The sixty-eighth annual report of James Murray's Royal Asylum Perth.

  • James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sixty-eighth annual report of James Murray's Royal Asylum Perth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/44 (page 12)
    year is due to that fact in some degree. No death occurred in the case of a curable patient. Five post-mortem examinations were made, and accurate records preserved. Average The average daily numbers on the books Numbers # 0 J Resident. during the year were—Certificated male patients, 51*48; female, 50*02. Voluntary male, 3*82; female, 4*18. Total, 109*52. This shows an increase of 5*32 compared with last year, and an increase of 23*48 over the average daily number since 1864, which is 86*04. The lowest number for any one day (107) occurred on 28th July, 1894, and the highest (112) on the 28th Novem¬ ber, 1894. Accidents. The accidents have been few and trivial, with one exception; and it is many years since such an event occurred here. An Irish patient attacked an attendant with a knife and wounded him severely. Fortunately the result proved less serious than was intended, the patient having deliberatelv schemed to murder the attendant in order to get the keys and so regain his liberty. The insane idea came upon him in consequence of his being detained here after he had declared his intention to leave. His escape might have been more easily compassed; and, in answer to the obvious remark that, if successful in his design, he would have been a criminal lunatic for life, his reply was that he would prefer the Queen’s prison to any asylum. Although this gentleman has been insane for years we were assured that he had never been violent or threatening, and our experience of him here corroborated that state-