The Royal Commission into Queen’s Asylum, conducted by Dr John Coverdale, opened in January 1867. Although its purpose was to cut costs at the Asylum, it failed to make any recommendations for this. It reported in December 1867.
According to Joan Brown, the government appointed the Royal Commission to consider reducing expenditure at the Asylum. However, out of concern for the children, they failed to make any recommendations to cut costs. Instead their
most anxious care became not how cheaply the children could be maintained until an age when they might be got rid of, but rather to place the Establishment on such a footing with proper regard to economy as would embrace ample provision for their physical wants and for their moral, religious and industrial training and secular instruction, considering that if these objects were attained, the expenditure, whether little or much, would be so much money squandered.
The report mentioned the ‘prison-like atmosphere’ and the lack of ‘joyous hilarity’ among the children.