ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that an analysis of admissions to Ticehurst Asylum between 1845 and 1915 suggests Ray’s hypothesis may be equally true of patients in the private sector. August 1845 provides a convenient point at which to take up the history of admissions and discharge at Ticehurst, since the passage of the 1845 Asylums Act made it statutory to keep admission and discharge books. The median length of stay for patients resident in Ticehurst at any one time fluctuated around twenty-five years. The Ticehurst case-notes show how often individual patients’ disturbances were part of a wider pattern of family problems. Removing a patient eased family tensions, and it was this social need which asylums like Ticehurst successfully fulfilled. At Ticehurst, voluntary boarding of former patients had been considered even before the 1862 Act made it statutorily regulated. The 1890 Lunacy Act finally established the principle of voluntary treatment.
