British Parliament passes the Mental Deficiency Act

1913. The British parliament passes the Mental Deficiency Act, which replaces the 1886 Idiots Act. This Act takes into account the recommendations made in the 1908 report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, and so adds two new categories of "mental defective," "feeble-minded persons" and "moral imbeciles," to the older law's two categories of "idiots" and "imbeciles."

Those four classes were defined as follows:

1) Idiots: those so deeply defective as to be unable to guard themselves against common physical dangers.

2) Imbeciles: those whose defectiveness does not amount to idiocy, but it nonetheless so pronounced that they are incapable of managing themselves or their affairs, or, in the case of children, of being taught to do so.

3) Feeble-minded persons: those whose weakness does not amount to imbecility, but who yet require care, supervision, or control, for their protection or for the protection of others, or, in the case of children, are incapable of receiving benefit from the instruction in ordinary schools.

4) Moral imbeciles: those who display mental weakness coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities, and on whom punishment has little or no deterrent effect.

At the height of the Mental Deficiency Act there were 65,000 individuals institutionalized in Britain. The Act remained in effect until 1959, when it was repealed by the Mental Health Act.

-Amy Dyrbye & Caroline Lyster

British Parliament passes the Mental Deficiency Act

1913. The British parliament passes the Mental Deficiency Act, which replaces the 1886 Idiots Act. This Act takes into account the recommendations made in the 1908 report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, and so adds two new categories of "mental defective," "feeble-minded persons" and "moral imbeciles," to the older law's two categories of "idiots" and "imbeciles."

Those four classes were defined as follows:

1) Idiots: those so deeply defective as to be unable to guard themselves against common physical dangers.

2) Imbeciles: those whose defectiveness does not amount to idiocy, but it nonetheless so pronounced that they are incapable of managing themselves or their affairs, or, in the case of children, of being taught to do so.

3) Feeble-minded persons: those whose weakness does not amount to imbecility, but who yet require care, supervision, or control, for their protection or for the protection of others, or, in the case of children, are incapable of receiving benefit from the instruction in ordinary schools.

4) Moral imbeciles: those who display mental weakness coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities, and on whom punishment has little or no deterrent effect.

At the height of the Mental Deficiency Act there were 65,000 individuals institutionalized in Britain. The Act remained in effect until 1959, when it was repealed by the Mental Health Act.

-Amy Dyrbye & Caroline Lyster