Bills and Receipts before 1880

Bills and receipts appear in all shapes and forms - in the very early 19th century very few bills were printed invoices, although these are more usual later on. This series of bundled bills and receipts is very detailed in content. The earliest include items for the building, furnishing and equipping of the new Retreat, 1794-7. There are regular bills for shaving of patients, clothes, provisions, mending and repairs, coal etc and, for the earliest years, restraints. After 1810 there are a few Bills for alterations, work and furnishing at the Appendage Some of these Bills were still in their original annual bundles, but others had been taken out and used by various researchers when the archives were still at the Retreat - they had consequently become disordered, or re-grouped by 'subject' (eg a few bills for hats had been brought together). All Bills are now re-sorted into their original annual bundles in order to enable an overview of what the Retreat was purchasing and work being done both at any one time and over a range of years. None of the bundles are very large - the Retreat was still a small enterprise at this date The survival is a little patchy - most Bills survive in quantity up to the early 1820s. There is some evidence that the Retreat later re-cycled the paper on which Bills were written, cutting sheets up to use any blank paper for other purposes. This may account for the dearth of Bills for the mid 19thc, and also any gaps in earlier coverage For Millfield and Throxenby Hall, branches of The Retreat, there are some separate bills: see RET 7/3/4

1794-1870s

36 bundles

Open and available at the Borthwick Institute for Archives. This material has been digitised by the Borthwick Institute for Archives as part of a Wellcome Trust funded project, and can be freely accessed online through the Wellcome Library catalogue.