One or two of those I visited appeared to me to be conducted on very patriarchal principles, as the following incident may illustrate.
I had been visiting a large hospital, and had remained there so long that it was already dark before I reached the adjacent lunatic asylum.
Seeing no lights in the windows, I proposed to my companion, who was one of the inspectors, that we should delay our visit till the following morning, but he assured me that by the regulations the lights ought not to be extinguished till considerably later, and consequently there was no objection to our going in at once.

If there was no legal objection, there was at least a physical obstruction in the form of a large wooden door, and all our efforts to attract the attention of the porter or some other inmate were unavailing.

At last, after much ringing, knocking, and shouting, a voice from within asked us who we were and what we wanted.

A brief reply from my companion, not couched in the most polite or amiable terms, made the bolts rattle and the door open with surprising rapidity, and we saw before us an old man with long dishevelled hair, who, as far as appearance went, might have been one of the lunatics, bowing obsequiously and muttering apologies.
After groping our way along a dark corridor we entered a still darker room, and the door was closed and locked behind us.

As the key turned in the rusty lock a wild scream rang through the darkness! Then came a yell, then a howl, and then various sounds which the poverty of the English language prevents me from designating--the whole blending into a hideous discord that would have been at home in some of the worst regions of Dante's Inferno.