In 1790 a Quaker,
Hannah Mills, was
interned at the York
Asylum, which was
no different from any
of the other asylums
of that day and age.
Friends of Mills, living
some distance away,
asked acquaintances in
the village to check on
her. Arriving at the asylum they were turned
away
and
refused
access, and later on it
was discovered that in
fact Mills had died in
the squalid conditions
there. The Quakers
became suspicious that
she should die after
only a few weeks in
the asylum and on visiting there they found
that the patients were
treated inhumanely.
Appalled at what he
saw there William Tuke
took charge of a project for a new type of
asylum based upon
the Quaker principles
of morality and a basis
that the inner light of
a person can never be
extinguished. This new
form of asylum would
focus on treatment
with the goal of recovery, rather
than sheer
brutality in
the hope
of beating
the madness out
of someone.
Although
he had a
strong will
and a philanthropic goal, it
was
not
so easy to
raise the
m o n e y
required to build a new
asylum. William Tuke’s
grandson, Daniel Hack
Tuke, described in an
account in 1885 the
problems his great
grandfather endured in
18
trying to bring together the Quakers to help
bring his vision into
reality.
Daniel Hack Tuke