The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Tuke, William
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).
