Priscilla Wakefield: Tottenham activist
Priscilla Wakefield: Tottenham activist
  • Priscilla Wakefield
    • Life and times
    • Family >
      • Next generation
    • Declining health
    • Memorial
    • Where she lived
  • Economist
    • Female Benefit Club
    • First Savings Bank
    • Account of Savings Bank
    • Financial inclusion heroine
    • Microfinance >
      • Finding out more
      • Books on microfinance
  • Educationalist
    • Supporter of Girls Education
  • Writer
  • Women
    • Lying-in charity
    • Women in Tottenham's past
  • Activism Now
    • Tottenham Today >
      • Breadline London
      • Friends of Parks
      • Living under One Sun
      • Marcus Garvey Library
      • Quaker Garden
      • StART Housing
      • Stop the HDV
      • A Tale of Stadium-led Regeneration
      • Taxpayers Against Poverty
      • Wards Corner: shop locally
    • Quaker: New Economy
    • Quaker: Sustainability
  • Resources
    • Priscilla's books
    • Priscilla Wakefield banner
    • Who we are
  • Priscilla Wakefield
    • Life and times
    • Family >
      • Next generation
    • Declining health
    • Memorial
    • Where she lived
  • Economist
    • Female Benefit Club
    • First Savings Bank
    • Account of Savings Bank
    • Financial inclusion heroine
    • Microfinance >
      • Finding out more
      • Books on microfinance
  • Educationalist
    • Supporter of Girls Education
  • Writer
  • Women
    • Lying-in charity
    • Women in Tottenham's past
  • Activism Now
    • Tottenham Today >
      • Breadline London
      • Friends of Parks
      • Living under One Sun
      • Marcus Garvey Library
      • Quaker Garden
      • StART Housing
      • Stop the HDV
      • A Tale of Stadium-led Regeneration
      • Taxpayers Against Poverty
      • Wards Corner: shop locally
    • Quaker: New Economy
    • Quaker: Sustainability
  • Resources
    • Priscilla's books
    • Priscilla Wakefield banner
    • Who we are
As time elapses, it is pleasant to look back and see what has been produced
Priscilla Wakefield diary entry 1810
My health is in a very enfeebled state but with thankfulness I add that as far as I can judge my intellectual powers are unimpaired. I have published Instinct Displayed and begun Travels in Africa. The employment of writing is profitable, not only with a view to what it yields but also an amusement, affording considerable relief from the cares of life.
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Figure 28 Whitmore House, Hoxton
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Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England, written by Jonathan Andrews and Andrew Scull, 2001

The two publications illustrated on this page show that in her later years Priscilla Wakefield, was an inmate of Whitmore House in neighbouring Hackney, one of the notorious madhouses of the nineteenth century. With the trials Priscilla faced with her family throughout her life, the need to earn the family income and her tremendous energy and commitment to social justice, it is perhaps unsurprising that she should suffer a breakdown, but the conditions she endured at Whitmore House must have exacerbated any frailties.

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A description of the crimes and horrors in the interior of Warburton's private mad-house at Hoxton, commonly called Whitmore House
by John Mitford, 1825

My love of young persons continues but a slight defect in my
hearing deprives me in some degree of the pleasures of conversation

27 December 1814

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A year in Europe John Griscom 1823

The New Suffolk Garland on 'The originator of the Savings' Banks' -
After her settlement at Ipswich, she had an interview with Henry Alexander, Esq., respecting the formation of a
public bank in that town; and she wrote the rules for a bank that was founded at Witliam.

The new Suffolk garland; a miscellany of anecdotes... relating to the county of Suffolk

Priscilla Wakefield died on the 12 September 1832
at the home of her beloved daughter, Bell, in Ipswich.

She was buried on 20 December in the Friends' burial-ground at the New Meeting House, Ipswich.
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Contact: PWForgottenHeroine@gmail.com

Follow: Priscilla Wakefield on Twitter @TottenhamQuaker