The case of Porter at Flushing has been almost equalled
in the Isle of Man. Mr. W. F. Peacock wandering about the island found confined in a hamlet called Ballakillowey a lunatic— named Dick Waterson. This man had, eighteen years ago, been frightened out of his senses by another apprentice dressed up as a ghost, and was placed by his relatives in a brick cow-house with a barred aperture. There he has been bricked up alive for eighteen years, lying naked like an animal in his own ordure, without a bed, his food chucked to him through the window. The neighbours have known all this for years, but have not interfered, and the Commissioners in Lunacy are powerless, for the lunacy laws do not extend to the Isle of Man. Now that the case has been exposed, the Lieutenant-Governor will doubtless interfere if he can find some place to put him in, for there is no asylum in the island, nor apparently any one on that side of it with either feeling or education. Are there Manx clergy, and if so, what was the local rector doing for eighteen years ?
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