Nineteenth-century asylums have generally been portrayed negatively for their inability to offer a beneficial therapy program for patients. Identifying numerous contributing factors, historians have suggested that the practised'moral treatment'therapy ultimately failed because it did not decrease numbers of custodial patients. Using the files of women patients admitted to the Asylum for the Insane in Kingston, Ontario, between 1878 and 1884, this paper offers an alternative view, demonstrating the successes of the treatment program for women suffering from milder forms of mental illness. It also questions the role of custodial care, suggesting that asylums also offered chronic patients a safe and compassionate alternative when all other options had been exhausted.