IDIOTS,IMBECILES AND INTELLECTUAL IMPAIRMENT by Catherine Slater, M.A. Cantab
A History of Mental Handicap/Learning Difficulties from 1000AD to 2000AD-
This site is about the history of people who have been described over the years as fools and intellectually impaired, mentally retarded and developmentally delayed, mentally handicapped and learning disabled, They have faced oppression and prejudice in the past but now are beginning to be recognised as individuals who should be included , respected and valued who have equal civil rights and who are unique indivuduals who can offer a great deal and live rich fulfilled lives just like anyone else.I apologise to anyone who objects to my use of terminology that was used in the past but I need to use the old terms when I am describing the old times.
Chapter Four--Segregation, Incarceration and Eugenics 1800-1945
The period from 1800- 1945 has been in many ways one of the worst for people with mental handicaps and disabilities. Industrialisation and scientific theories led to them being shut away from society and the legacy of prejudice is still with us today.This was also the period during which thousands of disabled people became the victims of mass murder by the Nazis
In 1800 Phillippe Pinel (1745-1826) a French Doctor wrote a treatise on insanity.
There were five categories of mental illness: melancholia or delirium, mania with delirium, mania without delirium, and dementia .- the fifth was, idiotism or the obliteration of the intellectual faculties.He described a defective perception and recognition of objects , partial and total abolition of the intellectual and active facilities, This disorder may originate in a variety of causes such as excessive or enervating pleasures, the abuse of spirituous liquors, violent blows on the head, deeply impressed terror, profound sorrow, intensive study, tumours of the cavity of the cranium, apoplexy, excessive use of the lancet in the treatment of active mania.The greatest number of idiots are either destitute of speech or are confined to the utterance of some inarticulate sounds. Their looks are without animation , their sense stupefied, and their motions heavy and mechanical. To be an idiot is almost levelled with an automaton to be deprived of speech or to retain that power merely of pronouncing inarticulate sounds, to be obedient only to the instructions one and sometimes to be insensible even to that to be incapable of feeling, attending to or gratifying without assistance their appetite for food , to remain motionless in the same place and position for several days together without discovering one single expression either of thought or expression. To be at other times subject to certain furious and evanescent outbursts of passion..
Such are the characteristics of ideotism. Hence attention to their physical wants and comforts is the utmost that can be devised for these unfortunate beings… education would not be appropriate owing to the natural indolence and stupidity of idiots they might be engaged in a manual occupation suited to their capacities
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Seguin a pupil of Itard founded in Paris the first school for idiots in 1837 .In 1846 the first private school for mental defectives in England was opened in Bath. In 1847 Park House in Highgate opened by a philanthropist Andrew Reed and this had an annexe at Colchester which later became the Royal Eastern Counties hospital and newly built model asylum at Earlswood which opened in 1855. It had 500 beds which set the pattern for many similar institutions and these 19th century hospitals lasted well into second half of the twentieth century.
In 1867 the Idiots Act was passed. It was decided that "harmless paupers of the chronic or imbecile class shoould not be the responsibility of the workhouse,which was their only refuge. Instead they should be seIn the 1860’s the first large scale institution was built in order to incarcerate and segregate people then known as idiots and the insane in Large numbers. Its chief physician was Down who was the first person to accurately describe the syndrome which bears his name The theories of Dr Down | .
He believed that people with Downs Syndrome were a throwback to a more primitive racial type. He was impressed by the oriental appearance of their eyes and thought his patients looked like Mongolians whom he apparently believed to be primitive. Down may have thought that different ethnic races represented different evolutionary stages in man which meant that people with "mongolism" were throw-backs or representatives of arrested development at some earlier evolutionary stage. At this time there was a belief that the British race was superior to all others, a view we now know to be racist.
As mental handicap appeared in all social classes the wealthy Victorians in Britain began to make residential provision for their own affected relatives and this provision was later extended to the include the other social classes.
All over Europe and America schools, were founded and Saxony became the first state in the world to make training for people with mental handicaps compulsory by law.
Special Educational NeedsIn England small schools for the so called idiots began to open and pre occupation with education included those with disabilities . Unfortunately this only interested a minority and as industrialisation gained momentum there was little room for the weak and incapable. The workhouses became full of social rejects. Until 1870 the majority of children in the UK received no formal education . Education was provided by voluntary bodies, the church and private fee paying schools. Most "mentally defective" children were confined to workhouses and institutions. Asylums were set up and" educable idiots and imbeciles" there received training and formal teaching. The Forster education act of 1870 established school boards to provide elementary education in those areas where there were insufficient places in voluntary schools.
National CurriculumElementary classes were large. Instruction was based on the "official code" with rote learning and memory tests. Teachers were paid by results. Some children were not able to learn in this environment. The 1899 Elementary Education (defective and epileptic children act)applied to children who "by reason of mental or physical defect are incapable of receiving benefit from the instruction in ordinary schools but are not incapable by reason of such defect of receiving benefit from instruction in special classes or schools. There was considerable reluctance however to set up such schools and by 1908 only 133 out of 327 education authorities were using their powers.
In 1914 the power to provide education for mentally defective children became a duty and in 1918 for physically disabled children. These special schools and private institutions were often run as charities supported by voluntary subscriptions . The main purpose was to provided training and discipline so that the disabled inmates became less of a public burden and didn’t end up as beggars or living on poor law handouts or becoming a publics nuisance .While the institutions was providing asylum(refuge) their inmates were expected to help run them. It was felt a healthy body encouraged a healthy mind and Satan made work for idle hands. Physical training and work therapy were encouraged. Social training including simple tasks like mending and cookery was given and instruction in whatever primary subjects could be learned such as telling the time and classes in Speech. They were not hospitals but therapeutic communities did not to care for the "helpless".
In Ireland in the Late 19th and early 20th century religious orders began to take over country mansions, build residential centres, or take over disused sanatoriums Isolated by physical barriers spacious grounds, walls, busy roads. nuns and monks intention to provide a high quality of devoted care for " children of God" emphasising their role as protectors of a rejected population ,these religious communities drew upon their own traditions of separation from the outside world. They catered for a wide geographical area
.By the end of the 19th century the enthusiasm for education had given way to demands for the permanent segregation from the rest of society. Eugenics was based on a wrong interpretation of Darwin’s theories of natural selection. Focusing on hereditary nature of defects it led to wholesale incarceration.. Disabled people became segregated into institutions There was no welcome for disabled people in the community.The National Assistance Act of 1911 introduced the first welfare benefits.
A Royal commission on the feeble minded estimated that there were 150,000 "mental defectives "in England and Wales . The care of the mentally handicapped was passing from educationalists to the medical profession who were thought to be able to provide answers to the problem. The government came under pressure to do something for mentally handicapped people.. This pressure came from two opposing schools expressing compassion on one hand and fear on the other. The Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 laid on local authorities the duty of providing care for certain cases of mental deficiency .This was done partly by Guardian ship Paying for accommodation in certain voluntary institutions providing new premises
The act defined four classes of mental defectives
1 Idiot-someone who is unable to guard himself against common physical dangers
2 Imbecile someone who is incapable of managing or being taught to manage his own affairs
3 Feeble minded someone requiring care and supervision for his own protection or the protection of others
4 Moral imbecile who,was not mentally defective
It also required Local Education Authorities to ascertain and certify which children aged 7 to 16 in their area were defective. So began an increasing reliance on dubious intelligence testing.
Those judged my medical officers to be incapable of being taught in special schools passed into the care of the local mental deficiency committee. The 1921 education act proposed for "handicapped children to be educated only in special schools or classes"There were 400 asylums in the mid 19th century but around 2000 in 1914.Since it was believed that mental defect could be detected by physical signs , many children who had difficulties in communicating, co-ordinating their movements or who had fits were labelled as mentally defective and incarcerated in long stay institutions alongside those who were labelled morons, idiots and imbeciles.
The Eugenics Education Society led by Sir Francis Galton propagated the dangers of natural degeneracy and argued that a defective mother can only produce defective children(.Attitudes to disability were reappraised as a result of the increasing importance of labour power and the need to distinguish the disabled who could not work from the disabled who did not wish to work. (shades of Alistair Darling) Disabled people became increasingly institutionalised and seen as being dependent. As Britain, USA and other countries became industrialised ,standardised labour was essential for factory production. In earlier times all had shared in labour except for the aristocrats and the clergy. However once time became money on the assembly line more people were categorised as disabled
.The USA forbade immigration of disabled persons from abroad
Genocide and Extermination
The early eugenicists were medical scientists who essentially conducted an experiment in genocide. They sought to improve the quality of the human gene pool by preventing the births of disabled infants. They tried to establish the hereditary nature of such diseases as diabetes , blindness and epilepsy. Misusing Darwin they believed human life was a struggle between the fit and the unfit (feeble minded, insane, epileptic, diseased, blind and deformed) who were to be bred out of existence. Techniques of sterilisation were being developed at this time along with wider use of birth control
Since disabled people were of little or no use to the profit makers and were likely to be a burden on the state, they were to be stopped from producing others like themselves. Compulsory sterilisation of many mentally disabled , mentally impaired and people with epilepsy in the USA, Germany, United Kingdom and other civilised countries By the 1930s 41 states in the USA had compulsory sterilisation laws for the insane and feebleminded . 17 prohibited people with epilepsy from marrying .Some states still have these laws
.The eugenics movement attracted many prominent non scientists as well. Winston Churchill was Home Secretary when the Mental Defeciency Act became Law. He said "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feebleminded classes ,coupled with a steady restriction among all the thrifty ,energetic and superior stocks constitutes a race danger. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.".Even more extreme was the idea of mass extermination, which was seen as another possible solution by the eugenics movement. DH Lawrence wrote in 1908"If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace , with a miltary band playing softly , and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out into the back streets and the main streets and bring them all in, the sick , the halt and the maimed : I would lead them gently , and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the brass band would softly bubble out the Hallelujah Chorus"
In Nazi "race science" ideology these ideas had their most horrific application in the final solution for thousands of disabled people
In Germany 1933 compulsory sterilisation was extended to all men and women suffering from hereditary diseases. In 1935 another law introduced compulsory abortion where either partner had a hereditary disease. in 1939 Hitler gave authority to physicians to end the lives of incurable patients 400 doctors nurses and the SS worked on the programme which was described as mercy killing but was fact mass murder of ,mentally and physically disabled people.There was a separate programme for the killing of disabled children. 1939 -1941 70,000 mentally ill and mentally disabled people were gassed on the orders of Hitler .Although following riots in Bavaria and the intervention of the Bishop of. Westphalia , Hitler ordered the killing to stop on Auguat 23rd 1941 but 96 of the 400 staff were sent to work in extermination camps. but it continued under cover using lethal injections At least another 20,000 mentally retarded , mentally ill and physically disabled people were taken to concentration camps where they were starved to death Altogether 80-100,000 disabled children and adults were victims of mass murder
..`The unashamed eugenics practised by the Nazis was justified by the nightmarish proposition that society should consist solely of physically perfect people and that selected breeding and culling, birth control and euthanasia need to be adopted to achieve that end.
In the Post-War world things began slowly to move away from the old eugenics and segregation to a more enlightened viewpoint. However old ideas were still around,.1952 Tredgold’s textbook on mental deficiency says."many of the defectives are utterly helpless, repulsive in appearance and revolting in their manners. Their existence is a perpetual source of sorrow and unhappiness to their parents ,in my opinion it would be an economical and humane procedure were their very existence to be painlessly terminated."
.The 1944 education act introduced compulsory secondary education. It also introduced the 11 plus segregating children into secondary modern and grammar schools and subdividing children with impairments into 11 categories including educationally sub normal ,maladjusted and those with speech defects as well as blind, deaf and delicate. Seriously disabled children had to be educated in special schools. Nevertheless since 1945 there have been some positive improvements in the lives of people with a learning disability.
With acknoweledgements to the book From idiocy to mental deficiency: historical perspectives on people with learning disabilities/ edited by David Wright and Anne Digby London: Routledge, 1996 , an extremely useful resource.Also A history of mental retardation / R.C. Scheerenberger Imprint Baltimore : P.H. Brookes Pub. Co., c1983
Next Chapter 4 Inclusion,civil rights and a better life?|
Introduction-Ancient times until 1200AD| .0| Chapter One .The mediaeval period 1200-1450|
Chapter Two:Renaissance, Reformation and Beyond|1450-1800|
1945-2000 Inclusion Civil Rights and a Better Life?|
History of Disability|
Information on the Nazi Holocaust| A useful guide for teachers about the holocaust| eugenics in Austria during the nazi regime
Another holocaust site which also gives some positive information on good educational opportunities for disabled children in Germany BEFORE Hitler came to power.| Eugenics in Vermont, a fascinating collection of articles More about eugenics and sterilisation in the USA
World Association of persons with disabilities
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