William Tuke

William Tuke 1732-1822, English merchant and philanthropist. He succeeded at an early age to the family business at York in wholesale tea and coffee. He is remembered as the chief founder of the York Retreat (opened 1796), an influential early institution for the intelligent and humane care of the insane. His son Henry Tuke, 1755-1814, was a cofounder of the retreat. Henry Tuke's son Samuel Tuke, 1784-1857, continued in the family business and interested himself in the conditions of the insane. His Description of the Retreat (1813) had great influence in reforming the treatment of insanity. Samuel Tuke's son James Hack Tuke, 1819-96, also entered the family business and aided in the management of the York Retreat. He long engaged in philanthropic aid to Ireland. His brother Daniel Hack Tuke, 1827-95, was an eminent physician whose study of insanity resulted in a valuable treatise, A Manual of Psychological Medicine (with J. C. Bucknill, 1858).

Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London, in Portugal Street. This was originally Lisle's Tennis-Court, built in 1656. It was leased in 1660 by Sir William Davenant, who enlarged it for use as a theatre, making it the first playhouse in England to have a proscenium arch behind the apron stage. It opened in 1661 with Davenant's own play The Siege of Rhodes, Part I, the second part appearing shortly afterwards. Thomas Betterton, who was to be closely associated with this theatre, made his first appearance there playing Hamlet. There was also a revival of Romeo and Juliet, with the original ending one day and the alternative happy ending by James Howard the next. Among the outstanding plays first seen at this theatre were Tuke's The Adventures of Five Hours (1663), based on Calderón, and Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-all (1667), in which the comedian Nokes scored a great success. Davenant died in 1668, and his widow, with the assistance of Betterton, kept the theatre going until Dorset Garden, the new playhouse begun by her husband, was completed. The company gave its last performance at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in 1671. Two months later Killigrew took over the empty building, following a fire which had destroyed the first Drury Lane Theatre, and remained there until 1674, after which the building reverted to its former use as a tennis-court, until in 1695 Betterton, who had seceded from the United Company formed by the amalgamation of the actors at Drury Lane and Dorset Garden, took a company which included Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle to the old theatre. He financed the restoration of the building by public subscription, and reopened it with Congreve's new play Love for Love. Though somewhat handicapped by the smallness of the stage and the limited accommodation in the two-tier auditorium, the company remained in occupation for 10 years, moving in 1705 to the new Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, built by Vanbrugh. The old building then ceased to be used as a theatre until in 1714 Christopher Rich took it over and put in hand extensive renovations, dying before they were completed. It was left to his son John Rich to finish the alterations, which gave the theatre a handsome auditorium seating more than 1,400 spectators and lighted by six overhead chandeliers, and a stage, with mirrors each side, larger than that at Drury Lane. All the scenery was new. The opening production was a revival of Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer, and in 1728 came the first night of Rich's most important new production, Gay's The Beggar's Opera. It was also at this theatre that Rich first appeared as Harlequin. In 1732, for reasons that are not yet fully understood, Rich undertook the building of a new theatre in Covent Garden, and moved there in the autumn of that year. Lincoln's Inn Fields was then used mainly for music and opera, except in the season of 1736–7 and again in 1742–3 when Giffard was there after the closure of Goodman's Fields Theatre. The final performance took place in 1744, and the old theatre then became, among other things, a barracks, an auction room, and finally the Salopian China Warehouse. It was pulled down in 1848.

Dix, Dorothea (1802–1887), asylum movement leader.Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, the daughter of an alcoholic Methodist preacher who was the black sheep of a wealthy merchant family. In 1836–1837, her career as a schoolmistress thwarted by ill health, she suffered a nervous breakdown. Traveling to England seeking a cure, she encountered leading reformers, including the Quaker Samuel Tuke, head of the well‐known York Retreat for the mentally disordered. Returning to the United States, Dix in 1841–1842 undertook an exhaustive survey of the appalling treatment of Massachusetts's indigent insane, confined in jails and almshouses, often in chains. She was supported by prominent reformers and by the Unitarian leader William Ellery Channing, a close friend. In 1843, in response to her scathing report, the Massachusetts legislature appropriated funds to expand the state mental hospital in Worcester. This set the pattern for her successful advocacy of similar reforms in many states, from New York to Mississippi. She was now well‐known, but her long campaign (1847–1854) to win federal funding for state asylums for the mentally ill proved unsuccessful. When the Civil War began, Dix, inspired by the British heroine Florence Nightingale, sought to become America's supreme nurse. Appointed superintendent of army nurses, she proved a domineering, inept administrator and was gradually relieved of power. Dix also supported prison reform, but otherwise generally ignored the other reform movements of the day, including women's rights and antislavery. Yet her single‐minded focus allowed her to accomplish more in politics than any other woman of her era.
See also Alms Houses; Mental Illness; Prisons and Penitentiaries.

Bibliography

David Gollaher , Voice for the Mad: The Life of Dorothea Dix, 1995.
Thomas J. Brown , Dorothea Dix: New England Reformer, 1998.

David Gollaher