held this position for the next 29 years and came to be regarded as one of the most enlightened asylum superintendents in Europe, and Richmond became widely known for its enlightened methods of treatment. Early reforms included measures to arouse, animate and educate the inmates, although Lalor is best known for his strong belief in education and training, including the employment school teachers within the Asylum. Lalor described his approach in an 1878 article follows: "I consider that education and training are most valuable agents in the treatment of the insane of all classes, whether simply lunatics, or idiots and imbeciles, or criminal lunatics, and that it expresses in name and substance what has long been known in reference to lunatics in general as to their moral treatment ... .starting with the proposition that education and training form the basis of the moral treatment of all classes of the insane." Reading, singing and therapy were much cultivated, while object and picture lessons were given. Along with the schools, converts were given every fortnight, furnishings improved, and inmates encouraged to eat together. The leading British psychiatrist Dr Daniel Hack Tuke, in a review of the asylum services in Britain and Ireland, described Lalor as a "credit to Ireland" and wrote that his system of employment and training patients was more efficient than anything he had seen elsewhere. On his retirement from Richmond in 1886, an article in the Irish Times (5/8/1886) paid the following tribute: “The retirement of Joseph Lalor Esq MD from the position of Resident Medical Superintendent of the Richmond Lunatic Asylum is an event of considerable importance ... In Richmond, he has full scope for his undoubted genius and for the human projects which he both conceived and put into execution with a decision of character and a perseverance absolutely necessary in one holding his position ... The fame of Dr Lalor’s mode of treatment spread to all Irish asylums, to England , to the United States and even to Germany; superintendents of asylums came to the Richmond Asylum to see for themselves, and the records of their visits go to prove that Dr Lalor was universally regarded as a humane and courageous administrator, and a benefactor of his kind.” The 1886 death of the “excellent and kind hearted Dr Lalor” was noted in the British Journal of Psychiatry: “It may in short be said that Dr Lalors