where. The Japanese, it is likely, will soon give up immersion in hot oil as a punishment; and if it were adopted in our American prisons we would hear no more nonsense about rebellious convicts. As long ago as Voltaire, he said that a traveler could tell when he had entered a Christian country from the prevalence of prisons. It may be accounted for from the want of sympathy on the part of the public, wherein the shower bath and black hole are held up to ridicule, and only an insignificant criminal is murdered in one of them.

In

In Massachusetts (Taunton) Lunatic Asylum, the death of Mr. Parks recently caused the Legislature to investigate the case. the evidence of Patrick Milan, of Readville, a former patient of the asylum, it appears that he saw the struggle between Parks and the attendants; three men held down the patient. Young was kneeling on his breast choking him and striking him with his fist, Lamson was stamping Parks' breast with his heel and kicking him in the side with all his might, waiting for a chance to hit fair between the struggles of the patient, who hallooed as often as there was any breath in his body.

When Parks was completely exhausted he was taken to his cell, where the witness heard more violence in the night.

The witness was asked, why didn't you make public such doings? he did not dare. He said he had known patients to be beaten for making complaints. One day the keeper, Charles Acorn, told witness to bathe, and upon his refusing (he not feeling well,) the keeper knocked him down and kicked him so severely that he was still lame from the injuries then received. He said he had also been kicked and bruised when he was in a strait jacket.

George O. Shattock, counsel for the asylum, cross-examined and bullyragged the witness, but failed to impair his testimony, which is their mode of procedure in cases of lunacy everywhere. A reform in the management of all our institutions is needed, and a change in the laws will save the tax-payers of this Commonwealth thousands of dollars.

JUSTICE TARDY BUT SURE.

It will be remembered that Ebenezer Haskell, a respectable manufacturer and an estimable citizen, over sixty years of age, after being three years a prisoner in Dr. Kirkbride's Asylum, and while there robbed of considerable property, for no other reason

than that he cited James Henry Horn to file an account as administrator of an estate in which Haskell was interested, escaped from that institution, and after a long and exhaustive trial was declared by the judge and jury to have always been, and to be now, an entirely sane man.

Before this verdict was rendered, the counsel for Dr. Kirkbride said that "it was not Mr. Haskell that was on trial, but the asylum.” The jury found the asylum guilty of repeatedly kidnapping and imprisoning a perfectly sane man, and consequently the counsel for the institution, not being satisfied with the verdict, moved for a new trial. But, curiously enough, the name of Mr. Biddle did not appear on the record, but instead, Mr. McGrath, who was in nowise connected with the asylum. This motion was made directly after the finding of the verdict in December last; but notwithstanding the best efforts of Mr. Haskell's counsel to obtain an argument, it was impossible for them to accomplish it until Friday last. That they got it then was owing entirely to the fact that on last Saturday week Mr. Haskell commenced suit in the Supreme Court against Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride, Dr. S. Preston Jones, and their confederate, Dr. Harbison, for conspiracy and false imprison

ment.

To interfere with this suit, and by a new trial to create a prejudice against this victim of the asylum's cupidity, its counsel whose name was not upon the record used all his skill and peculiar tactics to induce the court to grant a new trial.

The court yesterday refused Mr. Biddle's motion, and Kirkbride, Jones and Harbison will have an opportunity afforded them when this trial for conspiracy comes off, to show to the public a view of their asylum, that they have heretofore kept secret; and they will also learn that kidnapping of sane men is in the end an unprofitable speculation.-Philadelphia Morning Post, March 8, 1869.

A YOUNG BRIDE SPIRITED AWAY AND IMMURED IN A LUNATIC ASYLUM.

A singular case came up on Saturday before Judge Bedle, at the Hoboken County Court House, Hudson City, New Jersey. It was an application for a writ of habeas corpus to deliver from the custody of the Governors of the Trenton Lunatic Asylum, a Mrs. Merritt, now confined in that institution. From the affidavit made by the applicant and others, it would appear that on the 4th of

July last, Colonel H. D. Merritt, of Hudson City, was married to Mrs. Frances M. J. Morton, widow of the late William Morton.

She continued to reside with her husband at her own residence, near Manwah, in the county of Bergen, until the 9th of July. Early in the morning of that day, her brother, Edward Livingston Price, of Newark, a lawyer, and member of the last Legislature, went to her house, and sent word that he wished to see her down stairs. She went down, leaving her husband in the room. Her brother, who had a carriage in readiness, put her in it against her consent, and had her taken to the Bergen County Poor House, where she was locked up until the 17th. She was then taken to Hackensack, before a jury summoned by commission appointed by the Chancellor, in pursuance of a petition filed on the 10th of July. Without friends, or any one to appear for her to contradict the statements as to her insanity, she was found to be insane, and on the morning of the 18th of July was taken by her brother and confined in the Lunatic Asylum of Trenton. From the time she was taken from the house until her confinement in the asylum, her husband was unable to discover her whereabouts, and it was only a few days ago he learned from a gentleman in Jersey City that she had been placed in an asylum. Immediately on becoming acquainted with this, he applied through his counsel, Senator Winfield, for a writ of habeas corpus, which was allowed by his honor, Judge Bedle, returnable yesterday morning. The matter duly came before the court. Dr. Buttolph, superintendent of the asylum, returned that Mrs. Merritt was placed in his custody by her brother, Mr. Price. Mr. E. L. Price asked for a postponement for four weeks, and asserted that the adjournment would cause no inconvenience. The lady, he said, was properly cared for. The members of her own family had declared she was insane; a jury had so found, and the husband would have been notified had it been known where he then was. The case was adjourned.

For two weeks a close watch was kept over the lady, by a physcian, and he could not detect the least indication of insanity. She was discharged by the Court.

KIRKBRIDE'S ASYLUM AND THE TRIBUNE.

The Tribune, during the continuance of the Haskell trial in this city, published editorially an article which bore severely upon the present obnoxious law which permits a sane man to be kidnapped

and confined in an insane asylum for any indefinite time, upon the certificate of either a physician or dentist.

Subsequently The Tribune sent a special correspondent to visit and report upon Kirkbride's Asylum, and his account being published, we are prepared to endorse the general correctness of every statement embraced in it. It is, of course, an altogether one-sided view of that great suburban palace-prison, a view obtained through the spectacles of Doctors Kirkbride and Jones, who the able correspondent informs us, escorted him over the entire edifice. He found the floors well scrubbed, the parlors richly furnished, the stairs carpeted, the bed-rooms cleanly, the curtains expensive, the grounds extensive, the ventilation good, and supper excellent.

All which everybody already knew, for these things are exactly what are shown to all casual visitors, and are the cheap bids which the superintendent offers to an easily satisfied public. Unfortunately, however, for the superintendent and his astute assistant Jones, they were not able to convince The Tribune correspondent that the ugly records of the courts were untrue, which showed the asylum's complicity in kidnapping and imprisoning sane men in a hole "not fit for a dog;" in robbing them of all clothing; in violating the seals of private letters and abstracting their contents; in incarcerating entirely sane persons on the certificate of a dentist; in permitting a patient to drown herself, at midday, within the sound of Dr. Kirkbride's voice; in attempts to bribe the press; in other acts which shame all manhood. No, these things could not be proved untrue, for they are matters of record, and consequently the correspondent went home, and said all that was shown him was fair to the eye, but The Tribune did not take back a word of what it had previously stated editorially, for the wise old Tribune knew that the asylum was not yet so lost to all reason as to exhibit anything against itself, for how could The Tribune forget that it was Doctors Kirkbride and Jones who were so polite to their correspondent?

Imagine that mild mannered young gentleman, Mr. Twitchell, escorting our friend, Mr. Sheppard, through the bloody rooms in Pine street, the day after the murder, and explaining to that officer what a sweet-tempered young gentleman he was, and that he must not mind the ugly records of the court, which would slander him-the saintly youth, Twitchell-and then imagine the benevolent Doctors Jones and Kirkbride escorting The Tribune correspondent through its rooms, and telling him what a sweet place it was, and how really magnanimous they were in not asking