the soundness of the plan, and with a rare
modesty concerned very little about his own
claims to reputation in connection with it.
He gives to every other man his due, and is
for himself content that he has been a faithful
labourer. Of the beginning of his work at
Hanwell he himself writes: "Although the
phenomena of insanity and the character of
asylums had occupied my mind for many
years before I was appointed to the charge of
the Middlesex Asylum at Hanwell, in 1839,
and the defective management of insane
persons had been commented upon in a
work published by me about ten years
before assuming such duties, I was still
deeply impressed with the responsibility of
what I had undertaken, and my anxiety to
avoid the abuses which I had freely condemned,
was largely mixed with solicitude as
to the possible dangers to be incurred in the
attempt in an asylum containing eight hundred
patients. The perusal of Mr. Gardiner
Hill's lecture" (on the Management of Lunatic
Asylums, delivered in June, eighteen
hundred and thirty-eight, and published
April, eighteen hundred and thirty-nine)
"had almost convinced me that what was
reported as having been done at Lincoln
might be accomplished in other and larger
asylums.... Much interested by these details,
I devoted the few weeks intervening
between my appointment to Hanwell and the
commencement of my residence there, in
visiting several public asylums; in all of
which, except in that of Lincoln, various
modes of mechanical coercion continued to be
employed. My visit to the Lincoln Asylum
(in May, eighteen hundred and thirty-nine),
and conversations and correspondence with
Dr. Charlesworth and Mr. Gardiner Hill, as
well as frequent communications with the
late Mr. Serjeant Adams, at that time a
member of the Hanwell Committee, and who
had been much interested by the proceedings
at Lincoln, more strongly inclined me to
believe that mechanical restraints might be
safely and advantageously abolished in an
asylum of any size; and I commenced my
duties as resident physician and superintendent
of the Middlesex Lunatic Asylum at
Hanwell, on the first day of June. In various
asylums some attention had been drawn to
the subject of Mr. Hill's lecture; but I had
observed that his views were received
unfavourably, and sometimes in a spirit of
hostility, or even of ridicule; and I found them
by no means favourably regarded by the
medical and other officers at Hanwell. The
agitation, however, of so novel a question as
that of abolishing instruments of restraint
which, from time immemorial had constituted
a part of the daily treatment of numerous
cases of insanity, had led, at Hanwell at
least, to a some what less extravagant
employment of coercive instruments than had
before been common. After the first of July, when
I required a daily return to be made to me
of the number of patients restrained, there
were never more than eighteen so treated in
one day—a number which would seem
reasonably small, out of eight hundred patients,
but for the facts that after the thirty-first of
July the number so confined never exceeded
eight; and after the twelfth of August never
exceeded one; and that after the twentieth
of September no restraints were employed at
all."

Those are quiet words, but how much
energy do they express! Mr. Hill arrived at
his opinion, and unable to enforce it satisfactorily,
resigned at last his appointment in
the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum. The lecture,
expressing Mr. Hill's extreme views, was
printed in April, of the year eighteen hundred
and thirty-nine. Dr. Conolly, then about
to be placed in charge of the Great County
Asylum at Hanwell, and being strongly
disposed against the prisoning and fettering
of the insane, read the lecture at once, and
almost believed that its case was made out as
well for the great asylums as for the small.

In the month following he went to Lincoln,
made observations for himself, and
came away convinced. In the month following
that, he entered upon his office at Hanwell,
resolved to conquer quietly and quickly all the
strong prejudices he encountered there, and
to establish, against the opinion of his
colleagues and subordinates, against ridicule
and abuse, the extreme position that he
had accepted. He did not urge it theoretically
in an uncomprosing way; he did not
like Mr. Hill to deny that there might be
cases to which his principle was inapplicable.
He said little, and did all. When he had
been a month in office he was receiving daily
returns of the number of patients put under
mechanical restraint. He had urged his
general opinions in the meantime and the
restraints were not numerous. He watched
cases and pointed out the conclusions to
which they led. In one month more, the
use of such restraints—before small—was
reduced by more than half. In twelve
days more it was reduced to the occasional
binding of one patient in the course of a day,
and after a few more weeks—by quarter day
—it was abolished altogether.

Dr. Conolly's predecessor, at the Hanwell
Asylum, had been Dr. Millingen, a strong
opponent of the non-restraint theory. ln
the year during which Dr. Milligen's rule
lasted, instruments of coercion multiplied.
There had reigned before Dr. Millingen, Sir
William Ellis, a wise and kindly man, who
is entitled to distinction in this history as
the reformer who, first at Wakefield and
afterwards at Hanwell, made the experiment of
introducing labour systematically into our public
asylums. "He carried it out at Wakefield,"
says Samuel Tuke, "with a skill, vigour and
kindness towards the patients, which were
alike creditable to his understanding and his
heart. He first proved that there was less