Developing its reputation
The Retreat’s revolutionary humane approach to mental health care was attracting visitors from around the world, with the publication of ‘Description of The Retreat’ by William’s grandson Samuel Tuke. This book was enormously influential on mental health practice and is referred to in modern-day textbooks on the history of psychiatry. The Retreat itself was growing and in the 1820s opened its doors to the first non-Quaker patients.