Transcript
SIMON JAMES
The job for a historian to try to unpick is, are we always talking about the same group of people over time? The group of people we call people with learning disabilities today, are they the same as the group of people we called idiots in the 18th century? And I think what we learn is that, although there is inevitably some overlap, these things change as society, changes. And who they choose to define as the out-group of people with learning disabilities or whatever also changes over time.
People had a very strong idea about what an idiot looked like. Because they believed that your face and your appearance reflected your inner characteristics.
NARRATOR
In the 18th century before the French Revolution, people were born into what they believed was their God-given place in society. No one should seek to change their life. To be born rich or poor was an accepted fate. But to be born poor or lacking the mental faculties did not mean that your place in society was without regard.
The Victorian caricaturist James Gillray captured the significance in his drawing "Very Slippy Weather."
SIMON JAMES
Firstly, this is a depiction of everyday life in the streets of late 18th, early 19th century London. And he's there. He's not in an institution. He's not being whipped or abused or badly treated. He's slightly separate from everybody else, but he's a part of his community. And he has a stake in the society that he lives in.
The second thing is that, although he's being portrayed as a slightly comic figure, the main comic figure is the very intelligent intellectual gentleman who is actually lacking so much in common sense that he slips on the ice when he's looking at his thermometer to try to find out what the weather is like. And I think what people had a sense of in the 18th century was that there are different types of intelligence. And there are different types of people. There are other types of sense, which can actually create a place for everybody in the society that we live in.