Tuke Family

   An important dynasty of English psychiatrists and philanthropists. William Tuke (1732–1822), a Quaker grocer in York, England, was moved by the circumstances under which a friend had died in the York County Asylum to propose in 1792 to the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Yorkshire the need for revolutionizing the treatment of the insane. The community thereupon resolved to build a 30-bed institution for the treatment of insane persons "on humane and enlightened principles." The York Retreat, as it was named, opened in 1796. (See Moral Treatment.)

   Henry Tuke (1755–1814) was the eldest son of William Tuke and took over the family business in York.

   Samuel Tuke (1784–1857) was a son of Henry and grandson of William. Despite his interest in medicine, he remained in the family business. Yet, during the years he occupied himself with scholarship in the area of mental illness and the treatment of the insane, writing in 1813 a Description of the Retreat, and again in 1846 a Review of the Early History of the Retreat. Psychiatry historians Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine have said that the "pioneer work" of these three generations of Tukes "opened a new chapter in the history of the insane because of the avowed aim to accord them the dignity and status of sick human beings, and to substitute self-restraint based on selfesteem . . . for the debasing and brutalising coercion and restraint [of the previous regimen]" (300 Years, p. 687). (Samuel Tuke’s wife, Priscilla, was the daugher of James Hack.)

   Daniel Hack Tuke (1827–1895) was a son of Samuel and great-grandson of William. Born in York, Hack Tuke became interested in the operation of the Retreat and decided to study medicine, qualifying in 1852 after studying at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London (and gaining an M.D. degree at Heidelberg University the following year). He was made physician to the Retreat and lecturer on mental diseases at the school of medicine in York. In 1858, he and (Sir) John Charles Bucknill (1817–1897) published their Manual of Psychological Medicine, a work that kept its place in several successive editions as the principal text in the field. In his Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind Upon the Body in Health and Disease, Designed to Elucidate the Action of the Imagination (1872), he introduced the concept of "psycho-therapeutics," noting "the remarkable influence which the mind exerts upon any organ or tissue to which the attention is directed, to the exclusion of other ideas" (p. 393). This represents an early statement of the mechanism of suggestion.

   After living in the port of Falmouth for a number of years because of his tuberculosis, Hack Tuke moved in 1875 to London, opening a private practice in psychiatry and from 1892 onward lecturing on mental diseases at Charing Cross Hospital. In the view of his biographer in Munk’s Roll, "his greatest achievement was his publication of the Dictionary of Psychological Medicine" in 1892, which established him as one of the chief authorities of the day.

   There was a second, apparently unrelated, line of Tukes who also made a name for themselves in mental medicine:

   Edward Francis Tuke (ca. 1776–1846), from Bristol and also a Quaker, founded Manor House, a "private lunatic asylum," in Chiswick, a suburb of London.

   Thomas Harrington Tuke (1826–1888), son of Edward Francis, took charge in 1846 of the family clinic, going on then to become himself a prominent psychiatrist. In 1858, he wrote a much-cited article in the Journal of Mental Science on hydrotherapy in insanity; he was said to have introduced nasal feeding of the insane (given that food refusal was quite common in asylum patients). He married the second daughter of John Conolly, the psychiatrist who introduced "no restraint" to England. Known subsequently as "Chiswick House," the 35-bed sanatorium continued for decades in the hands of two psychiatrist sons of Harrington Tuke, Thomas Seymour Tuke (ca. 1856–?) and Charles Molesworth Tuke (1857–1925); it was administered in the early 1920s by the latter, who had qualified in 1881.