Undisciplined and a Moral Danger
Fright, Idleness and Immorality as Attributions of "Imbecile Children" in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain
Dados Bibliográficos
| ID | 5161965 |
|---|---|
| Autores | W Sims-Schouten (0000-0002-4463-6057, UCL London UK, autor correspondente) |
| Ano | 2025 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Fascículo | 1 |
| Páginas | e70014-e70014 |
| Data de publicação | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sim |
| Open Access | Sim |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Periódico | Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores do periódico | ISSN: 0022-5061 • E-ISSN: 1520-6696 |
| Editora | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/jhbs.70014 |
| PMID | 39835782 |
| OpenAlex | W4406670988 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referências citadas | 50 |
From the second half of the nineteenth-century treatment of "imbecile" children in Britain underwent significant change. Examining the period from 1870 to 1920 when imbecility became a discrete category, and a matter of concern in policy and practice, this paper focuses on conceptualizations around fright, idleness, morality, and parental mental state as behavioral, emotional, and psychological causes and attributions of "imbecility" in children. I view this in light of the Victorian emotional culture of "care and control," which was driven by a shift in cost-cutting and fear of the impact of "imbecile children" on society, justifying exclusions, defining boundaries, and driving change. In light of the legacy of the "deserving/undeserving paradigm" and "care and control" agenda propagated by the Poor Law established in 1834 in England (and in 1845 in Scotland), "idleness" and "immorality" implied a form of abnormality, while "fright" could cause abnormality, and all needed to be controlled. Furthermore "fright" was classified as an (external) emotional event or trigger that has a lasting impact, and an early indication of including psychological factors (in addition to somatic) in explanations of "deficiencies." Using the Scottish National Institution for the Education of Imbecile Children founded in 1862 and the Waifs and Strays Society for destitute children, established in London in 1881 as examples, I argue that concerns about the rise of "mental deficiency" in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods were driven by moral panic as a force for social control, and to a lesser extent, the concept of care
Aesthetics · Attribution · Criminology · Immorality · Moral panic · Morality · Period (music) · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Child Abuse and Trauma · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
The expression of the emotions in man and animals.
The Problem of Mental Deficiency
Canalization of Development and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters
Accommodating “Imbeciles”or the “Weak-Minded”
Facing Fear
The development of institutional care for 'idiots and imbeciles' in Scotland
Institutionalization of mentally-impaired children in Scotland, c .1855–1914
A Pest to Society’
Mental testing in the early twentieth century
Emotions
Political dimensions of ‘the psychosocial’
Democratizing mental health
A troublesome girl is pushed through’
Where is the Fault
Eugenics in Britain
Care and trauma
The deserving and the undeserving? Refugees, asylum seekers and welfare in Britain
Introduction
About to Meet Her Maker
Girls, Boys, and Emotions
Her Father's Daughter Florence Davenport-Hill, 1829-1919
Diabetes and "Defective" Genes in the Twentieth-Century United States
Disabled Children
Rethinking Mental Retardation
The Maternal Imagination. The Fears of Pregnant Women in Seventeenth-Century Holland
The Biology of Stupidity
The Physiology of Mind, the Unity of Nature, and the Moral Order in Victorian Thought
My Resisting Getting Well
"Safeguarding the Interests of the State" From Defective Delinquent Girls
| Velocidade de citação | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | Não |