I have previously written about Sarah and her family in my blog: Hallgate Zion Independent Chapel in Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire. Sarah and family are included in the Sargison tree which includes people in the parishes of Eastrington, South Cave and Cottingham.

I knew that Sarah had lived in Cottingham with her mother until at least the 1851 census. However, her mother Mary had died in 1857 and a pauper lunatic return for 1861 (QAL/2/19/9), which I consulted at the East Riding Archives in Beverley, indicated that she had been committed to the joint North and East Ridings asylum in York on 10 November 1860. It indicated that she was aged 57 and chargeable to the parish. The cost of her maintenance in the asylum was seven shillings a week. Sarah was recorded as a lunatic and dangerous to herself. She did not have dirty habits which contrasts with what was noted about her brother Thomas in 1846.

In 1861 Sarah was recorded as have been of unsound mind for five months. She was in the 7 April 1861 census return for the asylum which was located to the north of York, in the suburb of Clifton, as shown in the following OS map: Yorkshire Sheet 174 dated 1853:

Further Sculcoates Union  pauper lunatic returns for Sarah can be consulted up to the year 1871 (QAL/2/286/8) when she died on 5 May 1871 There seems to be only one entry for her in Ancestry’s collection of UK Lunacy Admission Registers, so perhaps once admitted to the asylum, she did not leave. Do contact me if you have any further information which you are willing to share with me.

Note: the map used in this blog has been reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland under the following creative commons licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ and sourced from the NLS maps site https://maps.nls.uk/.

Bibliography:

Births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/  : accessed May 2023.

Cottingham. https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ERY/Cottingham : accessed May 2023.

Lewis, Samuel ed. (1848) A Topological Directory of England. London: Lewis. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-dict/england : accessed May 2023.

OS (1853) Yorkshire Sheet 174 Map. https://maps.nls.uk/ : accessed May 2023.

UK, Lunacy Admission Registers, 1846-1912. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/  : accessed May 2023.