Contributors Records

The contributors who financed Friends Asylum (both individual Quakers and Monthly Meetings) met at the Yearly Meeting of Contributors to make large decisions about the welfare of the Asylum. Each Monthly Meeting that contributed $200 a year and each individual who contributed $10 a year or $50 at once was called a member of the institution. The Monthly Meetings were expected to send an agent to the Yearly Meeting of the Contributors, and were allowed to recommend one patient at lowest terms of admittance. The minutes contain information about the decisions that the Contributors made, as well as data about patients admitted, donations and legacies received, Asylum finances, and the Contributors' finances. Minutes between 1828 and 1836 were lost in a fire; some were reconstructed and are present in sketchy form in volume 2. (Information from “A Mild and Appropriate System of Treatment”: Moral Treatment and the Curability of Mental Illness at Friends Asylum" by Abigail Corcoran)