The fate of the incurable can also be glimpsed the same year, when the last remaining private patient, a woman, died after almost 39 years in the asylum.
The decades took their toll on the institution, and with patient numbers still climbing, new asylums had to be built further out.
By 1891, with buildings aging and the expanding city crowding around, commissioners described the original asylum as “inconvenient, ill constructed [and] ill adapted”.
It closed in 1902, with most of the buildings knocked down soon after – though the site, now a public park, was not fully cleared until the 1960s.
The only reminder is a plaque on the final surviving fragment, a red brick pillar which formed part of an entrance gate.
Ms Sweetmore added: “Asylums were largely closed down in the late 20th Century but places like Nottingham, for all their failings, were a big step away from what went before.”