to assign to education its part in the repression of crime, in order that we may know what is the special effect we may hope to produce by it. It is obvious that it is the non-educated classes who fill our prisons, but it would not do to jump to the conclusion that it was the want of education that made the prisoners into criminals, for of course the educated classes are those who are comparatively well-to-do, and therefore belong to the party which is preyed upon, and not on that which preys on society. Moreover, education having been hitherto the privilege of the minority, it has given them an additional tool by aid of which they have been enabled to rise in the world, and to advance in the acquisition of wealth more rapidly than the |