Proceedings of the 1st European Congress on the History of Psychiatry and Mental Health Care

unemployment of the post-civil war period made it far more difficult for educated idiots to gain employment in the community, while the culture of success and "hustle and bustle" meant that "without a head one could not get ahead" (p. 134). Education remained central to the institution but was adapted from the "three Rs" to industrial training, and from gymnastic stimulation of the senses to military drill. Education would train productive, working "inmates" for "colonies" which expanded to populations of over 2,000, a size that would have horrified the founders of idiot asylums. Between 1890 and 1910, under the influence of Social Darwinism, there were increased demands to institutionalize "mental defectives". The institutional population rose from 5,000 to 21,000. Superintendents actively propagated the idea that crime and mental deficiency were linked, that mental deficiency was rapidly increasing, and that for the safety and eugenic fitness of the community defectives should be segregated in greater numbers. However the serious flirtation of superintendents with eugenic ideas was brief. Soon World War One superintendents distanced themselves from the eugenic lobby and instead allied themselves with the mental hygiene movement's vision of adaptation of the mentally disordered. Superintendents extended their influence into the community through "farm colonies" and "parole" in employment in the community. Such policies were viewed favourably by state governments as cheap options, alleviating pressure for further institutional expansion. Trent argues that support for sterilization needs to be understood, not only as eugenic policy, but also as a supplement to parole. Ironically, although the arrival of the depression placed even greater strain on institutions, mass unemployment made parole far more difficult. Colonies survived by neglecting standards of care and became dependent on the labour of residents to produce food, clean, and act as carers for less able residents. In the1950s public awareness of conditions of care was raised by the emergence of middle-class confessional accounts of coping with retarded children. Rather than precipitating mass withdrawal, this catharsis legitimized the use of institutional care. The postwar baby boom, an increasingly mobile workforce, and an idealized nuclear family provided the conditions for the most rapid period of expansion in residential care and special education of the mentally retarded, rising from 81,000 in 1936 to 193,000 by 1967. De-institutionalization began in the 1970s in reaction to a new critique of the institution, awareness of the rights of residents, and financial cuts by state governments who …