State aid to institutions for imbeciles : report of deputation to the Lord President of the Council, at the Privy Council Office, Whitehall, on Wednesday, February 12th, 1890.

  • Asylums for Idiots and Imbeciles in England and Wales.
Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: State aid to institutions for imbeciles : report of deputation to the Lord President of the Council, at the Privy Council Office, Whitehall, on Wednesday, February 12th, 1890. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    After a while the classes, which, beside girls, include the little boys, form into drill, and go through it to the sound of music, marching with a wonderful precision and order when we consider how imperfect is their control over their bodily movements. Some time afterwards, as we pass along the corridor, we see them through the glass doors dancing a quadrille with intense enjoyment; the piano being played merrily by a junior teacher. Music is so great an element in their training, that almost all the attendants are required to play on some instrument; and concerts are got up weekly, often by the resident staff alone, with the aid of their imbecile patients. In the boys' school-room—the boys including grown men who are still only children in mind—writing and summing were going on, with a clock lesson on one side and a desk of letter-writers on another. Of course in both boys' and girls' school-rooms the greater number do nothing but scribble on their slates ; and in arithmetic the lack of mental power is still more perceptible ; only sixteen out of the five hundred and sixteen being able to work sums in simple rules. But they are all occupied, and ' all, more or less, reaching forward to something beyond what they have already attained. Sixty-nine of the patients can write home with assistance, while nineteen write letters without assistance. From the school-room we went to the workshops, looking into the kitchen, and laundry and bakehouse, as we passed them. Everywhere we met the elder inmates of the asylum, young men and young women, helping in whatever work they displayed any capacity for, with an air of pleasant importance and self-satisfaction on their faces. The workshops, where tailoring, shoemaking, joinery, and mat-making, are taught, are much the same, at first glance, as the same places in orphanages and industrial schools. It is when you come to look at the vacant faces and misshapen heads of the boys busily at work, and to hear their mumbling voices, that you feel here are busy hands which can never do the world's • work ; labourers whose toil can never earn their own livelihood. We asked one of them, who is just completing a large and handsome ink-stand, how much his work was worth, and after much grave con- sideration, he answered sixpence. Another, who has finished a strong . set of steps seven feet high, thinks he might ask a shilling for them. What chance would such workmen have in the fierce conflict of life ? The total number of boys employed in industrial occupations is onea hundred and seventy-two, and of these fifteen are employed as gardeners, twenty-five as weeding-boys, and eleven on the farm. The boys on the* farm were fine strong young fellows, who seemed to be able enougal to gain their own living, if they could find places under patienti and considerate masters, who would not take advantage of their half-: wittedness. One of the great wants of the institution is this kindly] co-operation of employers, who would take an interest in the recovered^