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УДК 94(420) „1837/1901" АЛЕКСАНДРОВА А.П.
кандидат филологических наук, доцент, начальник бюро переводов, Орловский государственный университет имени И.С. Тургенева Е- т a il: a ngelica. p. a lexa ndrova @уа п d ex. ru АЛЕКСАНДРОВА Д.П.
магистр прикладной этики, Орловский государственный университет имени И.С. Тургенева E-mail: arnold71@inbox.ru КИРСАНОВ М.А.
технический редактор научного журнала «Ученые записки ОГУ», Орловский государственный университет имени И.С. Тургенева
UDC 94(420) „1837/1901"
ALEXANDROVA A.P.
Candidate of Philology, Docent, Head of Translation Agency, Orel State University named after IS. Turgenev E-mail: angelica.p. alexandrova@yandex.ru ALEXANDROVA D.P. Master of Applied Ethics, Orel State University named
after I.S. Turgenev E-mail: arnold71@inbox.ru KIRSANOVM.A.
Technical editor of scientific journal "Scientific notes of OSU", Orel State University named after I. S. Turgenev
DISABLED PEOPLE IN VICTORIAN EPOCH ЛЮДИ С ОГРАНИЧЕННЫМИ ВОЗМОЖНОСТЯМИ В ВИКТОРИАНСКИЙ ПЕРИОД
This paper is devoted to the life of disabled people during the reign of Oueen Victoria. It highlights the extent of discrimination against disabled people and the problems they faced and also concentrates on their living and working conditions. Besides it throws some light on education of children living in Victorian age and sufferingfrom different kinds of disabilities. The conclusion suggested in this article has been based on the studies conducted by British researches.
Keywords: disability, disabled people, mentally ill people, people with physical disabilities, Victorian era, workhouse, asylum, education.
Статья посвящена жизни людей с ограниченными возможностями в период правления королевы Виктории. В ней рассматривается вопрос дискриминации в отношении людей с ограниченными возможностями, проблемы, с которыми они сталкивались, а также условия их жизни и труда. Кроме того, статья затрагивает вопрос образования детей Викторианской эпохи, имевших ограниченные возможности. Выводы, сделанные в этой работе, основаны на изучении исследований, проведенных британскими учеными.
Ключевые слова: инвалидность, люди с ограниченными возможностями, психически больные люди, люди с ограниченными физическими возможностями, Викторианская эпоха, работный дом, приют, образование.
The survey of studies of the subject under the consideration paints a depressing picture.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the policy of segregating severely disabled people into institutional settings slowly increased and was subsequently extended to other disadvantaged groups. The workforce had to be more physically uniform to perform routine factory operations. Disabled people were rejected. The speed of factory work, the enforced discipline, the time keeping and production norms - all these were a highly unfavourable change from the slower, more self-determined and flexible methods of work into which many handicapped people had been integrated [1]. They were viewed as 'worthy poor', as opposed to work-shy 'unworthy poor', and given Poor Law Relief (a place in the Workhouse or money from public funds). Disabled people became more and more dependent on the medical profession for cures, treatments and benefits [9].
The 19th century demonstrates the rapid expansion of new institutions when many people with disabilities were moved from their communities into asylums and
workhouses; it is the time when buildings designed for disabled people 'boomed'. The industrial revolution had a dramatic impact on the English landscape. Towns, factories, railways and mills quickly replaced the ancient fields and villages. Outside many towns and cities, the high walls and chimneys of a new county pauper lunatic asylum began to dominate the view. The asylum was something distant to marvel at, but not somewhere many 19th century people would ever want to live [10].
The Earlswood Asylum (formerly theNational Asylum for Idiots) was the premier establishment for the care ofpeople with mental disabilities throughout the Victorian era, and theinstitution upon which a national network would be modelled.
Following the 1834 Poor Law Act1, 350 grim new workhouses were built, one within roughly every 20 miles. Earlier workhouses had housed the destitute disabled of the local parish, and their buildings were of a more humane design.
The new workhouses were intended as miserable places to live, conditions were Spartan and work regime was
© Александрова А.П., Александрова Д.П., Кирсанов M.A. © Alexandrova A.P., Alexandrova D.P., Kirsanov M.A.,
harsh;no-one would enter it willingly. Families were broken up. inmates were made to wear specific uniforms, there were no recreational facilities and socialising was strictly forbidden in working hours. Routines were rigidly enforced and food was limited to what was considered necessary for survival and work. These houses were intended for disabled and mentally ill people. The 1845 Lunatics Act2 included "Person of unsound mind" and lunatics were supposed to live in madhouses.
At the beginning of the 19th century, a few hundred people were living in nine small charitable asylums. By 1900, more than 100,000 mentally ill people were in 120 county pauper asylums. A further 10,000 were in workhouses.
This happened largely because society now thought that giving financial relief to people in their own homes would encourage laziness. The truly destitute would be helped, but only in the workhouse, where no one would want to stay for long. Society did not understand the impact this would have on disabled and mentally ill people.
A new class of medical professionals, the 'alienists' considered asylums to be peaceful places where patients could be restored by 'moral treatment'. But by the end of the century, they had lost their 'therapeutic optimism' and believed that most patients were 'incurable'. The asylums contained 'chronic' and dangerous cases, and most of the imnates never left.
Despite the expansion of institutions, people with disabilities still lived in their communities. Special schools and many charitable organisations for disabled people were established. Though some people begged on the streets, others prospered. Young disabled people formed a self-help group called the Guild of the Brave Poor Tilings. Their coat of amis was a sword crossed with a crutch [10].
Speaking about disabled people researchers suggest differentiating between what is known as the medical model of disability, which sees disability as a personal tragedy that needs to be fixed or overcome through medical intervention, and the social model of disability, which argues that it is not the person with a disability who is defective, but the society that stigmatizes physical difference and builds the world around one standard kind of body [ 7 ].
The article "Disability in Herefordshire, 1851-1911" written by Christine Jones gives us an account of a post-census survey set up to obtain more data about disabled people in the county. Age distribution for each condition and was found to vary between those with congenital and those with acquired conditions. Among those with a handicap of sight, hearing or speech a higher proportion remained unmarried. Disabled people often remained in the parental home until their late thirties, and when their parents died they moved in with siblings or became a lodger or imnate. Although few of the disabled children seemed to be receiving education, over 60 per cent of the adult males were found to be working and almost 25 per cent of the adult females. Disabled peoplewere viewed not merely as statistics, but were included as members of the local population, and not always dependent members. Besides, the author views disability in the national context giving information about the population of England and Wales and the numbers and proportions with disabilities [2]:
We can seefrom this table that the proportion with loss of sight fell over the 60-year period, probably because of a reduction in the incidence of smallpox and improvements in surgical techniques for removing cataracts. The proportion with loss of hearing and speech decreased a little between 1861 and 1871, probably due to the introduction of mental disability as an additional category, and then rose dramatically in 1911 because of the change in classification to include those with hearing loss but without loss of speech. Throughout this article all those suffering loss of mental ability, variously described by contemporaries, but without clear definitions, will be tabulated together. AndrewScull attributes the steady rise in the proportion of the population with loss of mental ability to the increasing provision of asylums [3]. People suffering loss of mental ability were described as 'idiots, imbeciles or feebleminded, and lunatics'. These words used for designating people with loss of mental ability were not distinguished according to the person's mental state. The 1886 Idiots Act3 provided separately for idiots and imbeciles, which was the Victorian definition of learning disability, but the 1890 Lunacy (Consolidation) Act ignored the distinction.
Year Population Loss of sight Loss of hearing and/or speech Loss of mental ability
N % N % N %
1851 17,927,609 18,306 0.10 10,314 0.06 N/A N/A
1861 20,228,497 19,352 0.10 12,236 0.06 N/A N/A
1871 22,712,266 21,590 0.10 11,518 0.05 69,019 0.30
1881 25,974,439 22,832 0.09 13,295 0.05 84,503 0.33
1891 29,002,525 23,467 0.08 14,192 0.05 97,383 0.34
1901 32,526,075 25,317 0.08 15,246 0.05 132,654 0.41
1911 36,070,492 26,336 0.07 41,771 0.12 161,993 0.45
07.00.00 - ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЕ НАУКИ И АРХЕОЛОГИЯ 07.00.00 - HISTORICAL SCIENCES AND ARCHAEOLOGY
The nineteenth centuiy was also significantforanupsurge of Christian morality and humanitarian values which were to have a profound effect upon the lives of disabled people. A mixture of religious altruism and conscience, this spirit of Victorian patronage put an end to the widespread practice of infanticide for disabled children which had hitherto been the rule rather than the exception. [4] It also stimulated some Victorians to question seriously the harsh treatment meted out to people who were generally considered incapable of finding work. When combined with the institutionalised mistrust of people claiming charity, these philanthropic ideals set in motion a process of differentiation which not only separated disabled people from other disadvantaged sections of the community, but also divided them up into specific categories and groups, with differing treatment for each group. There were four different groupings: able-bodied males, able-bodied females, children, the 'aged and infirm'. Four specific categories for dealing with the non-able-bodied poor were distinguished. They were the 'sick', the 'insane, 'defectives', and the 'aged and infirm'. The term 'sick' described people with acute, temporary or infectious diseases. The 'insane' were singled out for special treatment from the outset. People termed 'idiots', 'lunatics', 'mad', 'mentally infirm', or 'suffering from diseases of the brain' were either admitted to an asylum or boarded out on contract to families willing to be held responsible for them.The term 'defectives' was used to describe people with sensory impairments such as blindness, deafness and the lack of speech. 'Aged and infirm', the oldest of the four categories, referred to people with chronic illness and/or permanent impairments [1].
During Victorian period there was the emergence of interest in specific institutions for idiots within the context of changing provisions for paupers, on the one hand, and legislative and administrative changes in the care of lunatics and the regulation of asylums, on the other hand. The emerging medical discourse on insanity and the growing interest in studying and protecting childhood and in establishing children's charities was important. Much time was spent on managing violent and dangerous defectives or on ensuring the treatment of 'curable cases', and there was little time or money to consider the appropriate care of chronic, harmless, incurable patients. Data suggest that, while some cliildren had certainly been boarded-out or were transferred from other institutions, the majority had previously been looked after at home, within a nuclear family. Victorian cliildren were sometimes sent home from school if their teachers thought them 'idiots' and a boy with epilepsy was removed from a children's home and 'sent' elsewhere as he required more attention than the home felt they could provide.
Lesley Huloncebased his research about children's disability on institutions in Victorian Wales which cared for and educated disabled cliildren. These were large and impressive establishments and were supported by both local and national subscribers. Many disabled cliildren were financially supported by the poor laws which paid for them to receive the sought-after education and training provided
by these institutions. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act provided the destitute with the right to ask for poor relief. While it was first intended that this would entail entering a workhouse, in later years local poor law guardians were empowered to provide funds for disabled cliildren to be educated at specialist institutions. Education led to wider employment opportunities and the children were subsequently trained to capitalize on their abilities. Thus, this investment produced useful and independent future citizens.
Roman Catholic girls, especially those with physical or mental disabilities, were sent to Nazareth House in Cardiff at the expense of poor law unions across Wales. The guardians of the poor also paid for cliildren with sensory disabilities to go to specialized institutions. Deaf cliildren were sent to the Cambrian Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in Swansea, and sometimes to other establishments around the country. Blind cliildren were educated via tactile methods such as Moon type and later Braille at the Swansea and South Wales Institution for the Blind and also trained for a narrow range of employments. These institutions were privately run establishments which relied on donations.
Disability was not considered a barrier to education. A girl born without arms was taught to write with her mouth and another girl, described as a 'blind imbecile' was reported to be 'proud of the one tiling she can do - the singing of little songs'. Although these statements were intended to generate pity prompting increased funding for Nazareth House, they also celebrated the children's abilities rather than just their impairments. At Nazareth House education was led by the nuns in 'the moral atmosphere of order, duty and busy kindness for life in domestic service', and the girls were trained in domestic duties and were generally placed as sen ants when they were 16 or 17 years old.
Physical disabilities were not perceived by the institution or by poor law authorities as preventing paid work. The institution stressed what the cliildren were able to accomplish rather than their incapacity.
The Swansea and South Wales Institution for the Blind was established in 1865 by a group of middle-class ladies. Blind cliildren were the 'preferred figures of disability in the Victorian imagination'. Swansea Blind Institution used both education and vocational training to harness the abilities of their cliildren for 'useful toil' and paid work in their future. So if a child did not show aptitude for one trade, their other abilities were taken into consideration to enable them to find future employment.
In Victorian Britain, occupations such as piano tuning along with basket weaving, mat making and knitting were regarded as suitable occupations for blind people and were known as 'blind trades'. Some cliildren were awarded scholarships to attend the Royal Academy of Music for the Blind in Norwood [11].
In Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum 1847-1901 David Wright argues that the burden of care fell mostly on women, that is on mothers and sisters of the disabled, and that institutionalisation may well have followed a particular 'crisis of caring' within the
household, precipitated for example by a sibling leaving home.
D. Wright analyses the characteristics of families sending children to Earlswood according to whether they paid fully or partially for care or were admitted on an entirely charitable basis. Parents who paid for their children's care appear to have used the asylum as an experimental alternative to care at home, rather tlian as a dumping ground for unwanted relatives.. .Poor households who sent children to Earlswood were those in which care may have become impossible because of the lack of family support [5].
There is an opinion that the mid-Victorian expansion of asylumdom was a means of repressive social control. The information presented in D.Wright's investigation disputes the common assumption that Victorian asylums were transformed from educational to custodial institutions. It was stated that long stays were unusual and that the length of stay decreased over time. Some records offer that boys were admitted more often than girls.
Conditions of work were difficult but the financial remuneration was relatively good, and the asylum managers attempted to improve conditions in order to reduce the loss of employees to other institutions. Attendants were entirely unskilled and unemployable, and that asylum work constituted an occupation of last resort. But D. Wright in his research states that women often came to asylums from domestic service, and frequently left to take up superior
positions elsewhere. Male attendants often came from the armed services and many moved to county constabularies. Thus, this finding disputes the traditionally received wisdom that asylum workers were underpaid, unskillful, and uncaring.
Asylums were dependent on subscriptions and donations. They got subscriptions from individuals and companies. The Board was at the mercy of changing economic conditions and competition from alternative charities for idiot children that emerged in the last half of the nineteenth century. It attracted subscribers by accentuating in particular the educational and reclamational aspect of their work with idiots.
In Victorian era disabled people were more likely to be out of work than non-disabled people, they were out of work longer than other unemployed workers, and when they did find work it was more often than not low-paid. low-status work with poor working conditions. The overwhelming majority of disabled people were forced to depend on welfare benefits in order to survive. The disability benefit system did cover all the needs that disabled people experienced. As a result, disabled people faced economic deprivation, poverty and dependence. Disabled people did not have an opportunity to articulate their views. Thus, unemployment, a lack of money and dependence on others excluded disabled people from social activities typical of non-disabled community.
Comments
The 1834 Poor Law Act1 - Some people welcomed it because they believed it would: reduce the cost of looking after the poor, take beggars off the streets, encourage poor people to work hard to support themselves. It ensured that the poor were housed in workhouses, clothed and fed. Children who entered the workhouse would receive some schooling. In return for this care, all workhouse paupers would have to work for several hours each day.HoweVer, not all Victorians shared this point of view. Some peoplespoke out against the new Poor Law, calling the workhouses 'Prisons for the Poor". The poor themselves hated and feared the threat of the workhouse so much that there were riots in northern towns.
The 1845 Lunatics Act2- A UK Parliamentary Act which, with the Comity Asylums Act 1845, embodied mental health legislation in England and Wa les until repealed by the Lunacy Act 1890. The Act established the Commissioners in Lunacy,a group of 11 members with 3 from the legal field, 3 from th e medical field and 5 honorary members. The primary remit of the Commissioners was to inspect asylums and reach out to mentally ill patients in workhou ses andgaols. mentally ill children in workhouses and single lunatics, and bring them into asylums for treatment, or, if they couldn'tbe brought in, at least monitor their treatment and mental condition.
The 1886 Idiots Act3-It was intended to give "... facilities for the care, education, and training of Idiots and Imbeciles". The' Act made, for the first time, the distinction between "lunatics", "idiots", and "imbeciles" for the purpose of making entry into education establishments easier and for defining the ways they were cared for. Before the Act, learning institutions for idiots and imbeciles were seen as either "licensed houses" or "registered hospitals" for lunatics, for which the parents of children hoping to enter would have to complete a form stating that they were "a lunatic, an idiot, or a person of unsound mind". Additionally, they were required to answer irrelevant questions and present two medical certificates.Hie Act was repealed by the Mental Deficiency Act 1913 , by which time two further classifications had been introduced: 'Teeble-minded people" and "moral defectives".
References
1. Barnes Colin. Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination: A case for anti-discrimination legislation'C. Hurst&Co. 1991
2. Jones Christine. Local Population Studies. Publisher: Local Population Studies Society. Volume 87, Number 1, Autumn 2011, pp. 29-44.
3. Scull Andrew. The most solitary of afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700-1900. Yale University Press (1 May 2005), pp. 334-374.
4. Tooley Michael. Abortion and Infanticide. Clarendon Press. 1983.
5. http: //www. history. ac. uk/re views/re view/2 5 0
6. http://www.nationalarcl"dves,gov.uk/education/resources/
7. http://www.nineteenthcenturydisability.org/about
8. http://www.theiiifolist.con"i/php/Sim"iinaryGet.php?FindGo=idiots_act_1886
9. https://attitudes2disability.wordpress.eom/2007/02/03/tlie-19tli-century/
10. https:/Mstoricengland.org.uk/researcli/iiiclusive-heritage/disability-history/1832-l914/
11. https://reniedianetwork.net/2014/10/21/abilities-first-mstitutions-lor-disabled-children-in-victoriaii-ai^
12. littps://www.rescare. org .uk/liistory-of-legislation-on-disability-2/
13. Wright David. Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum 1847-1901. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001.
