3 minute read
"Those they called Idiots"
How historian Simon Jarrett’s new book warns against complacency, and reminds us to ‘learn from the past’
I have not always been a historian.
For many years I worked with people with learning disabilities, including a spell as a nursing assistant in an old-style ‘mental handicap hospital’ in the 1980s.
Later I worked with people who were moving out of these hospitals, to live new lives back in the community. I therefore played a very small part in both the great incarceration and the great return that I write about in my new book, Those they called Idiots.
It was these experiences that inspired my interest in this largely untold history. Who were these people, and why had they been sent to spend their lives in these institutions?
Was there a time, before the institutions, that they were not ‘these people’ at all?
Those they called Idiots explores the history of people with learning disabilities over the last 300 years, beginning in the communities, workplaces, and families of 18th century Britain.
It then moves into what I call the ‘great incarceration’ in the asylums of the 19th century, and ends with the ‘great return’ from institutions to communities towards the end of the 20th century, which we know today as ‘Care in the Community.’
I argue in the book that there is a historical myth that people with learning disabilities (known as ‘idiots’ at the time) were persecuted, abused, neglected, and ostracised in society before being ‘rescued’ by the asylums.
In fact, in the 18th century, so-called idiots lived lives where they were largely included and accepted.
It wasn't until the early 19th century, after the French Revolution, that there was a change in attitude.
People who were different came to be seen as threatening and dangerous. People with learning disabilities were moved into institutions, seen as unfit for mainstream society. I argue that the example of the 18th century can
teach us much about truly inclusive communities, capable of adapting to all their human members.
The closure of these institutions, and community return of the late 20th century, was a remarkable episode, which we should celebrate. But I warn in the book that we cannot be complacent.
What we offer today is a form of conditional acceptance. If people can abide by the rules and live as others wish them to, they are accepted.
If not, they can be brutally excluded just as in the past, as the current scandal of over 2,000 people with learning disabilities detained in Assessment and Treatment Units (ATUs) demonstrates.
I have been overwhelmed by the response to the book. People with learning disabled family members, and those who work with people with learning disabilities, have contacted me.
A teacher has used it to write a history of learning disability, which is being used to teach 11-14 year olds as part of the National Curriculum. There’s a real eagerness to understand this.
I am also the editor of Community Living Magazine. Now in its 34th year, Community Living campaigns for equal citizenship for people with learning disabilities.
We encourage debate about the big issues that concern people with learning disabilities today. Our next issue contains an interview with Katie Price and her son Harvey, as well as a feature about Edel Harris, the new Chief Executive of Mencap. My book and the work of Community Living Magazine are linked.
The past casts a long shadow over the present, and to understand the position today, we need to be well-informed about what happened before.
Some of the very grim things happening today – unlawful DNAR notices on patients with learning disabilities in NHS hospitals, high death rates in the pandemic, institutional abuses in A&T units, preventable deaths under medical care – did not emerge from nowhere. They are rooted in history.
We must have the humility to learn from both the mistakes and successes of the past.”
