Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
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Message 1.Β
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Message 2
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Saturday, 18th July 2009
definitely not abuse but how i was aware of it in the 1060s which was not a pc age lol
in my scout troop (about 30 of us)there was a mongol lad - richard - of about 30 (mongol = NOT downs) - he was accepted as part of the troop and we didnt even think of him as different
he couldnt take part in the games - british bulldog etc - because he was sooooo strong - everything else he was ok
part of the 1st and 2nd class badges awards involved knots and splicing - you learnt that part from Richard who could tie any knot and splice any rope - and he used to sit there and explain things superbly and we all learnt from him
its quite amusing that when the terms "downs syndrome" came online as a pc term - we realised richard was suffering from a disability lol
he died at 36 rip
stLink to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 3
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Saturday, 18th July 2009
tahat was of course 1960s lol
Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 4
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Sunday, 19th July 2009
A great uncle of mine suffered from spinal TB from birth. He was less than five feet tall and hunch-backed. He did not have much schooling, yet his mother was determined to make sure he could make a living for himself.
This was the East End of London just over 100 years ago. The family had had a hard time after the bread-winner had died but my great-grandmother through the system of sweated-labour in the rag-trade had established out-working relationships with a number of tailors.
One of these tailors took the lad on as an apprentice. He was ugly to look at - I only have one picture of him in my grandparents wedding photograph - but he was probably cheap and came from a background familiar with hard work.
In due course my disabled great-uncle became a good tailor because a decent man gave him a chance. He sadly died just after the war in the late Forties so I never knew him. My father was still wearing a suit he made nearly thirty years later.
It needs to be said that that side of my family was Scottish and that the tailor was Jewish.
I don't think that people then were as unpleasant to the disabled as they have been since. In those days and those conditions there was only one measure: were you willing to earn your daily bread?
In my experience the disabled are often more capable in their work than the supposedly fully abled.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 5
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Sunday, 19th July 2009
Big Lad,
Looking at the lists of inmates in poorhouses or workhouses at the turn of the 19th/20th century recently, I was struck by the large proportion of these unfortunates who were listed as 'idiot', 'cripple', 'lunatic', or worse.
These were people who didn't qualify for entry into the many asylums that could be found everywhere, or didn't receive help from any other source.
Of course, many of these customs are based on biblical texts, but it was the Victorians who seem to have institutionalised both physical and mental disabilities.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 6
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Monday, 20th July 2009
delrick53,
In many cases the disabled were as said placed in 'institutions' but it has to be remembered that the poor families had difficulty feeding their healthy children until they where old enough to work but it was extremely difficult to care for the severely handicapped.
This was particularly evident while education was denied them because of the long held belief that because a person could stand unaided that they were cretins.
Therefore the institutions were seen as the only viable option. This does not excuse the more affluent who palmed off their 'failures' to the hide them.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 7
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Monday, 20th July 2009
Spruggles,
I agree, but I was thinking more about the attitudes and the way people treated the disabled during the Victorian era.
Before that time, and there isn't much information out there, it seems that these unfortunates were looked after by the community, especially in rural areas. They were seen as part of the community, and you can find them mentioned in local histories all over rural Britain. The nicknames may appear cruel - 'Mad Jack' - 'Jock the Limp' - 'Crazy Cathy', but like many famous blues musicians, it was just a name.
It's possible that formalising the care of these people actually did more harm than good, and pre-Victorian 'Care in the Community' was a better alternative.
What is also significant is the number of single mothers who found themselves in the poorhouse. Could this have been because of the Victorians attitude to 'family values' ?
Before this time, formal marriage was reserved for a particular class, with the poor opting for 'common law' marriages at best.
If the 'breadwinner' died, there was no stigma attached to the surviving partner.
When the Victorians formalised marriage, we see an influx of 'single mothers' and their children entering the poorhouse, as legally, they had never been married, and therefore didn't qualify for widows benefits.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 8
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Friday, 24th July 2009
Spruggles,
What's the best book to read about this sort of thing?? I'm not aware of any of the points you made about the Victorian era.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 9
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Saturday, 25th July 2009
The workhouse was the last desperate act of many seeking a way to keep body and soul together. This was the model for the later `lunatic' asylums and, in many cases, local hospitals. Many of the people who ended up there were those without family or people whose family could no longer carry the time and expense of looking after them.
Nowadays we don't have workhouses and lunatic asylums we have care in the community. How different is it these days for such people: that is the challenge?
I have some third cousins who died in the East Herts hospital of tuberculosis during the Twenties and Thirties. I know the extended family at the time tried hard to keep them at home but about five died in what had been the workhouse not long before.
Whilst I condemn the judgemental attitude of certain Victorian poor law guardians at least they provided something better than an early, squalid and lonely death under the railway arches. We also forget that many modern hospitals have their origin in what were original workhouse establishments. I can name Barnet General, Whittington Hospital, the old Edgware General and Buckingham just for starters.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 10
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Saturday, 25th July 2009
stanilic,
I got the following link from another thread, and it's a truly fascinating site.
If you search 'disabled' on the site you'll find a lot of information about those disabled people who were both destitute AND disabled.
Obviously, it varies not only from country to country (with different 'Poor Laws'), but from parish to parish.
Well worth spending some time there, considering this was going on a hundred years ago, and didn't really improve until after WWI.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 11
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Friday, 31st July 2009
I think all sorts of abusive customs have been allowed to perpetuate, all kept rather quiet by communities. The Aztecs are probably among the worst offfenders in this respect. Suti in India appears fairly horrific, and honour killing etc, and foot-binding (as it was curiously named).
But the unwritten history of accepted abuse (by communities and civilsation), towards those not able to speak up for themselves and not so good in defense appears even in this messageboard to be missing, and still kept quiet.....Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 12
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Sunday, 2nd August 2009
delrick53
An interesting link which I appreciate.
The quality of workhouse care varied so much from local authority to local authority. My knowledge is based on London which had developed a lot more specialised non-workhouse homes for the disabled, the long-term ill and the insane than other areas.
My great-grandfather had a small role in resolving the social problems caused by the Bethnal Green Poor Law Guardians in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. They had resisted the application of outdoor relief for the poor until they were forced to do so by legislation. My great-grandfather's role as a churchwarden was to act as a local conduit for charitable funds raised within the City to supplement outdoor relief within his parish. I have no doubt there were others engaged in this activity elsewhere and they certainly reduced the numbers in the workhouse and living in squalid poverty. This was the start of social welfare as we know it today.
We tend to forget that our social services, including social housing were very much a product of quite humane legislation and endeavours of the Victorians. I think we have allowed our outlook to become over-burdened by the very worst of the tales from earlier in the nineteenth century when the Utilitarian perspective diminished the value of a humane system of social welfare. We have to appreciate these were the same values as allowed the Great Hunger in Ireland to happen. A cruel indifference to the weak and the poor very much at odds with the values of an ostensibly Christian society. An irony not lost on Charles Dickens among others.
However, we must not forget that in the same way as today we have our social and economic theorists with their unintended consequences, the Victorians and earlier had the same.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 13
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Thursday, 6th August 2009
A parallel question, is what abuses have been allowed to exist in the first place and in effect allowed to continue. Child abuse historically is a quiet subject seemingly, except when they (our ancestors) appeared in the workshop and the factory floor, as mentioned previously. Absurdly high numbers appear in statistics compiled in this current age, most of which logically and repulsively occurs within their own homes and often perpetrated by their own parents or relations/friends.
For this sort of thing to be accepted generally by a society, knowledge of how these things are accepted/tolerated even promoted, might take things forward (or back to a better time?!).Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 14
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Friday, 7th August 2009
Big Lad
A good sensitive point which we must not ignore. It is largely apparent that the abuse of children lies within the family or close to the family.
We have to accept that in the pre-industrial age there was nothing unusual in putting a child to work. There was no schooling and even no real sense of childhood. Also there was an expectation that most children would not survive to adulthood.
So our sensitivities to this issue are those of our time and not then.
However, we need to appreciate the Victorian reformers who acted very strongly against child prostitution. We owe our prevailing age of consent to that period and must not forget it.
Also sending children up chimneys and down mines was an extension of the pre-industrial perception of children as additional bread winners. We would all agree now that there is a difference between a child minding some cattle or sheep and a child sent down into a dark and unsanitary pit to dig coal. Yet, for a family living on pathetic wages in 1840 this could be the difference between getting by and going hungry.
Once again it was the Victorians who put a stop to this practice and eventually brought in state education for all.
From this and what I have written above I am open to accusations that I have a good opinion of the Victorian social reformers. I do indeed: they got organised, argued their case and did much good for people weaker than them. Eventually this brought us to our modern ideas as to social welfare.
I am afraid, however, that I do not see Oscar Wilde as the great martyr to homosexual freedom as some do today. He was arrested, charged and found guilty of abusing fourteen year old youths from the Telegraph Office where an illegal paedophile network exploited vulnerable boys. Such paedophilia has nothing whatsoever to do with homosexual rights and so to me Oscar Wilde was nothing more than a serial child sex abuser.
This will put me at odds with some but I also appreciate that without hypocrisy our society today could not function in the way that it does.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 15
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Friday, 4th September 2009
Some interesting arguments about change that occured during the middle and later Victorian Years. As someone growing up during the late 70s and 80s, I was not really made aware of such things, and many other very interesting ideas and understandings etc. All I knew until more recent years was how terrible things were.
I read recently that Saints Days were not exactly observed in any sort of holiday form, and that until it was banned, a good public execution once every 2 months or so might have been all the excitement abuse that a community might have had.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 16
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Saturday, 5th September 2009
Just to round off this discussion I had an interesting chat with my 93 year old mother last week. She is suffering from senile dementia but has a converse clarity about times long gone. I got her talking about her mother.
Now her mother was a very beautiful woman of Scots-Irish stock. Sadly in her forties she contracted breast cancer that was not then treatable and so the cancer spread around her body into the brain.
She was latterly committed to a lunatic asylum which was located in a former work-house.
In 1940 shortly before she died, my mother aged 24 and her younger sister aged 16 visited her. At the time their brother was in the Forces. The building was a grim place. They found my grandmother chained to a bed in a padded cell in quite an incoherent condition. My aunt screamed and fled. My mother, aware she could do nothing for her mother, went to retrieve her sister who she found sobbing hysterically at the bus-stop. They never saw their mother again as she died not long afterwards at the age of 50.
Anyone want to talk about the good old days?Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 17
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Sunday, 6th September 2009
Yep. Anyday. (and I'll let you know when my discussion is being rounded out)
And Why? because its interesting, moving, and human (perversely enough) etc etc
The good old days can be categorised, as you yourself have categorised the good old days.
An understanding of western history and the change that has occured over the last 100, 200, 250, 350 years is key in a discussion about the good ol days. And we need to agree on some fundamentals. Can't do that. No discussion. Talk amongst yourslves until the end of time.
One thing is for sure, if you believe in mankind (or have a humanist approach to life) then there really were good old days (perhaps even during feudal and semi-feudal times. waco right?). Anyone suffering because of abusive people or people made abusive by generaly accepted custom and the excuse for custom, might only know in their lives there right to life, and the physiological will to live.
As usual, we have no discussion, if you truly believe that Government has forced people to be civilised to one another only in the last 50 years??? A question funnily enough, in which I can be convinced?!!Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 18
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Thursday, 10th September 2009
You are in control Big Lad, it was my mood at the time as earlier that day I had just brought a sad old woman down from the misery of her condition.
Personally, I don't give a stuff about government. It is the people who matter and their story is yet to be told. What is relevant is that most are better people and more tolerant than the story-tellers would have us believe.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 19
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Sunday, 13th September 2009
Stanilic,
A tragic story. I didn't realise it was so bad so recently.
During the 80's and 90's I was involved with some people who had been in institutions for most of their lives (they were in their 50's), and I was pleasantly surprised to see how many young people accepted them into the community.
The only hostility came from one elderly single male and his (Tory) councillor (who wasn't re-elected).
There used to be a mentally ill person who lived here in the 1870's. She lived with her mother, and made a living delivering water from the river at a flat rate of one half-penny a bucket.
She had a fearsome reputation, and on one occasion got the better of a visiting soldier who had given her cheek, much to the amusement of the locals who paid her fine.
When her mother died, it was decided to send her to the poorhouse, much against the wishes of the local people, many of whom who had given her cheek when they were children.
She was last seen in the early morning being placed in a carriage from the poorhouse, and was never seen again.
The woman's name was Kirsty Rule, and although she was called 'Daft Kirsty' by most, I don't think there was any malice.
It was after I moved into this cottage 5 years ago that I discovered that it had been built by the overseer of the relevant poorhouse (for his daughters), and he would have been the person responsible for 'Daft Kirsty's' welfare in her final years.
I didn't find out about Kirsty until my post M7, and it does seem to confirm what I said then about names being just that.
Perhaps small towns are more tolerant and supportive ?Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 20
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Monday, 14th September 2009
You are in control Big Lad, it was my mood at the timeΒ
Sure. Nay bother.
I would say you might have gone a little OTT however. But what's in a word?
Your critique of government appears to lean on historians, noticeably!
I salute that!
When ordinary people have the opportunity, freedom, whatever, to get away with abuse, it reminds me of honour killing and the like. The quieter stuff however, always to people with some sort of disability is the next future IMO.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 21
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Monday, 14th September 2009
Big Lad,
Can't see it happening here. Quite the opposite in fact.
I've lived and worked in small towns and a couple of cities, and in my experience one moronic remark will be challenged by 10 positive ones.
People may turn a blind eye to crime, but not to the abuse of the mentally or physically disabled or those with learning difficulties.
My youngest has worked with autistic kids in her spare time since she was 14 (she's 25 now), and she agrees.
I've never approved of the term 'honour killing'. the one thing that it isn't is honourable, and the term should be consigned to history along with those who practice this vile crime. Those who approve of this barbaric religious practice should publicly condemned, spiritual leaders or not.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 22
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Tuesday, 15th September 2009
Del,
I agree with almost everything in your most recent message.
primitive stuff??!Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 23
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Tuesday, 15th September 2009
Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the first English monarch to see her name given to the period of her reign whilst still living. The Victorian Age was characterised by......
I picked this off a website recently!
can anyone add to the missing end part of the sentence (sorry no prizes, only cheap French grog)???!!Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 24
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Tuesday, 15th September 2009
...grinding poverty, child prostitution, and the rampant hypocrisy of the ruling classes ?
Seems to fit.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 25
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Wednesday, 16th September 2009
Oddly enough it goes as follows.
was characterised by rapid change....Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 26
Posted by Big Lad (U1949096) on Wednesday, 16th September 2009
I might add of course, the factors you mentioned are part of this, but the webpage in fact stated as follows:
The Victorian Age was characterised by rapid change and developments in nearly every sphere - from advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge to changes in population growth and location. Families were large and patriarchal. They encouraged hard work, respectibility, social deference and religious confirmity, but while this view of 19th century life was valid, it was frequently challenged by contempraries. Women were often portrayed as either Madonnas or whores, yet increasing educational and employment opportunities gave many a role outside the family. Politics was also important to the Victorians - they believed in the perfection of their evolved representative government. Work and play expanded dramatically. The railway network stimulated travel and leisure opportunities for all, and by the 1870s visits to the seaside, race meetings and football matches could be enjoyed by many of this now largely urban society. Increasing literacy stimulated growth in popular journalism. This age saw the birth abd spread of political movements, most noticeably fabianism and liberalism. There were significant changes in medicine during the 19th century also, with increased specialisation and developments in surgery and hospital building. The public's faith in institutions was evident not only in the growth of hospitals, but was also seen in the building of specialised workhouses and asylums for the most vulnerable members of society. In conclusion Victorian society was disparate and no one feature can serve a definitive view of what it meant to be a Victorian Englishman.ΒLink to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 27
This posting has been hidden during moderation because it broke the in some way.
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Message 28
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Saturday, 19th September 2009
Big Lad,
I think we can all learn something from that, and I hope you find that closure - but not to the extent where you forget - because others can, and should learn from that story.
My youngest (I talk about my girls a lot, but so what ?) specialises in bi-polar disorders. A particular aspect of P-PD was the subject of her PhD, and she has lectured on the subject at several international conferences (She's only 25 - still my baby !).
As a result, I probably know more about it than most lay people just by talking with her (although it's mostly listening on my part).
She also diagnosed my PTSD when she was still doing her degree (I thought everybody was like I was), and as a result, I got help and can now deal with it, most of the time.
So it's people like her who are going to help people like you (and me, I suppose), and I can say without fear of contradiction - You're in good hands.
Take care, and good luck.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 29
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Sunday, 20th September 2009
Big Lad (27)
Are the very nasty experiences mentioned in M27 your own or are you quoting from another source without acknowledgement?
This thread has seemed a bit odd from the start.
1) It has no obvious link to the Wars and Conflicts agenda.
2) The person offering the OP seems to have changed gender?
3) The writer of M27 is clearly an American yet 'Big Lad' uses, in earlier posts, terms such as "Nay bother" (M20). A style of language I have never heard in the USA.
'Big lad' (lass?); Is this a wind-up?Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 30
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Sunday, 20th September 2009
Afternoon U3280211,
Hope you're well.
Probably because of my long talks with youngest daughter (as described),I spotted a few things here, and you've spotted the same things.
But, almost by way of confirmation, 'Big Lad' states that he/she suffers from bi-polar disorder, and if the thread isn't a 'wind-up', I think that could be the answer.Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 31
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Sunday, 20th September 2009
Evening Delrick.
I'm fine thanks, a nice day in the garden with a few glasses of Chilean red and an old dog at my feet, both of us watching 'she who must be obeyed' doing some much-needed watering.
I hope all is well with you, too?
Your daughter is obviously qualified in this stuff. Could you ask her if B-PD is ever associated with MPD?
Re:NI, seems that your long-running (and most informative) thread might be about to be 'reactivated' in a way neither of us would wish to see...?Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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Message 32
Posted by delrick53 (U13797078) on Sunday, 20th September 2009
U3280211,
Things aren't bad.
Currently trying to choose a holiday cottage in the Borders, within a mile or two of 3 specific rugby towns/grounds (because they were my favourite places to play) - using the fixture lists from Selkirk, Melrose, and Kelso as a guide to dates, with those dates having to fit the schedules two very busy, unattached, rugby loving daughters (and if possible, find out how many of the first team squads are 'available' - any rugby player being a 'good catch' of course)
And no street lighting anywhere close (I'm taking my new telescope).
Remarkably, there are plenty of suitable cottages, even if I do add the disability aspect into the requirements !
I'll ask her. She gets very annoyed when we use the wrong terminology, or assume we know because we've heard it somewhere. So I'd be scared to try.
I've had a quick look at the book she recommends for laypeople to read - Richard Benthall's 'Madness Explained - Psychosis and Human Nature',
and although there's extensive coverage of B-PD, I can't see anything about MPD.
I suspect that we aren't supposed to call MPD, MPD, anymore, but I'll keep looking.
One thing I can say is that many of the indicators for B-PD do point towards what you and I would call MPD.
Delusions are something else I suspect are common, and Benthall's book has many fascinating historic examples and case histories of both.
Indeed his book gives the reader a good historic overview of psychology/psychiatry during the last 100 years and more.
'The History of Psychology and Psychiatry' as a thread perhaps ?
One thing that has opened my eyes is the number of disorders, delusional and otherwise, that we can identify over on the R&E Boards. My daughter and her colleagues have had a look, and all they can see is excellent research material !
It's getting so bad over there that decent, sensible, rational posters, of all faiths and none, are starting to leave, and I'm mostly avoiding the place too.
I'm not sure whether you're talking about current events over there (NI) or something else, like :
The Sinn Fein PR Department has demanded, in Stormont, that the thread be removed ?
Martin McGuinness has joined the thread and I haven't noticed yet ? ( I know I was disappointed that only one Republican and zero Loyalists took part, so that prospect is making me tingle a little).
Anyway, I've been thinking of giving it another go. It's one of those threads where everyone should have an opinion, but have never had anywhere to express it in anything more than the 5Live soundbite forum.
Yet it still affects us all, whether we know it or not.
Or has it been an unwritten rule that contentious topics are frowned upon here ?
There's so little activity on this board at the moment if the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ are looking to cut something, they could be justified in getting rid of us !Link to this forum: Abuse to people with disabilities and special needs
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