Mental Deficiency: The Diagnosis and After- Care of Special School Leavers in Early Twentieth...

Mental Deficiency: The Diagnosis and After-Care of Special School Leavers in EarlyTwentieth Century Birmingham (UK)1

KEVIN MYERS AND ANNA BROWN

Abstract This article explores some issues concerning the development and imple-mentation of mental deficiency as an organising principle of state education policyin the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More specifically, and using the city ofBirmingham as a case study, it explores three themes. First, it provides a criticalnarrative of policymaking at the local level with the emphasis on governance andthe politics of knowledge. Second, it engages with emerging debates around theprocesses of identification and diagnosis of children deemed in need of specialschooling. Third, it employs both descriptive and inferential statistical models torealise some issues about the impact of diagnosis on the immediate life chances ofthose identified as mentally deficient.

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Despite a recent resurgence of interest in the development ofspecial schooling in late 19th and early 20th century England and Wales, its historiography cannot be described as extensive.Crudely, historical studies of special schooling for those deemed tobe in some way mentally deficient tend to fall into three broad cat-egories. The first category is the oldest, the most popular and there-fore the most extensive. It consists of studies that focus either onthe development of a national system of special education or onthe history of particular individuals and institutions. The empiri-cal and analytical quality of the work varies greatly but it sharesa tendency to simple description. It is the perspective of the poli-cymaker and the administrator that is adopted as problems emergeand solutions develop.2 Individuals feature prominently and, in theolder histories in particular, are lauded for the warmth of theirhumanity and the wisdom of their vision. Progress follows from the noble and benevolent intentions of voluntary effort and, asPritchard says of Mary Dendy, as a result of the “enlightened andwell meaning” who “always had the best interests of the childrenat heart”.3 Despite the reviving popularity of the key themes of“great man history” in contemporary Britain (continuity, progress,benevolent humanism and a lauding of celebrated figures), nolengthy exposition is required to illustrate the shortcomings of allthis as a way of understanding the emergence of mental deficiencyand special schooling. It treats uncritically or somewhat indul-

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Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 18 No. 1/2 March/June 2005ISSN 0952-1909

gently the advance of scientific and medical knowledge. It has littleor no conception of the structural relations that impact upon theperception and resolution of particular educational “problems”. Iteffectively silences the voices of the people deemed mentally defi-cient or in need of special schooling.

The second category of work on special schooling owed much todevelopments in sociology and, in particular, to the adoption ofboth structural and phenomenological perspectives. New diagnos-tic categories and forms of schooling were seen as tools of socialcontrol, ways for an increasingly interventionist State to secureorder and stability in a newly industrialised society. Mental defi-ciency aided the smooth running of the “normal” schooling systemand enabled the disciplining and segregation of those unwilling orunable to learn, labour and behave in ways consistent with thenew social order.4 It is important to note that this was, and largelyremains, a theoretical and sociological shift rather than an histor-ical one.5 In the field of mental deficiency and special education atleast, no new detailed historical studies were produced. Instead,new perspectives were adopted and new questions asked of exist-ing primary and secondary material.6 The key issue became thework that mental deficiency and special schooling did in legitimis-ing and reproducing a given social order. As all this suggests, thiswork tended towards a macro level of analysis though some of it,particularly that influenced by Foucault’s micro-physics of power,at least attempted to be sensitive to local conditions and practicesand to highlight the variety of policy responses in the developingnational system.7 Overall, the work was an important advance inthe development of critical historical research. In particular, theinsistence that cultural forms (including systems of schooling for particular problem groups) were related in complex ways tostructural conditions called into question the happy narratives ofprogress that had characterised much writing in the field of historyof education and from which subsequent writers still struggle toescape.8 Yet this kind of work can be criticised for its determinismand abstraction and for simplifications made possible only by his-torical ignorance. It rendered children and their families entirelypassive. They appeared rarely and only as problems – educational,medical or administrative – to be solved or as objects to be disciplined.

Whatever its particular analytical position much of the work isabout production; the production of concepts around mental defi-ciency and the production of a national system of schools to accom-modate the newly identified deficient. There have been few concretehistories of the consumption, application and effects of these ideasat a local level. The third category of work attempts to do just that

Mental Deficiency 73

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005.

and this article is designed as a contribution to it. Following thework of Mark Jackson, Mathew Thomson and Pamela Cox it is con-cerned with the local level and with the micro-politics of mentaldeficiency.9 The article is substantially based on the voluminousrecords of the Birmingham Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee. Using the case cards and minutes of the After-CareSub-Committee, the article employs qualitative methods to analysethe logic of and procedures for identifying children and youngpeople as mentally deficient in a UK city with a proud progressivereputation. Basic quantitative methods are also employed in orderto try and investigate the impact of diagnosis as mentally deficienton individuals and their families. The article is divided into foursections.

The first section – governance and the politics of knowledge –explains the history and provenance of the archival material thatforms the basis of this article. Consisting of some 28,000 casecards, numerous associated ledgers and a set of committeeminutes ranging over more than fifty years, the archive is an inte-gral part of that project of governance that Patrick Joyce has calledthe “rule of freedom”.10 Such a rule is characterised by the production, systemisation and application of particular kinds ofknowledge in the pursuit of social ordering.11 Debates around theclassification and surveillance of mentally deficient citizens providean example of social ordering at work.

The second section – special schooling in the city – elaborates onthe themes of classification and surveillance by explaining thedevelopment of special schooling for children judged to be feeble-minded or mentally deficient. Emerging in both continental Europeand North America in the same period, there was widespread beliefin the need for such schooling but no uniformity of provision orpractice.12 Some details of Birmingham’s provision demonstratehow local circumstances could affect special schooling, and pro-vides important contextual data for the arguments advanced insection three.

Section three, special schooling – impacts and analysis – is a pro-visional attempt to address a particular lacuna in the existing lit-erature on mental deficiency and special schooling: the impact ofdiagnosis on individuals and their families. In exploring this ques-tion, a small portion of the data that purported to demonstrate theneed for particular systems of schooling and care for the mentallydeficient is re-examined. This is a worthwhile exercise preciselybecause of the objective and scientific status accorded to this datain policy discussions. Indeed, given the importance attached to sci-entific study of the mentally deficient around the turn of the19th/20th century, it is rather surprising that so few historians have

74 Kevin Myers and Anna Brown


felt inclined to analyse its collection, systemisation and presenta-tion. A very modest start is made in this section and this, in turn,allows both for a critical evaluation of some policy claims and foran exploration of the immediate life chances of individuals trans-ferred to special schools in Birmingham in the year 1913.13 Itshould be noted at the outset that this attempt is very much in anexploratory vein. The fourth and final section discusses both thequalitative and quantitative material and draws some conclusions.

Governance and the Politics of Knowledge

Victorian and Edwardian reformers were prodigious gatherers ofsocial data. Whether it was as state commissioner or gentlemenstatistician, philanthropist or journalist, social mother or socialscientist, middle-class men and women visited and questioned,scribbled and transcribed, and calculated and tabulated. Theirobservations filled cards, notebooks and ledgers and weredeposited in vast archive repositories. By the early 20th century,the data producers were increasingly specialised and profession-alised. Organised into disciplines with recognisable if disputedboundaries and institutionalised in the new redbrick universities,14

these knowledge producers were central to a distinctively modernmethod of governance. Michel Foucault called it governmentality.15

Social data was, Foucault argued, a critical element of govern-mentality, a novel and modern mode of governing emerging inEurope from the sixteenth century onwards. Governmentality isseen as novel because it challenged the power of absolute mon-archs and, over a period of centuries, replaced it with forms ofpower that were simultaneously both more dispersed and morecomplete. Power was more dispersed because it was not the prop-erty of a single person (monarch), dominant institution (the state),class or group, but was everywhere; a constant presence that wasilluminated through Foucault’s analysis of the “microphysics ofpower:. In empirical studies of mental illness and the prison,16

Foucault attempted to demonstrate how governmentality resultedin the “formation of a whole series of specific governmental appa-ratuses, and . . . in the development of a whole series of savoirs”.17

A number of historians have argued that the period around theturn of the 20th century was an important phase in the develop-ment of governmentality.18 Hall and Schwartz, for example, havenoted the appearance of new experts and bureaucracies whoassumed the “positive role of producing and accumulating newknowledge about the specific subjects and categories which cameunder their disciplinary regimes”.19 One such subject was the “normal child”, a classification made possible by teachers,



physicians, hygienists and a range of other scientists concernedwith both gathering data and governing subjects.20

The records of the Birmingham Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee provide evidence of the operation of governmentalityover seven decades between the turn of the century and the 1970s.Established in 1901 by the Birmingham School Board, the After-Care Sub-Committee aimed to keep a record of the subsequenthistory of children leaving special schools and to assist thoseleavers in finding work. The resulting card index details the educational history of some 28,000 schoolchildren sent to specialclasses or schools and records something of their subsequent lifeexperiences. Within that index it is possible to trace the activitiesof experts whose authority to identify and judge the mentally defi-cient rested on the elevation of particular kinds of knowledge toscientific status. Examined, tested and judged at various times byteachers, doctors and psychologists, by philanthropic volunteersand social workers, the children’s lives vividly demonstrate thegrowing influence of the human and biological sciences in theproject of governance. Diagnosed variously as backward, feeble-minded or mentally deficient, the children were classified as apotential or actual danger that required the careful monitoring andfurther intervention of experts. As a result, most special schoolleavers received at least an annual visit from a representative ofthe After-Care Sub-Committee whose written comments cover awide range of subjects from employment terms and conditions, topersonal conduct and relationships.

In the earliest cards the Teacher’s Report is dominant.21 It was organised into six sections, some with separate related sub-headings:

• Elementary Attainments (Speech, Reading, Writing, Number)• Manual Attainment (Subjects taken)• Character, Habits, Physique (Physique and Physical Balance,

Physical Exercises, Moral Propensities, Sensory Condition)• Attendance• From what hindrance to employment does the child suffer?• Special Remarks

Entries vary in both quantity and quality. Sometimes they areminutely detailed, sometimes they consist of a single sentence, andoccasionally they are completely blank. So a detailed entry wouldtypically record attainment in specific subjects (“can do numbersfrom 5 to 12 and money to 1/-”; “fairly good progress in writing”),judgements about character and morality (“has violent fits oftemper”; “normal moral propensities”) and assessments of health



Men

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005. Figure 1: Teacher’s Report Card.

Image reproduced by kind permission of Birmingham City Archives

(“well developed, but has a weak chest”). The sections entitledCharacters, Habits and Physique and Special Remarks invitedfurther subjective judgements. “Slow, dull and apathetic” is thecurt assessment of one scholar entering special schooling in 1913;“no attention or initiative – stuporous” summarises another. Insome cases the only comment is registered under these sections;“this girl has an awful temper” is the only data recorded for onepupil in 1903.

However, the judgements by teachers appear to have become pro-gressively less important. By the early 1930s the section entitledTeacher’s Report had disappeared and was replaced by a simpli-fied set of data columns. What remained central were the judge-ments of after-care visitors, which remained particularly subjectivethroughout. There are judgements about family history (“brother ahelpless idiot”), about personal relationships and individuals (“veryworried – she is walking out with a young man”; “wife low type tho’well meaning and kindly”; “illegitimate child”), children (“two children normal but one squints”; “the two younger children seemdelicate and do not look normal”), standards of hygiene and domes-ticity (“terribly dirty and untidy house”) and about employmentstatus and experiences. Throughout these annual visits there arealso continuing judgements of mental health and capacity (“verystupid looking”; “a very low grade case”; “an imbecile”).

The continual assessment of special school leavers marks out anew phase in governmentality. A significant undertaking thatrequired the development of new knowledge, a new bureaucracyand a more interventionist politics, it was one result of the reso-lution of earlier knowledge contests in a way that invited expertjudgements of identified social problems. However, that designa-tion of expert was not easily attained and nor was it achievedwithout considerable struggle and tensions.

Stefan Collini is one of a number of historians who have identi-fied the emergence of a new kind of knowledge in Britain duringthe late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.22 Social sciencewas initially a diverse, complex and contested phenomenon. At onelevel, it was centralised and official, as evidenced in the numerousroyal commissions launched in the period between 1832 and 1850.At another level, it was much more localised, to be found both inthe philanthropic, literary and philosophical activities of anincreasingly articulate urban bourgeoisie, or, in a very differentguise, in a vibrant and radical working class culture.23 If sites ofproduction varied, so did the scientists and the subject matter.

Initially largely excluded, middle class women entered the fieldas “social mothers”, supposedly bringing uniquely maternal qual-ities to questions pertaining to women, children, education and



the family.24 Their expertise expanded the subject matter of 19th

century social science encompassing routine data collection on thepopulation (registration of births, marriages and deaths) and theeconomy (trade and industry statistics), and special investigationsinto particular social problems: the provision of sanitary servicesand taxation; juvenile crime and education; and a whole series ofothers.

Perhaps most importantly, the different versions of early socialscience were suggestive of the epistemological debates that dividedsome of the first practitioners. The social was not always under-stood exclusively as an autonomous and neutral domain that couldbe studied objectively; in Revolutionary France it was a term“roughly equivalent to politics in general”,25 and in a similarmanner Robert Owen’s social “was not a bland word but carriedpositive connotations of being inclusive, supportive, and concernedwith the optimal way people could live together”.26 In fact, the con-struction of an abstract field of study called “the social”, whichwould yield up its secrets only to an objective, dispassionate andincreasingly professional science, was a political victory of lastingsignificance.27 It helped ensure, for example, that the science of happiness associated with Owen and other radical groups, a science valuing experience and embracing extensive politicalchange, was slowly marginalised and eventually defeated.28 Unableto sustain an alternative vision of society, the working class wasremade under the scrutiny of middle class surveys and investiga-tions.29 Frequently under surveillance, working-class districts werevisited and measured, and their inhabitants observed and inter-viewed. Data accumulated in burgeoning surveillance systems andhad important consequences both for individual and group iden-tity and life chances, and for the development of social policy.30

Yet there is rarely any trace of the agency of the subjects studied.Apart from patchy evidence of resistance to continued surveillance(“visits deeply resented”; “will not answer door”),31 they appear pas-sively and somewhat poignantly as another instance of a socialproblem.

In addition to becoming the preserve of an urban bourgeoisie,social science became increasingly specialised and professional.Even if the early university training courses in social science orsocial economics tended to be interdisciplinary, academic andactivist specialisation became apparent. Emerging disciplines competed for specialised tasks and for the authority to pronounceon particular problems or issues. Of particular significance here is the contest between psychology and medicine for expertise and authority in the emerging fields of childhood and mental deficiency.32



There is little doubt that mental deficiency was firmly establishedin both professional and popular discourse by the early years ofthe 20th century. Testimony to the growing influence of the humanand biological sciences in the project of governance there remainedsignificant debates around issues of aetiology, diagnosis, profes-sional responsibility and treatment. Occasionally, these debatesare hinted at in the case cards. In the case of a school leaver in1918, for example, one card records, “doctor said [he is] unfit forwork, school teacher disagrees”.33 Such cases were not uniformlyor easily resolved because even when special schooling was madecompulsory in 1914, there was little agreement on the grades ofmental deficiency, or on how to diagnose them. Indeed, the lack ofconsensus about grades of mental deficiency and how to distin-guish between them meant there was a good deal of local variationin the identification and treatment of mentally deficient children.This means that local studies can considerably enhance the his-torical understanding of mental deficiency and special schooling.

Special Schooling in the City

Special schooling in Birmingham for children judged to be men-tally deficient developed in the closing decade of the 19th century.Birmingham was initially one of only seven school boards toattempt to provide for feebleminded children and each board hadtheir own definitions and objectives, and thus solutions.34 Uncer-tainty at the national level allowed for considerable local diversity,and the emphasis on local systems of provision can be attributedto at least two structural reasons. The first can be found in whatPat Thane has called the minimal nature of the British state, andin the importance that it attached to developing relationshipsbetween central and local government.35 The former laid downframeworks and a set of principles, the latter – consisting of bothlocal government and voluntary organisations – carried out admin-istration. The second structural reason for local diversity is to dowith national policy discussions in the fields of education andmental health in this period. Briefly, these were characterised bya lack of clarity and a level of indecision that some social policyaccounts have a tendency to underestimate. In such circum-stances, the Birmingham School Board was able to engage withthe medical, scientific and educational debate concerning the diag-nosis, identification and treatment of the feebleminded, in devel-oping educational policy at the local level.

Following the emergence of a system of mass, compulsory edu-cation many of the school boards struggled to come to terms withthe education requirements of children who, for various reasons,



appeared unsuited to the provisions of the ordinary elementaryschools. A Royal Commission was established to examine the edu-cation of the blind, deaf and dumb and included within its termsof reference were “such other cases as from special circumstanceswould seem to require exceptional methods of education”.36 Whilstthe education of the mentally defective formed only a small part ofthe Commission’s report, and was excluded from the ElementaryEducation (Blind and Deaf Children) Act of 1894 which followed it,the Commission recommended the separation of the feeblemindedfrom ordinary children and some of the more progressive schoolboards responded to this. The first “Schools for Special Instruc-tion” of the London School Board opened in 1892 and the Birm-ingham School Board recommended that “the board establish onesimilar class as an experiment”; their first feebleminded classopening in 1894.37

Even before an inquiry from the Education Department as to“whether the Board had considered how the education of Defectiveand Epileptic Children could be best provided for”, Birminghamhad both considered and begun to explore such provision.38 Specialeducation in Birmingham expanded with the establishment in1898 of the Special Schools sub-committee “to have charge of theeducation of the blind, deaf, and feeble-minded children” at a timewhen there were 49 deaf children in two schools for the deaf and66 feebleminded children in three special classes;39 eighteenmonths before the passing of the Elementary Education (Defectiveand Epileptic Children) Act 1899.

The special classes were situated in those parts of the city iden-tified as having the most feebleminded children. Originally situatedwithin existing elementary schools, a programme of special schoolbuilding did not begin until 1908.

The School Board transferred infant teachers to special classes.Initially uncertificated, the teachers were judged to have the nec-essary gendered characteristics – kindness and patience – to teachthe 20 or so children in each class. Children did not transfer tothese classes until at least the age of seven, but infant school ped-agogy designed for children between the ages of three and six wasjudged suitable for special school scholars.40 The timetable con-sisted of short periods, alternating the “3Rs” with music, physicalexercises and manual work.

“The Special Classes devote a great deal of time to manual work, for many childrenwho will never be able to count or to read are yet able to do a good deal with theirhands. Great efforts are therefore made to train their hands and eyes. The more advanced girls do needlework and cookery, the boys, metal work and carpentering”.41



Although manual work had been a feature of the curriculum fromthe beginning, as beliefs about the nature of mental deficiencychanged, so the emphasis on a manual curriculum increased. Thisdevelopment reflected wider changes in the understanding of theproblem in the period before the First World War. Initially viewedlargely as a problem of educational backwardness, the shift to adiscourse of “mental deficiency” indicates the increasing signifi-cance of the eugenic belief that intelligence or mental ability wasfixed, innate, and hereditary.42 This was a fundamental move fromthe perceptions underpinning the 1899 Act. As the Chairman ofSpecial Schools sub-committee in Birmingham, Ellen Pinsent43

later reflected,

“The promoters of the [1899] Act apparently believed that mental defect arose fromretarded or arrested mental development, and that suitable special education andtreatment would gradually develop the brain to a normal or only slightly sub-normallevel . . . [T]he condition of mental defect is now recognised as an incurable one.What little intellect a child possesses can be trained and made the best of, but whatis lacking can never be supplied”.44

Over time, there is evidence of an increasing focus on the non-academic function of the special schools, namely to “waken” limitedintelligence and provide a means of self-sufficiency. Much has beenwritten on the subject of academic versus vocational training inworking class schools and how an increased emphasis on domes-tic skills for girls was driven by an agenda of social control andnational efficiency.45 Many of these arguments must surely applyin the special schools. For example, a house was rented in theneighbourhood of two schools to teach domestic and manual workwhich, for the girls at least, can be viewed as training in how to bea “good” servant or a “good” working-class wife.46 However, thestress on control and efficiency does not take into account theunderstanding that many of these children would never read ade-quately and that perhaps it was better to feel a sense of pride inwhat can be done well and to be able to occupy some useful socialrole, rather than a continual sense of failing in the more “academic”subjects.47

Perhaps the biggest difficulty faced by educational policymakersat the turn of the 19th/20th century concerned the definition anddiagnosis of mental deficiency. Amidst some complex and confus-ing debates, two distinct but connected views can be discerned. Onone hand there were still those who regarded some deviant peopleas distinct human types. Usually influenced by theories of reca-pitulation, they tended to regard criminal, sexual and mentaldeviants as evolutionary throwbacks. They were reminders of a



primitive past and a potential danger to be observed and controlled.Though generalisations are difficult and should be treated withcaution, it was a view most prevalent in medicine. For the influ-ential Dr. Henry Maudsley, for example, mental deficiency was anorganic illness that was evident in both physiological and patho-logical phenomena. It was inherited and, he argued pessimistically,was largely incurable.48 On the other hand there were those whoviewed mental deficiency as an instance of a relatively new concept:mental or intellectual ability. Influential in England because it wasclosely associated with the work of important figures like FrancisGalton and Cyril Burt, deficiency was plotted on a curve of con-tinuous ability.49 Rather than distinct human types, there werecharacteristics of mind or, later, levels of ability that were distrib-uted in a Gaussian or bell curve.50 Those who tended towards thissecond view tended to be associated with, or at least influenced by,psychology. They stressed the mutability of behaviour and wereinterested in developing a scientific pedagogy of the kind suggestedby Seguin and Montessori that could significantly ameliorate atleast some forms of deficiency.51

In practice, however, the distinction between medical and psy-chological models was a fine one, a question of emphasis and tone,not categorical difference. Even the Elementary Education (Defec-tive and Epileptic Children) Act of 1899 offered no clear definition.Ellen Pinsent acknowledged the uncertainty of definition in 1901,

“At one end of the scale we have “the hopeless, helpless, speechless idiot,” at theother, a child who is merely dull and backward. There is no clear scientific line tobe drawn between mental deficiency and stupidity – or again between mental defi-ciency and imbecility . . . The Act speaks first of “children . . . not being imbecile, andnot merely dull or backward,” – but it recognises that the qualification for a specialclass must be largely an educational one when it continues, ‘children . . . incapableof receiving proper benefit from the instruction in the ordinary public elementaryschools’.”52

Despite the evident uncertainty about what constituted mentaldeficiency, and the continuing disputes between medicine and edu-cation professionals, in Birmingham teachers were initially maderesponsible for the identification of children for transfer to thespecial schools. Once recommended by a teacher, the children wereexamined by the Medical Superintendent of the Board. However,and in a manner that is suggestive of professional tensions in thefield of mental deficiency, practice had already altered by 1902. Inthat year, convinced that teachers were failing to identify all defi-cient children, Ellen Pinsent volunteered to visit the ordinaryschools with the Board’s Inspector. Together, they selected childrenfor examination by the Medical Superintendent of the Board. In her



evidence to the Royal Commission she related how she “visited allthe 56 elementary board schools, containing about 60,000 children” and found on average four in each school “sufficientlydefective to bring up for a medical examination”.53 The empiricalevidence does not provide any explicit account of the process bywhich children were selected for examination, but Pinsent’s writ-ings provide some clues towards the process of identification. Inone of her earlier papers she described the history of the specialschools and commented on the imprecise nature of definition anddiagnosis. She illustrated her address with photographs of manyof the children and many of her writings show a firm belief in “thephysical signs and irregularities which . . . aid . . . diagnosis”, albeitwith the proviso that “they are not a perfectly safe guide”.54 Inanother address she again showed photographs, and this timecomments on the “types” of deficiency.55 Although the images sheused have not survived, other sources have researched such“images of deviance” and Birmingham’s procedures (influenced byEllen Pinsent) appear to be in line with that of others.56

Aside from a belief in the physical signs (or stigmata) of deficiencythere is also some evidence to suggest that Pinsent was interestedin new technologies for diagnosis and later “made a selection fromBinet’s tests and a rough standardisation and [went] ahead on [her]own in what was . . . an almost completely unexplored field”.57 Nev-ertheless, the process of identification continued to be imprecise:on at least one occasion the minutes note the Medical Superin-tendent was “asked to report definitely whether [child A] is men-tally deficient or not”.58 Different approaches were taken across thecountry and in 1913 two doctors on the Special Schools sub-committee accompanied Ellen Pinsent to London to discuss themethods of Cyril Burt, psychologist of the London Education Com-mittee.59 Their report concluded that they employed similar teststo those used in London, yet Birmingham’s procedures had notbeen devised by a trained psychologist. Burt’s methods havereceived detailed attention, and from these it is possible to gainsome idea of the practices used in Birmingham, at least in theperiod just prior to the First World War.

The first two decades of special education in Birmingham(1894–1914) cover the transition from school board to local education authority and the period of uncertainty and debate overthe nature of and responses to mental deficiency, culminating in the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act and the 1914 Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act. By 1913, in addition to schools for the deaf, blind and “physically defective”there were eight special schools for 1,281 “mentally defective” children.60



Once children had been identified and transferred to the specialschool, they followed one of two patterns. Either the smaller classesallowed the child to quickly progress and thus return to the ordi-nary elementary school, or more usually, scholars remained in thespecial school until age 14 or 16. The difference between theleaving ages depended upon the characteristics of the individual.Although the law required special education to continue until age16, its permissive nature allowed Birmingham to make its owndecisions. Thus in Birmingham it was possible for the parents ofa special school scholar to apply for their child to leave at age 14,on obtaining “suitable” employment. The Special School sub-com-mittee considered each case on its merits, and an assessment wasmade both of the child’s ability and the nature of the employment.At whatever age the child left the special school, their records werethen passed to the After-Care Sub-Committee. This committee,whose workers in the early part of the century appear to be havebeen entirely voluntary, visited them annually to ascertain theirphysical, mental and economic condition.

Special Schooling: Impacts and Analysis

This article draws upon the records of the Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee of the Birmingham Education Committee toprovide (for the first time) a quantitative analysis of children leavingspecial schools during the 1910s and 1920s to assess the effect ofthe special classes upon one cohort of children, to draw some con-clusions about the children, their schooling and its results on theiradult lives. The efficacy of the special classes in enabling them tobecome independent members of society will be assessed by sta-tistical analysis of the outcomes of all children who were admittedto Birmingham special classes in 1913.

It is important to note that policymakers concerned with specialeducation in Birmingham actually seemed to have little faith in theeffectiveness of provision, in terms of the employability of the chil-dren on leaving school. For example, the Special School sub-committee “insisted on the necessity for continuous [institutional]control for the majority of the feeble-minded” because “many dete-riorate rapidly when removed from the discipline and control of the special school”.61 The Chairman of the sub-committee, EllenPinsent believed the special class

“. . . fails in two radical particulars – first, the vast majority of pupils do not leaveschool able to support themselves; and second, they are allowed complete libertywhen they reach sixteen . . . [but] a child of defective intellect never becomes anadult in the sense of becoming a responsible human being”.62



This kind of claim was commonplace in the first decade of thecentury and was used successfully to campaign for legislation (the1913 Mental Deficiency Act) that allowed for the compulsory insti-tutionalisation of “certified mental defectives”.63 The argument wasoften supported by considerable amounts of statistical data that,according to Richard Soloway, both lacked accuracy and “suggestsmore about middle and upper class perceptions, attitudes, fearsand hopes . . . than they do about the physical, social and biologi-cal realities contemporaries thought they were measuring”.64

Nevertheless, such data, if used critically, can provide the startingpoint for historical analyses of policy and practice in the field ofeducation and mental health.

A sample was taken of all the children who were transferred toa special school in 1913; this allows for the analysis of children ofvarying ages and who had varying lengths of attendance but whoall began their special schooling during the same period. The infor-mation concerning the adult lives of special school children wasextrapolated from the cards to place each individual in one of threecategories of outcome:

1. “Employment” – this includes cases where there may have beenbrief spells of unemployment but most years s/he was inemployment. In these cases it is judged that the child had theskills and abilities to hold down a job and their unemploymentwas reflective of economic influences beyond their control. Ofcourse, judgements concerning categories of employment arenecessarily subjective and open to debate. Early 20th centurypolicymakers judged employment in terms of the level of self-sufficiency it could support; crude estimates of minimalincome levels framed criteria for independence.65 Yet suchjudgements showed little understanding of either labourmarket dynamics or the social and cultural aspects of wageforms in maturing capitalist economies.66 Low paid, menial andunskilled labour was an important feature of Birmingham’sindustrial economy.67 Small-scale workshops, domestic out-work and spasmodic employment all provided a significant partof working class family income. Moreover, and judging from thedata on the cards, such activity was regarded as a typicalfeature of the lives of working class families. For the purposesof this analysis “employment” is taken to include all wagedlabour.

2. “At Home” – this variable includes two distinct groups. Onegroup (generally male) was at home due to long-term or regularunemployment. The other group (generally female) was at homedoing domestic duties; reflecting the ideology of separate



spheres in the early-20th century and the stereotype of the(married) woman whose place was the home.

3. “Institutionalised” – this specifies those who were placed in aninstitution, usually a mental asylum, within 15 years of leavingschool. The selected time period facilitates a focus on the(dis)abilities of the individual concerned, before ageing orillness altered the situation.

According to the record cards, there were 123 transfers in 1913,but nine did not have any information about their outcomes afterleaving school and a further three had incomplete informationabout their years at school; therefore a total of 111 cases wereanalysed.

Descriptive statistics draw attention to the gendered nature ofschooling and its outcomes. Historians of childhood have observedthat often girls were forced to neglect their schooling whenever themother needed them to help at home, and this detrimentallyimpacted on their educational attainment.68 Others have suggestedthat teachers sent troublesome children, especially boys, to thespecial classes to avoid having them in their class.69 It is certainlythe case that boys are disproportionately represented in the specialclasses (57% of all special class scholars in 1913, whereas theymake up only 44% of the total Birmingham school population inthat year). Descriptive statistics also identify the gendered natureof the outcomes, whereby about 85% of males were employed and3% at home, compared with about 51% of females employed and34% at home (see figure 2).

If the percentages are considered within outcomes this is evenmore noticeable, with 90% of the “At Home” category being female,compared with only 10% male (see figure 3).

Also of interest is the average age at which a child was identifiedas “feeble minded” and admitted to a special class. The legalrequirement was special schooling between the ages of 7 and 14,before this the ordinary infant class was considered sufficient. Bothcontemporary and modern discussions of the system assume thisto be the case, with most children transferring at age 7. Neverthe-less, a preliminary reading of the data suggests that for many children this did not occur until much later; 10 was the averageage of all children transferred in 1913, who then attended thespecial school for an average of 5 years. At one level, this late ageof transfer can be simply explained as a bureaucratic issue withthe time lag between diagnosis and transfer indicating that chil-dren had to wait for a special school place to become available. Atanother level, however, it raises more interesting questions aboutthe operation of policy within local government. It is clear, for





Birmingham Education Committee, After-Care Cards Dataset 1913 (K Myers/A Brown 2003)

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Birmingham Education Committee, After-Care Cards Dataset 1913(K Myers/A Brown 2003)

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Figure 2: Outcomes, by gender (1).

example, that policymakers had a vested interest in increasinglevels of diagnosis to emphasise the need for more special schoolplaces and justify further financial commitment. This should notbe taken to imply conspiratorial intent but to simply note that oncebodies were established as the “epistemological ground of all think-ing about social pathologies”, it logically followed that there shouldbe expanding professional groups to work upon those bodies.70

With the emergence of professional identities in the fields of edu-cation, social work and health, it would not be a surprise to finddebates emerging about appropriate professional identities andboundaries.71

The leaving age varied from 14 to 16, and a provisional assess-ment of the data suggests that the children who left at age 14 gen-erally had more skilled employment than those who left at 16. Of those who left the special school at 14, the percentage inemployment increased. By contrast, for those who left at 16, thepercentage from that group “Institutionalised” increased. This iscorroborated by a reading of the committee minutes which showthat a child was only allowed to leave school early if they had a“suitable” job and those who were judged unable to work remainedat school longest and often passed straight to an institution.72

Using inferential statistics it is possible to go beyond this smallsample and to infer generalisations about other times and popu-lations.73 In this case, it is possible to assess the importance ofvarious influences on the life chances of an individual.74 The inde-pendent variables (of gender, age, and socio-economic background)have been taken from the After-Care Sub-Committee record cardsin order to ascertain the importance of these factors upon a child’semployment outcome after leaving special school. These variableshave been chosen to reflect theories about personal and societalinfluences on life chances. The socio-economic background of thechild is categorised by using their address as indicator; the MedicalOfficer of Health Reports of 1913 identified three categories ofaddresses within Birmingham with corresponding ranges of mor-tality rate. Their socio-economic background is identified bywhether they lived in the Central (high mortality) band, the Middle(average mortality) band, or the Outer (low mortality) band. Theremaining variables reflect either the number of years a childattended special school or the age at which they left school. Thisanalysis does not include factors such as the economic climate andavailability of jobs in the period, attitudes and ideologies concern-ing placing people in an institution, or the personality character-istics of the individual that affect their ability to obtain and keepa job. All of these factors (and more) would be influential in a child’slife chances, but are beyond the scope of this analysis.



In terms of the effectiveness of the special classes themselves,when other factors are held constant, the length of time a childattended the classes did affect their outcomes. Up to the age of 14,the longer a child attended, the more likely they were to obtainemployment, and longer attendance also reduced some of theadverse effects of gender and socio-economic background. So a boywho attended for only one year had an 88.5% probability of beingemployed if from an outer ward, and a 75% probability if from acentral ward; by comparison, a boy attending for 10 years had over99% probability of employment regardless of where he lived (seefigure 4).

A girl attending for one year had 10% or 21% probability ofemployment depending on where she lived; after 10 years the prob-ability varied between 52% and 75%. So for girls the mitigatingeffects of the special schooling on their background were actuallygreater but never removed the effect of socio-economic background.However, for girls the longer they attended a special class, the prob-ability of their being “At home” was reduced from 54% (outer ward)and 37% (central ward) to 15% regardless of their background (seefigure 5).

The initial expectation was that a child who was sent to specialschool at a younger age had somehow drawn the teacher’s atten-tion to their mental deficiency sooner, and was therefore “worse”in terms of educational ability. However the results suggest that



Birmingham Education Committee,After-Care Cards Dataset 1913(K Myers/A Brown 2003)

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Birmingham Education Committee, After-Care Cards Dataset 1913(K Myers/A Brown 2003)

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Figure 5: Probability of outcomes for girls, by ward address.

the longer period of special schooling in some way rehabilitated thechild towards full employment potential. Conversely, however, andwith the marked over-representation of boys in the special schoolin mind, it might be suggested that some of these children hadwhat might now be termed behavioural rather than learning diffi-culties, which did not significantly influence their employmentopportunities.

For girls, the major influence on their outcomes was the issue ofseparate spheres and contemporary attitudes to working women.75

During this period there was an increasingly influential assump-tion that women would work only until marriage. The figures cer-tainly provide evidence that women were more likely to be at homethan men, but this was the case for all women and had littlebearing on their learning disability. It must also be rememberedthat many women in this period did work (for example, out-work,taking washing, prostitution) but the nature of their work was oftenhidden and rarely recorded on official documents. This has pre-sented a particular problem to historians who are limited to offi-cial census records and documents, and the estimations for womenemployed in this model are likely to be lower than their true value.

The final outcome to be discussed is that of “Institutionalised”and here again there is a range of results. For women this proba-bility was always higher than for men and the probability increasedfrom outer to middle to central wards. But again, longer attendanceat special school mitigated these factors with the probability forboys decreasing from approximately 4% (outer ward) and 15%

(central ward) to less than 1% after 10 years attendance. For girlsthe effect was even more marked, reducing from 53% and 24% to10% and 3% after 10 years attendance. The important factor hereseems to have been an earlier transfer to special school; wherelength of stay continued until age 16 the probability of an institu-tion increased.

Conclusion

Policymakers in the field of mental deficiency were central to thecreation of what some historians and sociologists have called a“regime of truth”: the construction of certain people and behav-iours as problematic and the emergence of social and institutionalpractices to solve those problems.76 This is useful insofar as itemphasises the relationship between new knowledge about thementally deficient and a particular set of historical conditions. AsMark Jackson argues, mental deficiency

“. . . was the product of a range of social anxieties about rising levels of insanity anddeficiency, about the inherited and biological nature of social and educational inep-titude, about the maintenance of law and order and the preservation of nationaland imperial strength, and about the links between poverty, criminality, fertility,class and mental deficiency”.77

Yet new forms of knowledge about the mentally deficient shouldnot simply be seen as a product of those conditions, as rising inex-orably and mysteriously from historical circumstances. Instead, ashas been emphasised throughout, it was the product of historicalagency; the work of a group defined at the local level by their classand their gender. Moreover, as the product of agency, the adequacyof this knowledge can be held up to critical scrutiny. The recordsof the Birmingham After-Care Sub-Committee have been used inan attempt to explore and explain patterns of diagnosis and theoutcomes of special schooling in early 20th century Birmingham.In summary, three points should be stressed.

First, the data presented are not accompanied by any grandclaims about the unique virtues of quantitative data or methods.In fact, some of the results of what has been a rather laboriousprocess are rather disappointing; the data provide additional evi-dence, but say nothing particularly novel, about the operation ofgender relations in this period. Instead quantitative methods havebeen used to complement and extend the numerous studies thatexamine, from a range of perspectives, the production, fabricationor invention of mental deficiency.

Second, inferential statistics have identified that socio-economicbackground had a significant influence on probable employment



outcomes. That is to say, that when all other variables remain constant, children from the central wards had lower probability ofemployment than those from the outer wards. It is difficult toisolate mental deficiency as the most prominent factor at workhere, since those living in the poorest or slum areas were likely tobe more susceptible to periods of unemployment anyway. What canbe said with some certainty is that the data clearly show that morepessimistic estimates of employability were wrong. Whilst it wasfrequently anticipated that just a third of all special school leaverswould be capable of materially contributing to their own liveli-hood,78 the data infer that a boy had over 99% probability ofemployment after ten years at special school, whereas a girl hadbetween 50 and 75% probability according to her domicile.

Third, and arguably most revealingly, the length of time spent inspecial schools significantly reduced the impact of a deprived socio-economic background. For boys, 10 years at special schoolcompletely neutralised the negative impact of their social back-ground in terms of their employment probabilities. For girls, theexperience of special schooling was even more marked in terms ofincreasing their probability of employment but their social back-ground remained influential. Whether this points towards thequality of teachers and teaching in schools, is suggestive of thesocial networks the After-Care Sub-Committee could draw on or,more practically, it simply indicates the continued need for lowpaid, menial work in maturing capitalist economies are issuesworthy of further investigation.

Jane Lewis has rightly argued that because “at the turn of thecentury social provision was locally financed and locally adminis-tered” it was characterised by diversity.79 However, in the case ofmental deficiency there are few detailed accounts of this diversityand, more specifically, little understanding of what might betermed care in the community. It is clear that in Birmingham inthe early 20th century an extensive system of voluntary welfare pro-vision was established. By focusing on the relationships betweeneducation and welfare policy, and by analysing provision at thelocal level, it becomes evident that policy for the mentally deficientwas not just concerned with their isolation or incarceration, butalso with attempts to educate the child and monitor the materialand moral well being of the adult in the community.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Steve Parton (Birmingham City Council)and staff at Birmingham City Archives for granting access to therecords of Birmingham Education Committee Special Schools



After-Care Sub-Committee Record Cards. We would also like tothank Colin Rowat for advice on statistics, Ruth Watts and JohnMorris for reading draft versions of this article and to the anony-mous reviewers for their constructive criticisms. Any errors remainour own.

Endnotes

1 In this article we have used the terminology of disability as usedduring the early 20th century. We are aware that such labels are now med-ically obsolete and may be offensive but used with care they serve to illu-minate the changing attitudes to and understanding of disability.

2 D.G. Pritchard, Education and the Handicapped 1760–1960 (London,Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963); G. Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education 1880–1940 (Oxford,Clarendon Press, 1984); J.S. Hurt, Outside the Mainstream: a history ofspecial education (London, Batsford, 1988); T. Cole, Apart or a part? Integration and the Growth of Special Education (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1989).

3 Pritchard, Education and the Handicapped, pp. 182, 221.4 Sally Tomlinson, Educational Subnormality: A Study in Decision-

Making (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981) and A Sociology of SpecialEducation, (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), ch. 2; Ian Copeland,The Making of the Backward Pupil in Education in England 1870–1914(London, Woburn, 1999).

5 One notable exception to this is Brian Simon’s pioneering work, par-ticularly on mental testing. See Brian Simon, Intelligence Testing and theComprehensive School (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1953).

6 Tomlinson, Educational Subnormality, pp. 32–45 and A Sociology ofSpecial Education, ch. 2.

7 Felicity Armstrong, “The historical development of special education:humanitarian rationality or ‘wild profusion of entangled events’?”, Historyof Education, 5, 31 (2002), 437–456.

8 Ted Cole, Apart or A Part? Integration and the Growth of British SpecialEducation (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1989), pp. 169–179.

9 Mark Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility: Medicine, Society and theFabrication of the Feeble Mind in late Victorian and Edwardian England(Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000); Mathew Thomson,“Family, Community and State: the micro-politics of mental deficiency”and Pamela Cox, “Girls, Deficiency and Delinquency” in D. Wright and A.Digby (eds.), From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency: Historical Perspectives onPeople with Learning Disabilities (London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 184–230.

10 Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City(London, Verso, 2003).

11 Joyce, The Rule of Freedom, esp. chapter 1.12 For example, Seth Koven & Sonya Michel (eds.), Mothers of a New

World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (London, Rout-ledge, 1993); P. Wagner, A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline(London, Routledge, 1994).

13 On the importance of linking diagnostic practices with gender, raceand class see John Carson, “Review of James W. Trent, Jr., Inventing theFeeble Mind”, Social History of Medicine, 8 (1995), 522–3; for the signifi-



cance of local studies see Mathew Thomson, The Problem of Mental Defi-ciency: Eugenics, Democracy and Social Policy in Britain, c.1870–1959(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998), ch. 7, and Ludmilla Jordanova, “TheSocial Construction of Medical Knowledge”, Social History of Medicine, 7,3 (1994), 361–381 (pp. 373–4).

14 S. Collini, “Political Theory and the ‘Science of Society’ in VictorianBritain”, The Historical Journal 23, 1 (1980) 203–231; E. Janes Yeo, TheContest for Social Science: Relations and Representations of Gender andClass (London, Rivers Oram, 1996).

15 M. Foucault, “Governmentality”, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P.Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Hemel Hemp-stead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 87–104.

16 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Penguin,1977/1991) and Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the ageof Reason (Tavistock, 1973).

17 Foucault, Governmentality, p. 103.18 For an overview see C. Gordon, “Governmentality rationality: an

introduction” in Burchell, Gordon and Miller, The Foucault Effect, pp. 1–51.19 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.

20 H. Hendrick, Children, Childhood and English Society 1880–1990 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997); A. Turmel, “Child-hood and Normalcy: Classification, Numerical Regularities and Tabula-tions”, International Journal of Educational Research, 27, 8 (1997),661–672.

21 The following section is based on material from Birmingham CityArchive [BCA]: City of Birmingham Education Committee, Special SchoolsAfter-Care Sub-Committee Record Cards.

22 Collini, “Political Theory and the ‘Science of Society’ ”; P. Corrigan andD. Sayer, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution(Oxford, Blackwell, 1985); Janes Yeo, The Contest for Social Science; L.Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian Britain: The SocialScience Association 1857–1886 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,2002).

23 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London,1963); R. Johnson, “Really useful knowledge: radical education andworking 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.

24 Janes Yeo, Contest for Social Science, chapters 5 and 9; Joyce, Ruleof Freedom, pp. 29–30.

25 R. Wolker, “Repatriating modernity’s alleged debt to the Enlighten-ment: French Revolutionary social science and the genesis of the nationstate” in P. Joyce (ed.), The Social in Question: New Bearings in History andthe Social Sciences (London, Routledge, 2002), pp. 62–80, (p. 67).

26 Janes Yeo, The Contest for Social Science, p. 38.27 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).

28 Johnson, “Really useful knowledge”; Janes Yeo, The Contest for SocialScience, pp. 236–237.

29 M. Savage and A. Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class,1840–1940 (London, Routledge, 1994), pp. 58–59.



30 I. Grosvenor and K. Myers, “Progressivism, Control and Correction:Local Education Authorities and Educational Policy in 20th centuryEngland”, Pedagogica Historica (forthcoming 2005).

31 BCA, Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee Record Cards.32 M. K. Simpson, “Medicine vs. Psychology: The Emergence of a Pro-

fessional Conflict in Developmental Disability”, Journal on DevelopmentalDisabilities 8, 2 (2001), 45–59.

33 BCA, Special Schools After-Care Sub-Committee Record Cards, boxR.

34 For more detail on special schooling in Birmingham see Anna Brown,“Private Lives and Public Policy: Ellen Pinsent, special education andwelfare in Birmingham, 1900–1913” (unpublished MA thesis, Universityof Birmingham, 2003) and “Caring Power: special schooling and the fee-bleminded in Birmingham 1870–1914” (forthcoming PhD thesis, Univer-sity of Birmingham).

35 P. Thane, “Women in the British Labour party and the Constructionof State Welfare, 1906–1939” in Koven and Michel, Mothers of a New World,pp. 343–377.

36 Report of the Royal Commission on the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb &c1889 in Pritchard, Education and Handicapped, 1963, p. 96.

37 Birmingham School Board, Annual Report, 1894 [BirminghamCentral Library [BCL], Local Studies and History Section [LSHS],L48.21/146708].

38 Birmingham School Board, Annual Report, 1895 [BCL LSHS L48.21/146708].

39 Birmingham School Board, Annual Report, 1898 [BCL LSHS,L48.21/146708].

40 Jane Read describes the pedagogy of the London special schools andtheir close links to Froebelian methods; the practices of the Birminghamspecial schools were similar. J. Read, “Fit for what? Special education inLondon, 1890–1914”, History of Education, 33, 3 (2004), 283–298.

41 Ellen F. Pinsent, “The Education of Feeble-minded Children by theBirmingham School Board”, Women Workers Quarterly Magazine XI/3(1901), 45–56 (p. 50) [Private Archive].

42 Deborah Thom and Mary Jennings, “Human pedigree and the ‘beststock’: from eugenics to genetics?”, in Theresa Marteau and MartinRichards (eds.) The Troubled Helix: Social and Psychological Implications ofthe New Human Genetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),pp. 211–234 (pp. 215–6).

43 Ellen Pinsent was co-opted onto the Special Schools Sub-committeeof the Birmingham School Board, and chairman between 1903 and 1913.For further details see Anna Brown, “Private Lives and Public Policy”.

44 Mrs Hume Pinsent, “The results of special school education as shownin 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].

45 Anna Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood”, History WorkshopJournal 5 (1978), 9–16; C Dyhouse, “Social Darwinistic ideas and thedevelopment of women’s education in England, 1880–1920”, History of Education, 5, 1 (1976), 41–58; C Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1981).

46 Birmingham Education Committee, Special Schools sub-committee[SSSC], Minutes, Nov 1904 (minute 580) [BCA, BCC-BH 5/1/1/1].



47 Compare current government Green Paper consultation on the 14–19curriculum and the “Next Steps” document: DfES, 14–19 Opportunity andExcellence (London: HMSO, 2002).

48 Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, pp. 35–37; D. Pick, Faces ofDegeneration: A European Disorder (Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 1989), pp. 203–213.

49 B. Norton, “Psychologists and Class”, in C. Webster (ed.) Biology,Medicine and Society, 1840–1940 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1981), pp. 289–314.

50 In other words the curve of normal distribution. See, D. Thom,“Mental retardation” in G. E. B. and R. Porter (eds.) A History of ClinicalPsychiatry. The Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders (London,Athlone Press, 1995) pp. 251–260.

51 Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, pp. 168–175.52 Pinsent, Women Workers, p. 46.53 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].

54 Presidential Address (Mrs Hume Pinsent), Ladies’ Literary and Debat-ing Society, Birmingham, Report of the Session for 1903–1904, 11 [BCLLSHS L50.7/184355].

55 Mrs Hume Pinsent [Ellen Pinsent], “The Care of the Feeble-minded”,Charity Organisation Review, 103 (1905), 3–22 (pp. 5–13) [Private Archive].

56 Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, 89–128.57 Letter from Ellen Pinsent’s daughter, Lady Adrian to R. Laslett, 10

August 1956, 2 [Private Archive].58 SSSC, Minutes, (Feb 1905) [BCA, BCC-BH 5/1/1/1].59 SSSC, Minutes (May/June 1913), (minutes 3860 and 3897) [BCA,

BCC-BH 5/1/1/3].60 Birmingham School Board, Annual Report (1901) and City of

Birmingham Education Committee, Annual Report (1914) [BCL LSHSL48.21/128509 and L48.21/3219].

61 Birmingham Education Committee, Report of the Special SchoolsAfter-Care Sub-Committee, 1914, pp. 2, 15–6 [BCL LSHS L41.3/202642].

62 Pinsent, Ladies’ Literary and Debating Society, p. 13.63 H.G. Simmons, “Explaining social policy: the English Mental Defi-

ciency Act of 1913”, Journal of Social History, 11, 3 (1978), 387–403.64 R. Soloway, “Counting the degenerates: the statistics of race deteri-

oration in Edwardian England”, Journal of Contemporary History, 17(1982), 137–64, (p. 136).

65 Precise estimates are hard to find. Ellen Pinsent, “Care and Controlof the Feeble Minded”, (Reprinted from The Nineteenth Century and After,London, Farrington, n.d. [1909?]), p. 14 seems to suggest a minimumincome of 10s. per week. Yet no indication is given of whom this refers toor at what age. Judging by the estimates in C. Feinstein, “New estimatesof average earnings in the United Kingdom, 1880–1913”, Economic HistoryReview 43, 4 (1990), 595–632, the figure is comparatively low.

66 There is little research into how families understood the economicimpact of deficiency on family income. For an introduction to the socialand cultural complexities of wages see P. Scholliers and L. Schwarz (eds.),Experiencing Wages: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europesince 1500 (Oxford, Berghahn, 2003).

67 For an overview see E. Hopkins, Birmingham: the making of thesecond city, 1850–1939 (Stroud, Tempus, 2001), chapter 2.



68 Anna Davin, Growing up Poor: home, school and street in London,1870–1914 (London, Rivers Oram, 1996), pp. 97–112.

69 See arguments in D.G. Pritchard, Education and the Handicapped,(London, Routledge, 1963, repr. 1998), pp. 132–150.

70 R. Nye, “The Rise and Fall of the Eugenics Empire: Recent Perspec-tives on the Impact of Biomedical Thought in Modern Society.” HistoricalJournal 36, 3 (1993), 687–700, (p. 688).

71 Copeland, Making of the Backward Pupil, pp. 176, 209.72 SSSC, Minutes, 20 January 1909, minute 1904b [BCA, BCC/BH

5/1/1/2].73 P. Hudson, History by Numbers: An Introduction to Quantitative

Approaches (London, Arnold, 2000) p. 8.74 This has been achieved through the use of a multiple regression

model, which allows an investigation of “associations between the move-ment of variables where there are several causal variables which appearto be operating”. For further detail and comment see Hudson, History byNumbers, pp. 159–160.

75 P. Bartley, The Changing Role of Women, 1815–1914 (Hodder andStoughton, 1996).

76 M. Foucault, “Power/Knowledge” in C. Gordon (ed.), Selected Inter-views and Other Writings 1972–1977 (New York, Pantheon, 1980), p. 153.

77 Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, p. 39.78 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 Com-mission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded (London: P.S. Kingand Son, 1909), p. 42.

79 J. Lewis, Family Provision of Health and Welfare in the MixedEconomy of Care in the late 19th and 20th Centuries, Social History of Med-icine, 8, 1 (1995), 1–16.



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