 Hannah Mills (Quaker)

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.Mills was admitted as a young widow to the York Asylum on 15 March 1790, suffering from 'melancholy' (what might now be termed clinical depression).