Those They Called Idiots: The Idea of the Disabled Mind from 1700 to the Present Day

Sensitive and sweeping, this is a history of the little-known lives of people with learning disabilities from the communities of eighteenth-century England, to the nineteenth-century asylum, to care in today's society.

Those They Called Idiots traces the little-known lives of people with learning disabilities from the communities of eighteenth-century England to the nineteenth-century asylum, to care in today's society. Using evidence from civil and criminal courtrooms, joke books, slang dictionaries, novels, art, and caricature, it explores the explosive intermingling of ideas about intelligence and race, while bringing into sharp focus the lives of people often seen as the most marginalized in society.

Author: Simon Jarrett
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 06/10/2025
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.72h x 5.04w x 1.26d
ISBN13: 9781836390718
ISBN10: 1836390718
BISAC Categories:
- History | General

About the Author
Simon Jarrett is a research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the editor of Community Living Magazine.