Those They Called Idiots

Simon Jarrett is a writer and historian specializing in the history of disability. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Open University and author of A History of Disability in England: From the Medieval Period to the Present Day (2023). He also writes about people with learning disabilities and the arts for Community Living magazine. He is Chair of Corali Dance Company, a leader in dance created by people with learning disabilities.

• Introduction Part One: Idiocy and Imbecility in the Eighteenth Century, c.1700-18121 Poor Foolish Lads and Weak Easy Girls: Legal Ideas of Idiocy2 Billy-noodles and Bird-wits: Cultural Ideas of Idiocy3 Idiots Abroad: Racial Ideas of Idiocy Part Two: New Ways of Thinking, 1812-18704 Medical Challenge: New Ideas in the Courtroom5 Pity and Loathing: New Cultural Thinking6 Colonies, Anthropologists and Asylums: Race and Intelligence7 Into the Idiot Asylum: The Great Incarceration Part Three: From Eugenics to Care in the Community, 1870 to the PresentDay8 After Darwin: Mental Deficiency, Eugenics and Psychology, 1870-19399 Back to the Community? 1939 to the Present ReferencesSelected Secondary ReadingAcknowledgementsPhoto AcknowledgementsIndex

Simon Jarrett is a mesmerising historian. He has an ear for tender, and sometimes even funny, stories about people with learning disabilities, while never shying away from the shocking abuse and casual indignities they experienced in the past and continue to be subjected to today. Jarrett overturns many assumptions about the history of disabled people and their interactions with different communities. His book is a history of medicine, science, law, philosophy, and psychology. Most of all, though, it is a history of lived experience. Jarrett’s story is not only a nuanced analysis of the lives of “idiots” from 1700 to the present; it is also a tribute to their struggles, needs, and desires.