Those They Called Idiots

Simon Jarrett is a writer and historian specializing in the history of disability. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Open University and author of A History of Disability in England: From the Medieval Period to the Present Day (2023). He also writes about people with learning disabilities and the arts for Community Living magazine. He is Chair of Corali Dance Company, a leader in dance created by people with learning disabilities.

"Simon Jarrett is a mesmerising historian. He has an ear for tender, and sometimes even funny, stories about people with learning disabilities, while never shying away from the shocking abuse and casual indignities they experienced in the past and continue to be subjected to today. Jarrett overturns many assumptions about the history of disabled people and their interactions with different communities. His book is a history of medicine, science, law, philosophy, and psychology. Most of all, though, it is a history of lived experience. Jarrett’s story is not only a nuanced analysis of the lives of “idiots” from 1700 to the present; it is also a tribute to their struggles, needs, and desires." - Joanna Bourke, Professor of History, Birkbeck, University of London"Simon Jarrett’s elegant and provocative book brings into focus for the first time the history of people with intellectual disabilities over three centuries. Drawing on a fascinating set of sources, Jarrett traces the ‘idiot’s' journey from community life to institutionalisation and back again, and in the process uncovers the richness and variety of lives lived by people with intellectual impairments in the past. This is a history marked by cruel stereotyping and harmful policies underpinned by the pseudo science of eugenics, but it is also a history of love, protection and integration. This humane history teaches us how society can adapt to accommodate all its members." - David Turner, Professor of History, Swansea University and author of 'Disability in Eighteenth-Century England'"Simon Jarrett’s Those They Called Idiots is a major re-thinking of intellectual disability, from eugenics and the views of institutional authorities of the late nineteenth century to the thoughts and practice of our modern society. Jarrett examines new sources to argue that, while recognized as different in the social structures of a preindustrial or transitional age, there have always been accommodations for the ‘idiot'. Thus our present view of mental incapacity is in fact a continuation of a long-standing awareness of how those with intellectual disabilities can be integrated into society." - Sander L. Gilman, Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University"In his recent magisterial history, Those They Called Idiots, Simon Jarrett describes the foundation in 1855 of "the world's first purpose-built asylum for idiots", renamed the Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives in 1926. As Jarrett observes, the names have changed, but "there has always been the 'idiot', repackaged and represented by varieties of professionals over time" . . . Jarrett celebrates the success of the "great release" of people with learning disabilities from long incarceration . . . Yet he recognises that the task of society is still "to adapt to all its human members"." - Michael Fitzpatrick, Daily Telegraph"Jarrett’s exceptionally readable – and beautifully illustrated – history describes in meticulous detail the way that this group has been treated by a largely uncomprehending world . . . The history of learning disabilities matter to us all because in our response we can see a mirror for who we are and what we care about. We should be grateful to Simon Jarrett for telling this complex, compelling and frequently troubling story with such tremendous clarity and style. I can’t recommend this wonderful book highly enough, even if—especially if?—you have no lived experience of the subject." - Stephen Unwin, writer, playwright and director"This is one of the finest history books I’ve read and a much-needed force for good." - Tom Almeroth-Williams, author of City of Beasts: How Animals Shaped Georgian London"This is a stunning book . . . this is the first time I have read an account which delves into the pre-institutionalisation era in such depth . . . Simon Jarrett is a talented historian who writes beautifully. At no point in its 352 pages does he indulge in the obscure jargon which delights too many academics. It is a readable book . . . we are gradually discovering the value of disability history to give new ways of thinking about the past. This book is a great illustration" - Disability and Society"Meticulously researched and well written, the book highlights a section of society that has always been present, but has received scant attention before now. The author has worked with people with learning disabilities for many years, and his empathy for them shines through . . . very well illustrated" - Who Do You Think You Are? magazine"this is a fascinating and original contribution, similar in its outlook to Michel Foucault’s highly influential work on the treatment of mental illness within Western society . . . Jarrett has ably kickstarted a long overdue and much needed discussion — let us hope that other voices will follow." - Morning Star"For sheer readability, Simon Jarrett has few peers in the burgeoning field popularly known as the Medical Humanities." - Metapsychology"This book takes a chronological journey of the disabled mind, mainly in England, from the early eighteenth century to today. Simon Jarrett presents a wellr esearched, immensely readable and sensitive book, offering insight and analysis into the experiences and contexts of those called idiots. The central tenet of this book is the way intellectually disabled people experienced a change in perception by the wider community through language, philosophy and shifting social and cultural mores. Jarrett is a skilled writer who weaves narrative and context in a seamless fashion - he moves effortlessly from outlining eighteenth century etiquette to recounting individual life stories . . . This book is an invaluable contribution to the history of intellectual disabilities and offers an example of how looking back presents new ways of going forward." - Family & Community History"The history [Jarrett] tells is a complex one, drawing as it does on changing social, cultural, medical and religious contexts; but Jarrett's superbly clear, jargon-free prose makes the difficult and emotive topics he covers understandable and relatable. This is a book very much alive to the sensitivity of its topic but one careful not to damn the past by the standards of the present." - Fortean Times"[Jarrett's] work is deeply humane, not least because of his clarity in denouncing the emotional and physical cruelties inflicted upon people labeled “idiots” as well as the vicious cruelties of a society that eventually imprisoned those deemed mentally different, for simply being different. Thus, his book is not a “balanced” treatment with meandering qualifications that leaves the reader wondering, “what does the author think about his topic?” It is instead a rigorous exposition of how grotesquely prejudiced beliefs about mental disability have had such a devastating impact for those who had to live with the consequences . . . Jarrett’s book is an impressive, accessible, and richly illustrated study about a maligned group of people in disability history. He bluntly shows how the evolution of cultural, legal, and medical thinking transformed a general descriptor into a specific label to oppress an entire group of people who continue to live under the shadow of dubious ideas about “the disabled mind” that are still evident today." - H-Disability"a remarkable history of mental disability in England . . . This important book should be read widely by experts and non-experts alike. It provides a wonderful introduction to the history of mental disabilities . . . Jarrett’s arguments about the important, and ultimately destructive, connections made between perceived racial differences and intellectual capacities during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are well-founded, persuasive and seamlessly argued." - Social History of Medicine"[an] excellent new history . . . Jarrett has provided an accessible yet scholarly text that must be added to the shortlist of essential histories of intellectual disability . . . Rather than a return to a begrudging tolerance of pre-institutional community presence, the new expectation should be of community belonging and membership . . . the need is for adaptation in a spirit of welcome and reception, rather than supervision and control. This book is an excellent summary of how we came to face that choice." - Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities"Simon Jarrett’s Those They Called Idiots: The Idea of the Disabled Mind from 1700 to the Present Day is a welcome contribution to the history of intellectual disability in the modern West. Focused primarily but not exclusively on Britain, this engaging synthesis draws on a remarkable array of sources — including court documents, philosophical tracts, vernacular dictionaries, medical texts, and lowbrow fiction, as well as secondary works — to locate (in the parlance of the day) “idiots” and “imbeciles” within their full place in early modern society . . . While of interest to specialists and students in fields as wide-ranging as disability studies, the history of medicine, British domestic and imperial history, and the social and cultural history of modernity, this book will have broad appeal beyond the academy." - Canadian Journal of History"Too often, we are on the edge of denying a condition of being human. But we need to know our history, and Simon Jarrett is the guide we have been waiting for." - Your Autism magazine"This book is an engagingly written, intellectually impressive, and absolutely necessary investigation of some of the most significant processes shaping understandings of idiocy, imbecility, etc., in the periods under discussion. While recent years have seen a (modest) growth in intellectual and cultural histories of the idea of idiocy, Jarrett has brought to light areas that have not previously been explored. His analysis of the intersection of popular, legal and medical understandings of idiocy and his investigations into visual representations of idiocy in popular art are entirely new within the field and will no doubt stimulate further research into these areas. As a result, this work is a must for historians interested in intelligence, disability and colonialism, and offers a compelling narrative of how a group of people can be exiled from society – and brought back into it." - Canadian Journal of Disability Studies"Written in lively and engaging prose, Those They Called Idiots is an attractive and very reasonably priced book. It provides an accessible and thoughtful overview of an important topic, and deserves to reach the wide audience it seeks." - Cultural and Social History"Simon Jarrett’s Those They Called Idiots makes a welcome contribution to the existing [Disability Studies] scholarship. His attention to intellectual disability produces fresh interpretations of familiar texts by such authors as Charles Dickens, William Godwin, John Stuart Mill, and Charles Darwin. He challenges readers to rethink simplistic narratives of linear progress by suggesting that we could learn from eighteenth-century ways of accommodating and including those with intellectual disabilities. Those They Called Idiots is an excellent resource for scholars of both disability and British studies." - Joyce L. Huff, Journal of British Studies"a highly readable account of ideas about those they called idiots . . . It is the idea of the disabled mind that is the subject of the book, and this idea is traced as something embedded in a variety of cultural practices. It is no small feat to pull this together into a compelling narrative . . . this is a well-informed, deeply researched and lucidly written history of the idea of the disabled mind that impresses on many levels." - Svein Atle Skålevåg, The British Journal for the History of Science

• Introduction Part One: Idiocy and Imbecility in the Eighteenth Century, c.1700-18121 Poor Foolish Lads and Weak Easy Girls: Legal Ideas of Idiocy2 Billy-noodles and Bird-wits: Cultural Ideas of Idiocy3 Idiots Abroad: Racial Ideas of Idiocy Part Two: New Ways of Thinking, 1812-18704 Medical Challenge: New Ideas in the Courtroom5 Pity and Loathing: New Cultural Thinking6 Colonies, Anthropologists and Asylums: Race and Intelligence7 Into the Idiot Asylum: The Great Incarceration Part Three: From Eugenics to Care in the Community, 1870 to the PresentDay8 After Darwin: Mental Deficiency, Eugenics and Psychology, 1870-19399 Back to the Community? 1939 to the Present ReferencesSelected Secondary ReadingAcknowledgementsPhoto AcknowledgementsIndex