Report of the Royal Commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded, Volume VIII.
- Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded.
- Date:
- 1908
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded, Volume VIII. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![THE POOR LAW AND THE MENTALLY DEFECTIVE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY, APART FROM THE Chapter II. [METROPOLIS. The Care of Mentally Defective Persons in Poor Law Institutions outside the Metropolis. 103. In regard to the feeble-minded and epileptic in the rural districts of Somersetshire, an extremely unsatisfactory state of things has been disclosed. At the Axbridge union, the following typical case is mentioned, in which endeavour was made to provide for a young woman in the asylum for idiots at Starcross, where improvable cases are taken :— “ Typical Case.—A.W., sent home from Starcross at the age of twenty-threo because she had one fit. She is now in the hospital ward of our workhouse, where she is a source of great trouble and discomfort, whereas with skilled supervision she could be kept employed, happy and harmless. “ Within the last eighteen months three Axbridge cases have been dismissed from Starcross— one because he was unruly ; one because she had one fit; one because his heart was bad. These cases were all over twenty years of age and all three have now come back to the workhouse.’’ 104. In rural workhouses, judging from those in the neighbourhood of Axbridge, there is no separate accommodation for epileptics and feeble-minded, whether adult or children. The adults are generally classed with the sick and infirm, to the great danger and discomfort of the latter. “Feeble-minded girls and women,” it is stated, “form a large proportion of the unmarried mothers who come to the lying-in wards of our workhouses, where they often appear again and again, adding to the rates and to the dete- rioration of the race by producing sickly and deficient children.” “Also, sane epileptics of respectable character, are often compelled to enter workhouses because no one is willing or able to care for them. The want of occupation, close confinement, often unsuitable diet of workhouses, are very detrimental to them ; they lead lives of extreme misery, and degenerate rapidly into a state of idiocy, or lunacy, otherwise probably preventible. It is a. great hardship to class sane epileptics with feeble-minded and imbeciles. Dangerous epileptics cannot be compelled to enter any institution, but may, if they choose, remain at home, a constant source of danger to themselves and their families.” 105. Miss Fry, another witness, who speaks also of Somersetshire, says in. £ad 2%!°227,^ regard to the children that the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic col. 1. Children) Act, 1899, has not been adopted by the Somerset County Council ; and that feeble-minded children are therefore to be found either.in the ordinary elementary schools or in their own homes, except in a very few cases where they have been sent by the guardians or by private charity to idiot asylums, or to Homes for the feeble-minded. Their place is not in the ordinary elementary school, where their example is bad for the other children, and their habits fre- quently a source of amusement to them. On account of their backwardness they are sometimes placed with the younger children or infants, and I have seen. Miss Fry says, big feeble-minded children sitting at infant desks and kept quiet by being allowed a slate and pencil. The teachers, especially those in small rural schools, find it impossible to give such children any individual attention, and much time is spent by young monitors in vainly endeavouring to teach them to read, write, and count. From motives of humanity, managers are unwilling to turn these children away, but there are other children who are too deficient to attend school at all, and they have to be kept at home. Some of these children are very difficult to control, and others need more careful and constant watching than their parents can give them; both classes tend to become worse when left without any training. Private charity cannot deal with all these cases. The voluntary homes are full. The guardians on the other hand are unwilling to pay for children who might be dealt with by the Education Authorities under the Act of 1899, if that Act were adopted, and they are also unwilfing to con- tribute much more than such children would cost if maintained in the workhouse. It is very undesirable. Miss Fry argues, to bring children who are not paupers under the Poor Law in this way, but the inaction of the Education Authorities leads to this. If they are dealt with now, they have to be certified as idiots, and sent to the West of England Asylum at Starcross. But parents often object to their feeble-minded children being certified as idiots, and medical men often hesitate to certify them as such. Further, at Starcross, only children capable of improvement are admitted, children of feeble intellect, viz., those who, unable to keep pace with normal children at an ordinary school, yet possess sufficient intelligence to learn some light trade or industrial occupation, to fit them, as far as possible, to be able to contribute to their own support; and thus, to provide for actual idiots remains a difficulty, while to obtain admission for the improvable feeble-minded they have to be certified as idiots. Somerset. Wills, Vol. II., 14842, p. 222, cols. 1 and 2. p. 223, c. 1. p. 22.3, c. ]. Vnl TT](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28038551_0062.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
