Disability and the Victorians

Disability and the Victorians brings together in one collection a range of topics, perspectives and experiences from the Victorian era that present a unique overview of the development and impact of attitudes and interventions towards those with impairments during this time. The collection also considers how the legacies of these actions can be seen to have continued throughout the twentieth century right up to the present day. Subjects addressed include deafness, blindness, language delay, substance dependency, imperialism and the representation of disabled characters in popular fiction. These varied topics illustrate how common themes can be found in how Victorian philanthropists and administrators responded to those under their care. Often character, morality and the chance to be restored to productivity and usefulness overrode medical need and this both influenced and reflected wider societal views of impairment and inability.

Disability and the Victorians investigates the attitudes of Victorians towards people with impairments, illustrates how these influenced the interventions they introduced to support such people and considers the legacies they left behind by their actions and perspectives. A range of impairments are addressed in a variety of contexts.

Disability and the Victorians brings together in one collection a range of topics, perspectives and experiences from the Victorian era that present a unique overview of the development and impact of attitudes and interventions towards those with impairments during this time. The collection also considers how the legacies of these actions can be seen to have continued throughout the twentieth century right up to the present day. Subjects addressed include deafness, blindness, language delay, substance dependency, imperialism and the representation of disabled characters in popular fiction. These varied topics illustrate how common themes can be found in how Victorian philanthropists and administrators responded to those under their care. Often character, morality and the chance to be restored to productivity and usefulness overrode medical need and this both influenced and reflected wider societal views of impairment and inability.

Foreword – Karen Sayer
Introduction – Iain Hutchison, Martin Atherton and Jaipreet Virdi

Part I: Attitudes
1 Restoration to usefulness: Victorian middle-class attitudes towards the healthcare of the working poor – Amy W Farnbach Pearson
2 Imperial lives – confronting the legacies of empire, disability and the Victorians – Esme Cleall
3 Disabling the author in Mid-Victorian realist fiction: case studies of George Eliot and Harriet Martineau – Deborah M Fratz

Part II: Interventions
4 Medicalising deafness in Victorian London: the Royal Ear Hospital, 1816-1916 – Jaipreet Virdi
5 Drunkenness, degeneration, and disability in England – Joanne Woiak
6 Victorian medical awareness of childhood language disabilities – Paula Hellal and Marjorie Lorch
7 ‘Happiness and usefulness increased”: Consuming ability in the antebellum artificial limb market – Caroline Lieffers

Part III: Legacies
8 The disabled child in an industrial metropolis: Glasgow’s children’s hospital, Scottish convalescent homes ‘in the country’, and east park home for infirm children – Iain Hutchison
9 The panopticon: Towards an intimate history of special schools for the blind – Fred Reid
10 Allowed to be idle: Perpetuating Victorian attitudes to deafness and employability in United Kingdom social policy – Martin Atherton
Index