Mental deficiency: The diagnosis and after-care of special school leavers in early twentieth century Birmingham (UK)

Journal of Historical Sociology

Volumn 18, Issue 1-2, 2005, Pages 72-98

  Myers, Kevin ^a   Brown, Anna ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 19944412502     PISSN: 09521909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6443.2005.00247.x     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. th century. We are aware that such labels are now medically obsolete and may be offensive but used with care they serve to illuminate the changing attitudes to and understanding of disability.
2. D.G. Pritchard, Education and the Handicapped 1760-1960 (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963);
3. G. Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education 1880-1940 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984);
4. U.S. Hurt, Outside the Mainstream: a history of special education (London, Batsford, 1988);
5. T. Cole, Apart or a part? Integration and the Growth of Special Education (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1989).
6. Pritchard, Education and the Handicapped, pp. 182, 221.
7. Sally Tomlinson, Educational Subnormality: A Study in Decision-Making (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981)
8. and A Sociology of Special Education, (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), ch. 2;
9. Ian Copeland, The Making of the Backward Pupil in Education in England 1870-1914 (London, Woburn, 1999).
10. One notable exception to this is Brian Simon's pioneering work, particularly on mental testing. See Brian Simon, Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1953).
11. Tomlinson, Educational Subnormality, pp. 32-45 and A Sociology of Special Education, ch. 2.
12. Felicity Armstrong, "The historical development of special education: humanitarian rationality or 'wild profusion of entangled events'?", History of Education, 5, 31 (2002), 437-456.
13. Ted Cole, Apart or A Part? Integration and the Growth of British Special Education (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1989), pp. 169-179.
14. Mark Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility: Medicine, Society and the Fabrication of the Feeble Mind in late Victorian and Edwardian England (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000);
15. Mathew Thomson, "Family, Community and State: the micro-politics of mental deficiency"
16. and Pamela Cox, "Girls, Deficiency and Delinquency" in D. Wright and A. Digby (eds.), From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency: Historical Perspectives on People with Learning Disabilities (London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 184-230.
17. Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, Verso, 2003).
18. Joyce, The Rule of Freedom, esp. chapter 1.
19. For example, Seth Koven & Sonya Michel (eds.), Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (London, Routledge, 1993);
20. P. Wagner, A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline (London, Routledge, 1994).
21. On the importance of linking diagnostic practices with gender, race and class see John Carson, "Review of James W. Trent, Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind", Social History of Medicine, 8 (1995), 522-3;
22. for the signifi cance of local studies see Mathew Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy and Social Policy in Britain, c.1870-1959 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998), ch. 7
23. and Ludmilla Jordanova, "The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge", Social History of Medicine, 7, 3 (1994), 361-381 (pp. 373-4).
24. S. Collini, "Political Theory and the 'Science of Society' in Victorian Britain", The Historical Journal 23, 1 (1980) 203-231;
25. E. Janes Yeo, The Contest for Social Science: Relations and Representations of Gender and Class (London, Rivers Oram, 1996).
26. M. Foucault, "Governmentality", in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 87-104.
27. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Penguin, 1977/1991)
28. and Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the age of Reason (Tavistock, 1973).
29. Foucault, Gouernmentality, p. 103.
30. For an overview see C. Gordon, "Governmentality rationality: an introduction" in Burchell, Gordon and Miller, The Foucault Effect, pp. 1-51.
31. S. Hall and B. Schwarz, "State and Society, 1880-1930" in M. Langan and B. Schwarz, Crises in the British State (London, Hutchinson, 1985), pp. 19-20.
32. H. Hendrick, Children, Childhood and English Society 1880-1990 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997);
33. A. Turmel, "Childhood and Normalcy: Classification, Numerical Regularities and Tabulations", International Journal of Educational Research, 27, 8 (1997), 661-672.
34. The following section is based on material from Birmingham City Archive [BCA]: City of Birmingham Education Committee, Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee Record Cards.
35. Collini, "Political Theory and the 'Science of Society'";
36. P. Corrigan and D. Sayer, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford, Blackwell, 1985);
37. Janes Yeo, The Contest for Social Science;
38. L. Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association 1857-1886 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002).
39. E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963);
40. R. Johnson, "Really useful knowledge: radical education and working class culture, 1790-1848" in J. Clarke, C. Critcher and R. Johnson, (eds.), Working Class Culture: Studies in Theory and History (London, Hutchinson, 1979), pp. 75-102.
41. Janes Yeo, Contest for Social Science, chapters 5 and 9;
42. Joyce, Rule of Freedom, pp. 29-30.
43. R. Wolker, "Repatriating modernity's alleged debt to the Enlightenment: French Revolutionary social science and the genesis of the nation state" in P. Joyce (ed.), The Social in Question: New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences (London, Routledge, 2002), pp. 62-80, (p. 67).
44. Janes Yeo, The Contest for Social Science, p. 38.
45. For an overview see T. M. Porter and D. Ross (eds), The Cambridge History of the Science, Volume 7: The Modern Social Sciences (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003).
46. Johnson, "Really useful knowledge";
47. Janes Yeo, The Contest for Social Science, pp. 236-237.
48. M. Savage and A. Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class, 1840-1940 (London, Routledge, 1994), pp. 58-59.
49. th century England", Pedagogica Historica (forthcoming 2005).
50. BCA, Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee Record Cards.
51. M. K. Simpson, "Medicine vs. Psychology: The Emergence of a Professional Conflict in Developmental Disability", Journal on Developmental Disabilities 8, 2 (2001), 45-59.
52. BCA, Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee Record Cards, box R.
53. For more detail on special schooling in Birmingham see Anna Brown, "Private Lives and Public Policy: Ellen Pinsent, special education and welfare in Birmingham, 1900-1913" (unpublished MA thesis, University of Birmingham, 2003)
54. and "Caring Power: special schooling and the fee-bleminded in Birmingham 1870-1914" (forthcoming PhD thesis, University of Birmingham).
55. P. Thane, "Women in the British Labour party and the Construction of State Welfare, 1906-1939" in Koven and Michel, Mothers of a New World, pp. 343-377.
56. Report of the Royal Commission on the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb &c 1889 in Pritchard, Education and Handicapped, 1963, p. 96.
57. Birmingham School Board, Annual Report, 1894 [Birmingham Central Library [BCL], Local Studies and History Section [LSHS], L48.21/146708].
58. Birmingham School Board, Annual Report, 1895 [BCL LSHS L48.21 / 146708].
59. Birmingham School Board, Annual Report, 1898 [BCL LSHS, L48.21/146708].
60. Jane Read describes the pedagogy of the London special schools and their close links to Froebelian methods; the practices of the Birmingham special schools were similar. J. Read, "Fit for what? Special education in London, 1890-1914", History of Education, 33, 3 (2004), 283-298.
61. Ellen F. Pinsent, "The Education of Feeble-minded Children by the Birmingham School Board", Women Workers Quarterly Magazine XI/3 (1901), 45-56 (p. 50) [Private Archive].
62. Deborah Thom and Mary Jennings, "Human pedigree and the 'best stock': from eugenics to genetics?", in Theresa Marteau and Martin Richards (eds.) The Troubled Helix: Social and Psychological Implications of the New Human Genetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 211-234 (pp. 215-6).
63. Ellen Pinsent was co-opted onto the Special Schools Sub-committee of the Birmingham School Board, and chairman between 1903 and 1913. For further details see Anna Brown, "Private Lives and Public Policy".
64. Mrs Hume Pinsent, "The results of special school education as shown in the Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded", Troisième Congrès International D'Hygiène Scolaire (Paris, 1910), pp. 1-2 [Private Archive].
65. Anna Davin, "Imperialism and Motherhood", History Workshop Journal 5 (1978), 9-16;
66. C Dyhouse, "Social Darwinistic ideas and the development of women's education in England, 1880-1920", History of Education, 5, 1 (1976), 41-58;
67. C Dyhouse, Giris Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981).
68. Birmingham Education Committee, Special Schools sub-committee [SSSC], Minutes, Nov 1904 (minute 580) [BCA, BCC-BH 5/1/1/1].
69. Compare current government Green Paper consultation on the 14-19 curriculum and the "Next Steps" document: DfES, 14-19 Opportunity and Excellence (London: HMSO, 2002).
70. Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, pp. 35-37;
71. D. Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 203-213.
72. B. Norton, "Psychologists and Class", in C. Webster (ed.) Biology, Medicine and Society, 1840-1940 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 289-314.
73. In other words the curve of normal distribution. See, D. Thom, "Mental retardation" in G. E. B. and R. Porter (eds.) A History of Clinical Psychiatry. The Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders (London, Athlone Press, 1995) pp. 251-260.
74. Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, pp. 168-175.
75. Pinsent, Women Workers, p. 46.
76. Statement of the Evidence proposed to be given by Mrs Hume Pinsent, Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, p. 1 [Private Archive].
77. Presidential Address (Mrs Hume Pinsent), Ladies' Literary and Debating Society, Birmingham, Report of the Session for 1903-1904, 11 [BCL LSHS L50.7/184355].
78. Mrs Hume Pinsent [Ellen Pinsent], "The Care of the Feeble-minded", Charity Organisation Review, 103 (1905), 3-22 (pp. 5-13) [Private Archive].
79. Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, 89-128.
80. Letter from Ellen Pinsent's daughter, Lady Adrian to R. Laslett, 10 August 1956, 2 [Private Archive].
81. SSSC, Minutes, (Feb 1905) [BCA, BCC-BH 5/1/1/1].
82. SSSC, Minutes (May/June 1913), (minutes 3860 and 3897) [BCA, BCC-BH 5/1/1/3].
83. Birmingham School Board, Annual Report (1901)
84. and City of Birmingham Education Committee, Annual Report (1914) [BCL LSHS L48.21/128509 and L48.21/3219].
85. Birmingham Education Committee, Report of the Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee, 1914, pp. 2, 15-6 [BCL LSHS L41.3/202642].
86. Pinsent, Ladies' Literary and Debating Society, p. 13.
87. H.G. Simmons, "Explaining social policy: the English Mental Deficiency Act of 1913", Journal of Social History, 11, 3 (1978), 387-403.
88. R. Soloway, "Counting the degenerates: the statistics of race deterioration in Edwardian England", Journal of Contemporary History, 17 (1982), 137-64, (p. 136).
89. Precise estimates are hard to find. Ellen Pinsent, "Care and Control of the Feeble Minded", (Reprinted from The Nineteenth Century and After, London, Farrington, n.d. [1909?]), p. 14
90. seems to suggest a minimum income of 10s. per week. Yet no indication is given of whom this refers to or at what age. Judging by the estimates in C. Feinstein, "New estimates of average earnings in the United Kingdom, 1880-1913", Economic History Review 43, 4 (1990), 595-632, the figure is comparatively low.
91. There is little research into how families understood the economic impact of deficiency on family income. For an introduction to the social and cultural complexities of wages see P. Scholliers and L. Schwarz (eds.), Experiencing Wages: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europe since 1500 (Oxford, Berghahn, 2003).
92. For an overview see E. Hopkins, Birmingham: the making of the second city, 1850-1939 (Stroud, Tempus, 2001), chapter 2.
93. Anna Davin, Growing up Poor: home, school and street in London, 1870-1914 (London, Rivers Oram, 1996), pp. 97-112.
94. See arguments in D.G. Pritchard, Education and the Handicapped, (London, Routledge, 1963, repr. 1998), pp. 132-150.
95. R. Nye, "The Rise and Fall of the Eugenics Empire: Recent Perspectives on the Impact of Biomedical Thought in Modern Society." Historical Journal 36, 3 (1993), 687-700, (p. 688).
96. Copeland, Making of the Backward Pupil pp. 176, 209.
97. SSSC, Minutes, 20 January 1909, minute 1904b [BCA, BCC/BH 5/1/1/2].
98. P. Hudson, History by Numbers: An Introduction to Quantitative Approaches (London, Arnold, 2000) p. 8.
99. This has been achieved through the use of a multiple regression model, which allows an investigation of "associations between the movement of variables where there are several causal variables which appear to be operating". For further detail and comment see Hudson, History by Numbers, pp. 159-160.
100. P. Bartley, The Changing Role of Women, 1815-1914 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1996).
101. M. Foucault, "Power/Knowledge" in C. Gordon (ed.), Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 (New York, Pantheon, 1980), p. 153.
102. Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, p. 39.
103. Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, The problem of the feeble-minded: an abstract of the report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded (London: P.S. King and Son, 1909), p. 42.
104. th Centuries, Social History of Medicine, 8, 1 (1995), 1-16.