Afterthought and one more question:
The afterthought is about the industry that developed as doctors built huge 'for profit' establishments to house so called lunatics. Your research shows that she stayed in 3 of them. What kind of disorder did she suffer from? It is hard to tell. There are research papers about how that system worked, but nothing that I have found yet about the plight of women who were psychologically distressed.
One more question: Sarah's niece was Mary Charlotte Marshall, who married David Simpson Morice,. She was admitted to the Ticehurst House Lunatic Asylum on 23 April 1868, where she stayed until she died in 1906. In her case it could well have been depression induced by childbirth. She was absent in the family census of 1861, which named her husband and two young children: Henry Edward (1853 - 1926) and Gertrude Frances (born in 1855, died in 1893 unmarried). That was soon after two of her other children died in infancy (John in 1857 and Alfred in 1858).
She then had 3 more children, born in 1862, 1864 and 1867, before being consigned in 1868 to Ticehurst for the rest of her life.
Is there a way to figure out where she was for the 1861 census?
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