On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell.

  • Dora Greenwell
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/54 page 14
    sg>- Christian State ! For the idiot, as it has been truly re¬ marked, does not sink alone. The present scientific re¬ searches bring into clear light a fact which has been long familiar to the chaplains of jails and others practically interested in our criminal population, that a large propor¬ tion of it is made up of weak and mentally deficient people, whose infirmities have made them the easy victims and the ready tools of the vicious and designing. M. Voisin’s atten¬ tion was drawn to this subject by seeing a company of formats, among whom his practised eye at once detected a man who was a manifest idiot, incapable of responsi¬ bility. In 1838, he inspected, along with a Commission appointed by the Government, a prison where 500 young criminals were submitted to his inspection. Upon a phre¬ nological examination, it appeared that the heads of more than two-thirds of these boys, that is 315 out of the 500, were of the lowest character of development—a truly astounding proportion. These poor boys, who all belong to the very lowest class, had not only had to contend against every social disadvantage, but had started in the race of life under the heavy weight and disability an im¬ perfect organization entails. Are such poor beings to be turned loose on society, to become centres of evil and degradation, or are they to be trained to peace and order, or at least to be sheltered, to be saved alike from injur¬ ing and from being injured % Such inquiries are certainly worthy of the attention of a great and Christian nation. Few who have considered the case of our pauper imbeciles with any attention, will doubt as to their having a direct claim upon the care of Government. State intervention
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