The following letter was written in Chicago in 1914 by the mother of a profoundly disabled son to his teacher in an ‘idiot asylum’ in rural Illinois.
“Will you find out if S— is in need of anything and let me know. Also will you see if his shoes are big enough? His Oxfords I know are but if his old shoes seem small, wish you would throw them out. I don’t want the child to suffer with his feet. If you will do that for me I will appreciate it very much. I miss him so, and often wonder if those little details are noticed. Wonder if he misses his mama. He loved me so much it seems a pity to put him away. Is little S— learning to talk or is he just the same? Sometimes I still have hope for him although I know it is useless.”
As the dad of a profoundly learning disabled son who, likewise, is in (a modern version) of institutional care, it strikes home in so many ways: the polite, almost deferential attitude towards the authorities, with the hope that if you’re polite and friendly they’ll look after your son better; the everyday nature of the inquiries—shoes, feet, and the endless anxiety that these ‘little details’ won’t be noticed; the almost embarrassed nature of the revelation of her mutual love for him and the deep regret that he has been ‘put away’; and finally the hope against hope that he might develop speech and the desperate, humiliating, heartrending acceptance that ‘it is useless’.
100 years later, everything has changed. But so much remains the same.
[Quoted in James W Trent’s magisterial Inventing the Feeblemind, A History of intellectual disability in the United States. Oxford, (2017)]