{"id":34433,"date":"2024-03-20T11:35:59","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T10:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=263142"},"modified":"2024-03-21T10:13:01","modified_gmt":"2024-03-21T09:13:01","slug":"how-people-with-learning-disabilities-thrived-in-the-20th-century","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/how-people-with-learning-disabilities-thrived-in-the-20th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"How people with learning disabilities thrived in the 20th century"},"content":{"rendered":"

A study by historian Lucy Delap suggests we need to rethink the experiences of people with learning disabilities in the 20th century. Here she explains how many thrived in work and wider society <\/p>

By Megan Shersby\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 20 March 2024 at 10:35 AM<\/p>

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Many histories of people with learning disabilities focus on segregation.<\/strong> But although in the 19th and early 20th centuries there was a push to move them into asylums, that never affected the majority. Most lived outside such institutions and had to work. Historians haven\u2019t looked much at lives in the community \u2013 yet that represented most people with learning disabilities.<\/p>\n

My research covered most of the 20th century, until its closing decades saw major economic changes caused by deindustrialisation and the rise of new forms of work associated with computers, and new expectations of school qualifications. Those things had a real impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities, increasingly cutting them out of labour opportunities.<\/p>\n

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On the podcast | Learning disabilities: an overlooked history<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Until relatively recently, broad definitions included terms we wouldn\u2019t use today,<\/strong> such as \u2018mental deficiency\u2019 or \u2018handicap\u2019. Those encompassed all kinds of cognitive impairments as well as those whose lives just didn\u2019t quite fit the mould \u2013 troubled adolescents, people involved in petty crime, or those deemed promiscuous.<\/p>\n
Indeed, young women who got pregnant outside marriage were sometimes called \u2018moral imbeciles\u2019. We wouldn\u2019t recognise those people today as having any kind of learning disability.<\/p>\n
Employment rates among people with learning disabilities varied<\/strong> between about 40 and 70 per cent in the first half of the 20th century. It was quite gendered: men were much more likely to be in paid employment than women, who tended to do housework or informal childcare. These numbers were very high compared to today, when fewer than 5 per cent of people with learning disabilities are employed.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s lots of evidence to suggest that, in the past, people we would recognise as having learning difficulties were successfully integrated into paid employment. That spanned different sectors \u2013 factories, workshops, extractive industries, the steel industry, and service-sector jobs with public contact.<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t all stuck in a cupboard somewhere, putting things in boxes or bags. Some were, but others were digging graves, sweeping the streets, emptying bins and working in hospitals doing low-level nursing jobs.<\/p>\n
Some were fairly well-paid, and even founded their own businesses. Certainly, some were stuck permanently on the very lowest entry-level wages doing very boring work, and few had roles that required professional qualifications, but there was an amazingly broad spectrum of employment.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m fascinated by a man who called himself Hugh McGowan<\/strong>, though he appears under a number of other names in the archive. He fought in the First World War<\/a>, but had a chequered time in the army: he was disciplined several times, so wasn\u2019t a perfect soldier.<\/p>\n
He was injured in battle, invalided out and sought a military pension, but doctors said he didn\u2019t qualify because he had a pre-existing disability \u2013 they termed him \u2018backward\u2019 or \u2018mentally defective\u2019. He contested that decision, writing lots of letters from 1921 right up to 1963, when he was 89.<\/p>\n
In them, McGowan describes his life \u2013 and it wasn\u2019t an easy life, because he existed right on the economic margins. When he had enough money, he would buy goods and sell them on for a fractional profit. He was convicted of theft, having stolen boots, bacon and other petty items, as well as being drunk and disorderly.<\/p>\n
So he repeatedly came to the attention of the authorities \u2013 though, he claimed in one of his letters, the authorities had \u201cgot me all rong\u201d. He was employed in various roles: shovelling coal, working in a power station, even as a fisherman \u2013 and he was very proud of never having claimed any kind of unemployment benefit.<\/p>\n
His is an example of the amazing diversity of experiences of people labelled and othered by the authorities, but who lived quite independently of systems of care and control.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not suggesting there was a golden age for people with learning disabilities, because they did encounter stigma and hardship. Many found economic niches, but often had to struggle to maintain them, and to assert their right to citizenship and participation.<\/p>\n
One interesting shift came in the 1950s, when ideas of resource management, human resources and productivity came to the fore.<\/strong> When attempts were made to modernise and improve efficiency in British workplaces, it became harder for people with learning disabilities to find their economic niche and to keep up with the pressure to gain educational qualifications.<\/p>\n
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