PublishedOneworld, July 2024 |
ISBN9780861544554 |
FormatHardcover, 352 pages |
Dimensions23.4cm × 15.3cm × 3cm |
By 1950, an estimated 50,000 people had been deemed 'defective' by the government and detained for life under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. Their 'crimes' were various: women with children born outside of wedlock; rebellious teenagers caught shoplifting; those with learning disorders, speech impediments and chronic illnesses who had struggled in school; and, of course, those who were simply 'different'.
Forcibly removed from their families and confined to a shadow world of specialist facilities in the countryside, they were hidden away and forgotten about - out of sight, out of mind.
Through painstaking archival research, Sarah Wise pieces together the lives irrevocably changed by this devastating legislation and provides a compelling study of how early 20th-century attitudes to class, gender and disability have continued to shape social policy.
