"All hope abandon, ye who enter here."
– Dante
Invisibility and Abandonment
From Menace to Mental Age
During this period, at least one state-supported institution existed in every state. The number of residents increased from 25,000 to 50,000. The ideas of parole and institutional care were promoted. At their peak, public institutions housed approximately 4 percent of all people with mental retardation but consumed the vast majority of public funds for services.
By the mid-1920s, professional views of persons with disabilities changed. Superintendents, including Dr. Walter E. Fernald who had previously spoken about the menace of feeblemindedness, began to see the positive results of education and community interaction for people with disabilities.
As Goddard stated in 1928: "The problem of the moron is a problem of education and training… feeblemindedness is not incurable… [and] the feebleminded do not generally need to be segregated in institutions… "
With hindsight, some professionals discovered that persons with disabilities did benefit from education and could function in the community. The notion of intelligence testing was also challenged and shown to be highly subjective in measuring one's ability to function in society. Still, IQ scores became permanent labels for persons with disabilities.
Gunnar Dybwad on Mental Age
Don't say "IQ testing", but say "psychological testing," because the most important thing was the mental age. The concept of mental age, that we were dealing with children you see, that was the great misunderstanding, you see.
And so we thought these were child-like people. The I.Q. is confusing. It's this concept of the mental age that he had the mental age of six and therefore would behave like a child of six, which was nonsense.
Because no child of six weighs 130 pounds and has lived 22 years. And living 22 years makes you a different individual than living 6 years.
Economic Depression and Lack of Education
In spite of an increased understanding of the abilities of persons labeled mentally retarded, and the positive outcomes seen by professionals, the institutions continued to grow in size and number. One reason for this growth was the inability of many families to meet the financial needs of their sons or daughters with disabilities; the lack of educational services also contributed. The Great Depression of 1929, a global crisis characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, placed a financial strain on all Americans but particularly on individuals and families with special needs.
During the 1920s and 1930s, special education classes were offered primarily in large cities. Many families sent their children to institutions because they believed that only there would they receive training. Negative attitudes about persons with disabilities persisted and, coupled with the lack of community services, the demand for institutional placements increased.
Extreme Consequences of Eugenics
While our country continued to house large numbers of people in institutions, the theme of abandonment reached its extreme in Germany in the 1930s.
We know of the Holocaust and the killing of 6 million Jews, Poles, Romanian Gypsies, and other groups by the Nazis. What is less commonly known is that one of the earliest populations the Nazis set out to destroy was people with disabilities. One hundred thousand children and adults with mental and physical disabilities were exterminated. Some who managed to live were subjected to inhumane and unconscionable medical experiments.
At Hademar Hospital, more than 10,000 people were killed. After being gassed, the bodies were cremated. The theme of abandonment continued even after death, with graves marked by numbers or not at all.
T-4 Programme
The headquarters of Germany's Euthanasia Programme, established in 1939 by the German government, was located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin. The code name for the Programme was T-4.
Hitler's rise to power was guided by the principles of racial hygiene, racial purity, and national health. The Nazi regime was committed to removing those individuals deemed unfit to live and produce inferior offspring. Hitler's definition of unfit was extremely broad and not only included "inferior races," but individuals with disabilities as well. By lethal injection or at killing stations, hundreds of thousands of people were put to death.
Germans are finally honoring all of those individuals with disabilities who were the first killed.
Tiergartenstrasse 4 photos courtesy and with permission of Professor Elizabeth Schiltz (August 2014)
Worsening Conditions During World War II
When the U.S. entered World War II, many attendants at public institutions were drafted, leaving a shortage of workers. Admissions to public institutions, however, continued to increase. Many institutions closed some of their colonies and placed more residents in each building to economize. Some institutions placed two residents to a bed and in hallways.
Conscientious Objectors
Institutions addressed their worker shortage by employing conscientious objectors. Records of their observations raised public awareness about institutional conditions that had never been disclosed. In 1948, Albert Deutsch wrote Shame of the States, a photographic exposé of New York's Letchworth Village. Originally designed to avoid the problems common to larger institutions, Letchworth was considered one of America's better institutions. Deutsch's exposé, and other exposés of this time served to highlight the horrible conditions in all institutions.
After decades of invisibility, persons living in public institutions were again the objects of attention.
Video footage showing President Franklin D. Roosevelt walking
With courtesy and permission of the Pennsylvania State Archives, MG-254.1 Audio-Visual Materials, Jimmie DeShong Motion Picture Film, 1937, featuring Franklin D. Roosevelt
Letters to Parents and Superintendents
Courtesy: Ed Burke