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Question:In the 19th century, what would the label imbecile suggest about the mental capacity of someone. In current society, someone with for example: a classified 'mental illness' of some sort, adhd, trisomy 21 or autism: how would any of these be labelled for instance.
Just curious to know on what basis they categorised anyone as imbecile, idiot or other class. How many classes were there in all. Thanks for your input. Just trying to understand the uk system.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: In the 19th century, what would the label imbecile suggest about the mental capacity of someone. In current society, someone with for example: a classified 'mental illness' of some sort, adhd, trisomy 21 or autism: how would any of these be labelled for instance.
Just curious to know on what basis they categorised anyone as imbecile, idiot or other class. How many classes were there in all. Thanks for your input. Just trying to understand the uk system.

Historical pseudo-scientific definitions include:

Cretin - Significant intellectual or developmental disabilities

Idiot - The greatest degree of intellectual disability - last "scientific" definition identified this as a person with a mental age of 2 years or less.

Imbecile - Less extreme than Idiot

And in the 1901 UK Census, there was actually a spot for Imbecile (but not as I understand it, Cretin or Idiot).

In the 1850 thru 1880 US census, you had "deaf, dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict" The 1890 census had the ever descriptive "defective in mind".

But the most important thing to recognize is who was actually collecting this information - CENSUS TAKERS. And the highest requirement for a census taker (especially 1900 and earlier) was the ability to WRITE!

They were given very minimal training - certainly no psychological training in the recognition of any mental illness. So who is actually determining the "imbecile" status or "insane" or "idiotic"??? A census taker.

Often just lack of education could be taken as a mental illness by a census taker.

Early on in my genealogy life, someone (I wish I could recall who so I could give credit) described a person who grew up in the isolated mountains of Kentucky. This person had absolutely no "school" education of any kind. None. But neither did their mother or father who obviously survived, functioned, were sufficient enough to live, have and raise a family. Now take this person and place them in New York City. What would a census taker "classify" them as?? Idiotic? Imbecile? Probably. But they aren't. Determination was done by a census taker....so take from that what you will.

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQBasics...
goes into it in a lot of detail. 30 years ago we used the term "mentally retarded". It covered a lot of ground. Sometimes perfectly normal kids with 20/200 eyesight or partial deafness got labeled "MR" by mistake. I expect some of the "imbiciles" in the UK 1881 were mis-diagnosed. Some were not; some women back then drank while pregnant and took patent medicine with lead in it.

There are constant arguments over how to test for intelligence. If, for instance, you show someone a picture of a telephone with no cord and ask what is wrong, he may not know, if his parents don't have one (or, today, if they use a cell phone exclusively.)

The site I cited said
IQ Range Classification
70-80 Borderline deficiency
50-69 Moron
20-49 Imbecile
below 20 Idiot

It noted society has mis-used the terms. Also, I suspect there wouldn't be a lot of difference between someone who scored 69 on the IQ test and someone who scored 70, but if "Morons" had to be institutionalized, or were not allowed to vote, or got hospitalization instead of prison for stealing apples off a display, while dull normals didn't, you'd have an interesting time of it.

It Could mean anything, even as late 1920 if you had epilepsy
you were regarded as having a mental illness. The definition of what was regarded as a mental illness in the past was anyone who was odd or a bit different, I thank my lucky stars that I was not born then.

Now census records are more sensitive in the U.S. than they were in the past. I notice on the 1870 census of Austin, Texas they had the Texas Lunatic Asylum. Today it is the State Hospital.

You have to realize many years ago, they didn't have the diagnostic tools that they have today. Trisomy 21 I don't think was heard of back in the 19th century. They just knew that some people were strange or deficient. They knew nothing about brain damage to a baby as a result of loss of oxygen during delivery.

If a person suffered a severe head trauma and afterwards their behavior was altered, people could put two and two together and could figure out it was the head injury. They didn't have Cat Scans and MRIs. Most people lived in rural areas and they didn't have the ambulance services and emergency services like they do today.

People were often confined to an institution because large families were unable to cope with certain behavior. I had an uncle as a young man that went to work for the state hospital in Austin, Texas. This uncle was born in 1900. He was told not to talk to any of the "patients," don't answer any of their questions etc. They kept asking him what his name was, where he was from etc. Finally he told them his name was Lee. They all jumped on him and started repeatedly asking him all sorts of questions. A guard came alone and beat them off with great big keys.

Can you imagine what a horror chamber that was for those people. Nobody would talk to them or acknowledge them as humans. If they weren't totally mad when they went in, they were after confinement.

I think of what Ted said about the eyesight problem. I know a woman, probably now in her late 70s. Her mother was told she was retarded in the 5th grade and her mother took her out of school. Well, it turned out she has a severe hearing problem. When you talks it sounds a little like babble. But she worked for a man with an auto electric company and he said she caught on very well. For years she wouldn't learn to drive because she thought she was mentally deficient. Finally, one of the nuns at the school her children went to convinced her that there was nothing wrong with her brain. She learned to drive very quickly.

If this is a UK question why have mainly USA researchers answered where are all you genealogist in the UK.

There are techincal distinctions between the terms (as listed above), there were others used on the forms as well... such as "simple minded since birth" (or other point in time when accident or illness resulted in a reduction of mental capacity). Occasionally the event which caused the disability was even recorded on the census. Some of them weren't officially required for the census, but whose conditions were noted in more detail as I describe here.

Though the formal labels applied, I doubt many of the people concerned had much in the way of formal diagnoses. It may well have often depended on how the parents described them.

The most common for learning disabilities I've seen have been Simple Minded, with Idiot and Imbecile cropping up at times. I don't often come across moron.

Lunatic is the most common for mental health problems, and there is almost always a clear disctinction between this and the "simple minded" type catagories. I have also seen "Lunacy brought about by....." and a condition listed. In this case the lunacy was described as temporary.