Transcript
NARRATOR
The Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century and brought many machines that were tricky to operate. If you couldn't operate the machines, you couldn't work and earn money, and so had to be looked after. One choice was to go into the first type of institutional care, the workhouse. It wasn't a good place to live.
In 1855, the first purpose built asylum, the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots was opened. The aim of the early asylums was to train and educate people with learning disabilities. The queen's cousins, Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon lived in the Royal Earlswood hidden away. It was here also that John Langdon Down first described the condition that is now known as Down syndrome.
From the beginning of the 20th century, attitudes towards people with learning disabilities began to change. They were now seen as dangerous, especially the women. In 1904, Sir Francis Galton defied the science of eugenics, which stated that only the fit and healthy should be allowed to have children. This idea was to have a serious and terrifying impact on people with disabilities.
A year before the start of the First World War, the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 meant that people with learning disabilities could be made to live in institutions even if they didn't want to. In these places, men and women were kept apart to make sure they didn't have any children. Many never returned to their own homes and families.
Negative attitudes towards people with learning disabilities weren't just here in Britain. Around the same time in America, people were only allowed to get married if they had a certificate to say they were normal and well. It was also common practice in some countries such as Sweden to stop people with learning disabilities having children by sterilising them. This is still carried out in Australia today.
But things were about to get much worse in other parts of the world. In Hitler's Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945, doctors and nurses killed thousands of children and adults with learning disabilities in hospitals and clinics. They were said to be useless eaters and have lives unworthy of life. They were starved, given drugs, or gassed. And some were experimented on.
After the horrors of the war came some hope. Judy Fryd, the mother of a child with a learning disability set up an organisation called the National Association of Parents of Backward Children. This later became MENCAP. In 1946, the NHS took control of the institutions. From then on, they were called hospitals.
At the beginning of the 1950s, there were thought to be 55,000 people with learning disabilities living in hospitals in England and Wales. That's more people than you'd find in some small towns and cities in England. And in 1948, things appeared to be improving further with the United Nations adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 3 states that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.
As Elvis Presley's fame grew, a report published by the National Council for Civil Liberties in 1950 said that the living conditions of those in hospital was very poor and that patients were often stopped from leaving because they were needed for work in the hospital. Some didn't even have a learning disability. They told a story of one lady who had to live in an institution because she didn't know how many feathers were on a chicken.