Mental Deficiency and Institutional Care

The Mental Deficiency and Lunacy (England and Scotland) Acts of 1913 provided funding for the institutionalization of those considered to be ‘on the borderland of imbecility’ at a time of neither universal access to healthcare nor entitlement to education beyond elementary schooling. One explanation historians have offered has been the influence of eugenics: contemporary fears that the ‘feeble-minded’ required permanent segregation or they would multiply and become a threat to society. Another is that universal elementary education, which was compulsory in Scotland from 1872, and in England and Wales from 1880, drew attention to those who were considered incapable of being educated in ordinary schools. For Mathew Thomson, a historian specializing in psychology and mental deficiency, the ‘problem’ also concerns the definition of citizenship within new forms of democracy, and new forms of disciplinary medico-legal power.

Despite the potential impact of this legislation on children and adolescents as well as adults, only limited research exists on how these institutions were experienced. Oral history accounts provide mixed responses, though Jane Read has shown how such sources might be problematic. Steve Humphries highlights the opposition of working-class parents to attempts by the authorities to incarcerate disabled children, the grim realities of institutional life and inmates' resistance. Anne Borsay argues that ‘once inside, personal identity was systematically attacked’.