Session Information
Contribution
At the end of the nineteenth century growing concern to identify the 'feeble-minded' or 'mentally defective' child and adult was evident in the plethora of activity by newly formed organisations eager to persuade the government to take action against what was perceived as a serious threat to Britain's social order and economic prosperity. This paper will interrogate the impact of definitions used by activists and by discussants in the parliamentary debates which preceded the passing of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act and the 1914 Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act on the construction of the 'feeble- minded' female subject. These definitions served to locate the debate within the powerful contemporary discourse of social hygiene which expressed the fears of eugenicists in the rhetoric of permanent care, and, from some, in a demand for compulsory sterilisation. As a consequence the sexual behaviour of working class girls and women came under particular scrutiny, a fact noted at the time. The paper will argue that the subsequent identification of girls and women deemed by their behaviour to have exhibited evidence of 'feeble-mindedness' was largely carried out by enthusiastic lay members of voluntary organisations lacking medical qualifications, albeit that certification required authorisation from medical officers. The proposal to impose permanent sequestration on 'fallen' girls and women demonstrates that 'mental deficiency' was to be addressed through control, and in the case of sterilisation, violation, of the female body. The paper will interrogate how far the rhetoric of permanent care for girls and women was carried out in practice by analysis of case studies drawn from published and unpublished sources representing a number of residential colonies for the 'feeble-minded' and different counties within the U.K. Although sterilization was never adopted as a process for controlling what was regarded as the fecundity of the 'feeble-minded' pressure continued from its advocates throughout the period and the paper will present evidence from some of those incarcerated in colonies that it was seen by some as a route back into the public world. The paper will draw on the records of the Board of Control, which had the ultimate responsibility for the care of the 'feeble-minded' population, and on the records of institutions such as the London Lock Hospital and Rescue Home. Reference to oral history accounts of women subjected to enforced institutional care will be used to suggest that the legitimacy of their classification as 'feeble-minded' was by no means unproblematic
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