Disability and the Victorians - (Disability History) by Iain Hutchison & Martin Atherton & Jaipreet Virdi (Paperback)

About the Book

Disability and the Victorians investigates the attitudes of Victorians towards people with impairments, illustrates how these influenced the interventions they introduced to support such people and considers the legacies they left behind by their actions and perspectives. A range of impairments are addressed in a variety of contexts.

Book Synopsis

Disability and the Victorians brings together in one collection a range of topics, perspectives and experiences from the Victorian era that present a unique overview of the development and impact of attitudes and interventions towards those with impairments during this time. The collection also considers how the legacies of these actions can be seen to have continued throughout the twentieth century right up to the present day. Subjects addressed include deafness, blindness, language delay, substance dependency, imperialism and the representation of disabled characters in popular fiction. These varied topics illustrate how common themes can be found in how Victorian philanthropists and administrators responded to those under their care. Often character, morality and the chance to be restored to productivity and usefulness overrode medical need and this both influenced and reflected wider societal views of impairment and inability.

From the Back Cover

The prejudices and challenges that people with impairments face in modern society are a direct consequence of the medicalisation of disability that occurred during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). This collection investigates how and why the legacies of Victorian attitudes and interventions continue into the present century. Taking a wide range of physical, sensory and mental impairments into consideration, the contributors show how Victorian philanthropic interventions in the fields of education, social policy, care provision, employment and employability sought to improve the lives of those who found themselves marginalised and excluded from mainstream society. Whether this exclusion resulted from illness, injury, disease or impairment, clear distinctions were made between those deemed able to be restored to societal norms of ability and behaviour and those who could not.

Offering an illustration of how Victorian attitudes and interventions were exported throughout the British Empire and beyond, this collection offers a timely and valuable insight into the shadow cast by our Victorian forebears.

Review Quotes

'Disability and the Victorians: Attitudes, Interventions, Legacies is a very timely work. In the midst of a global pandemic that has left many people newly impaired, there is an increased need for scholarship that provides frameworks for coming to terms with disability as a sociocultural phenomenon and a lived identity. [...] Disability and the Victorians makes an important contribution to the history of medicine and attitudes toward disability in Victorian Britain and beyond and provides a useful resource for scholars of nineteenth-century Britain.'
Joyce L. Huff, Journal of British Studies

'Disability and the Victorians encourages the reader to perceive these [Victorian] attitudes not as an event but as a chapter in a story that continues to this day. This collection challenges us to critically examine the systems and structures that perpetuate marginalization[...]Even though it encompasses tough subjects, Disability and the Victorians offers an academic study that eschews jargon; it guides the reader through the research in the field as if it were narrated through experience rather than academic findings.
Alberto Ruiz, SEL's Marginalia

Disability and the Victorians certainly fulfils its editors' desire to generate debate and spur further research: its contents encourage critical reflection on disabled people's experiences in the present day, thus enabling us to see how monumentally important the task of exploring the history of disability is.
Caitlin Doley (University of York), British Association for Victorian Studies

About the Author

Iain Hutchison is Research Affiliate in Economic & Social History at the University of Glasgow

Martin Atherton is Retired Course Leader for British Sign Language and Deaf Studies at the University of Central Lancashire

Jaipreet Virdi is Assistant Professor in History at the University of Delaware