Ellen Pinsent: Including the 'feebleminded' in Birmingham, 1900-1913

History of Education

Volumn 34, Issue 5, 2005, Pages 535-546

  Brown, Anna ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 27944447381     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00467600500221240     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (67)

1. In this paper I will use the terminology of disability as used by Ellen Pinsent and her contemporaries. I am aware that such labels are now medically obsolete and may be offensive, but used with care they serve to illuminate the changing attitudes and understanding of disability.
2. J. Goodman and S. Harrop (eds.), Women, Educational Policy-Making and Administration in England: Authoritative Women since 1880 (London: Routledge, 2000);
3. J. Martin, Women and the Politics of Schooling in Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Leicester University Press, 1999);
4. F. Hunt, Gender and Policy in English Education: Schooling for Girls 1902-44 (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991);
5. P. Hollis, Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government 1865-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987);
6. A. Turnbull, '"So extremely like Parliament": the work of the women members of the London School Board, 1870-1904' in London Feminist History Group (ed.), The Sexual Dynamics of History: Men's Power, Women's Resistance (London: Pluto Press, 1983), 120-133.
7. Goodman and Harrop, Women, Educational Policy-Making and Administration, 1.
8. G. Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education 1880-1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984);
9. T. Cole, Apart or A Part? Integration and the Growth of British Special Education (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1989);
10. M. Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy and Social Policy in Britain, c. 1870-1959 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998);
11. I. Copeland, The Making of the Backward Pupil in Education in England 1870-1914 (London: Woburn Press, 1999);
12. The Backward Pupil over a Cycle of a Century (Leicestershire: Upfront, 2002);
13. M. Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000);
14. D. Wright, Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum 1847-1901 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
15. Hurt makes no mention of Pinsent at all: J. S. Hurt, Outside the Mainstream: A History of Special Education (London: Batsford, 1988).
16. D. G. Pritchard, Education and the Handicapped 1760-1960 (London: Routledge, 1963), 182-183;
17. K. Jones, A History of the Mental Health Services (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 187;
18. S. Tomlinson, Educational Subnormality: A Study in Decision-Making (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 39.
19. R Armstrong, 'The historical development of special education: humanitarian rationality or "wild profusion of entangled events"?', History of Education, 31 (2002), 437-156.
20. A. Brown, 'Private Lives and Public Policy: Ellen Pinsent, Special Education and Welfare in Birmingham 1900-1913.' MA dissertation, Birmingham, 2003.
21. Hollis, Ladies Elect.
22. Brown, 'Private Lives and Public Policy'.
23. Thomson, Problem of Mental Deficiency, 84;
24. R.A. Lowe, 'Eugenicists, doctors and the quest for national efficiency: an educational crusade, 1900-1939',
25. History of Education, 8 (1979), 293-306.
26. Letter from H. D. Greene to E. F. Pinsent, 8 August 1908; abbreviations and punctuation in original. This letter is held in the private family archive, which was generously made available to me by Mrs A. Keynes.
27. Thomson, Problem of Mental Deficiency, 84.
28. Birmingham School Board, Annual Report (1898) (Birmingham Central Library, Local Studies and History Section (LSHS) L48.21/128509).
29. Statement of the Evidence proposed to be given by Mrs Hume Pinsent, Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded (undated), 1 (private archive).
30. Birmingham School Board, Annual Report (1901)
31. and City of Birmingham Education Committee, Annual Report (1914) (LSHS L48.21/128509 and L48.21/3219).
32. E. F. Pinsent, 'The education of feeble-minded children by the Birmingham School Board', Women Workers Quarterly Magazine XI, 3 (1901), 45-56 (private archive).
33. Birmingham School Board, Annual Report (1898), 59.
34. Pinsent, Evidence, 1.
35. Ibid.
36. Ladies' Literary and Debating Society, Birmingham, Report of the Session for 1903-1904, 11 (LSHS L50.7/184355).
37. Mrs Hume Pinsent (E. F. Pinsent), 'The care of the feeble-minded', Charity Organisation Review, 103 (1905), 3-22 (private archive).
38. Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, 89-128.
39. Pinsent, Charity Organisation Review, 7.
40. Letter from Ellen Pinsent's daughter, Lady Adrian, to R. Laslett, 10 August 1956, 2 (private archive).
41. Birmingham Education Committee (BEC), Special Schools Sub-Committee (SSSC), Minutes, (Febuary 1905) (Birmingham City Archives, BCC-BH 5/1/1/1).
42. BEC SSSC, Minutes (May-June 1913), minutes 3860 and 3897.
43. Pinsent, Charity Organisation Review, 22;
44. see also Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility.
45. Pinsent, Woman Workers, 46.
46. BEC SSSC, Minutes, 1900-1913. A definition of imbecility at this time is problematic as there was no consistency or consensus, but the category had existed under the lunacy legislation and tended to be a judgement of an inability to manage one's affairs as adult, with a consequent need for institutionalisation. In contrast, feeblemindedness was a new category, and was a judgement of potential independence, which in practice tended to be diagnosed at school age, on educational criteria.
47. Pinsent, Charity Organisation Review, 22.
48. Mrs Hume Pinsent, 'After-care of mentally defective children' (Liverpool, 1904), 7 (private archive).
49. E. F. Pinsent, 'Further accommodation for non-pauper imbeciles', Papers read at Conference of After-Care Committees (Birmingham, 1904), 35-45 (private archive).
50. Pinsent, Women Workers, 54.
51. 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), 1-2 (private archive).
52. Pinsent, Troisième Congrès, 5.
53. Pinsent, Evidence, 2.
54. P. R. O. Education files 50/31: papers on Special Schools (1906-1910), quoted in R. A. Lowe 'Eugenicists, coctors and the quest for national efficiency: an educational crusade, 1900-1939' History of Education, 8 (1979), 293-306.
55. Lowe, 'Eugenicists, doctors and the quest for national efficiency', 299.
56. See also Jones, A History of the Mental Health Services, 193.
57. Pinsent, Women Workers, 54.
58. Pinsent, Women Workers, 55.
59. Pinsent, Conference of After-Care Committees, 42.
60. As well as being a member of the Commission, Ellen Pinsent also gave evidence on behalf of the Birmingham Education Committee; it is possible that her influence was far greater than suggested here, but without a precise reading of the evidence and chronology it is difficult to judge.
61. Pinsent, Charity Organisation Review, 17.
62. Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, 144-148.
63. Pinsent, Women Workers, 56.
64. Pinsent, Troisième Congrès, 5.
65. E. F. Pinsent, 'Address on the occasion of the official opening of the new workshop and occupation centre for feebleminded young men', Leeds (1923), 5 (private archive).
66. Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency, 84.
67. S. J. Ball (ed.), Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1990), 4.