Hannah Mills

Hannah Mills was a Quaker from Leeds, England, whose treatment and death in 1790 while confined in the York Asylum (now Bootham Park Hospital) is recognised as having led to the development of the York Retreat, which pioneered the moral treatment of mental illness that became a model for progressive practices worldwide.

Hannah Mills was admitted as a young widow to the York Asylum on the 15th March 1790, suffering from 'melancholy' (what might now be termed clinical depression). At the request of her relatives, local York Quakers tried to visit her but were refused permission on the grounds that she was in private treatment. Hannah Mills died there on the 29th April 1790. [ [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-0117(198305)2%3A36%3A2%3C218%3ACITATC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J Digby, A. 1983] Changes in the Asylum: The Case of York, 1777-1815. "The Economic History Review" New Series, Vol. 36, No. 2 (May), pp. 218-239] These events shocked the Quakers. Some visited the asylum and saw that patients were treated worse than animals. Their concerns and suspicions about conditions and treatments at the asylum, and the asylums of the time in general, were confirmed. William Tuke was enlisted to help develop a more humane alternative and the York Retreat was opened in 1796.

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