"My historical research shows that much higher levels of inclusion are possible for people labelled disabled"

A new study by historian LUCY DELAP suggests we need to rethink the experiences of people with learning disabilities in the 20th century. Here she explains how many thrived in work and wider society

- LUCY DELAP

Many histories of people with learning disabilities focus on segregation. But although in the 19th and early 20th centuries there was a push to move them into asylums, that never affected the majority. Most lived outside such institutions and had to work. Historians haven’t looked much at lives in the community – yet that represented most people with learning disabilities.

My research covered most of the 20th century, until its closing decades saw major economic changes caused by deindustrialisation and the rise of new forms of work associated with computers, and new expectations of school qualifications. Those things had a real impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities, increasingly cutting them out of labour opportunities.

Until relatively recently, broad definitions included terms we wouldn’t use today, such as ‘mental deficiency’ or ‘handicap’. Those encompassed all kinds of cognitive impairments as well as those whose lives just didn’t quite fit the mould – troubled adolescents, people involved in petty crime, or those deemed promiscuous. Indeed, young women who got pregnant outside marriage were sometimes called ‘moral imbeciles’. We wouldn’t recognise those people today as having any kind of learning disability.

Employment rates among people with learning disabilities varied between about 40 and 70 per cent in the first half of the 20th century. It was quite gendered: men were much more likely to be in paid employment than women, who tended to do housework or informal childcare. These numbers were very high compared to today, when fewer than 5 per cent of people with learning disabilities are employed.