Those They Called Idiots

"In his recent magisterial history, Those They Called Idiots, Jarrett describes the foundation in 1855 of 'the world's first purpose-built asylum for idiots,' renamed the Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives in 1926. As Jarrett observes, the names have changed, but 'there has always been the ‘idiot,’ repackaged and represented by varieties of professionals over time.' . . . Jarrett celebrates the success of the 'great release' of people with learning disabilities from long incarceration. . . . Yet he recognizes that the task of society is still 'to adapt to all its human members.'"

“Jarrett is a mesmerizing historian. He has an ear for tender, and sometimes even funny, stories about people with learning disabilities, while never shying away from the shocking abuse and casual indignities they experienced in the past and continue to be subjected to today. Jarrett overturns many assumptions about the history of disabled people and their interactions with different communities. His book is a history of medicine, science, law, philosophy, and psychology. Most of all, though, it is a history of lived experience. Jarrett’s story is not only a nuanced analysis of the lives of ‘idiots’ from 1700 to the present; it is also a tribute to their struggles, needs, and desires.”

“Jarrett’s elegant and provocative book brings into focus for the first time the history of people with intellectual disabilities over three centuries. Drawing on a fascinating set of sources, Jarrett traces the ‘idiot’s’ journey from community life to institutionalization and back again, and in the process uncovers the richness and variety of lives lived by people with intellectual impairments in the past. This is a history marked by cruel stereotyping and harmful policies underpinned by the pseudoscience of eugenics, but it is also a history of love, protection, and integration. This humane history teaches us how society can adapt to accommodate all its members.”

"Jarrett’s Those They Called Idiots is a major rethinking of intellectual disability, from eugenics and the views of institutional authorities of the late nineteenth century to the thoughts and practice of our modern society. Jarrett examines new sources to argue that, while recognized as different in the social structures of a preindustrial or transitional age, there have always been accommodations for the ‘idiot.' Thus our present view of mental incapacity is in fact a continuation of a longstanding awareness of how those with intellectual disabilities can be integrated into society."

"Jarrett’s exceptionally readable—and beautifully illustrated—history describes in meticulous detail the way that this group has been treated by a largely uncomprehending world. . . . The history of learning disabilities matter to us all because in our response we can see a mirror for who we are and what we care about. We should be grateful to Simon Jarrett for telling this complex, compelling, and frequently troubling story with such tremendous clarity and style. I can’t recommend this wonderful book highly enough, even if—especially if?—you have no lived experience of the subject."