The Undesirables: The Law that Locked Away a Generation

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Description

Through the early twentieth century, the British Government locked away over 50,000 innocent people. Their crimes Being poor and unyielding. This is their story.


'Staggering Wise's book bristles with injustices.'Sunday Telegraph, *****


By 1950, an estimated 50,000 people had been deemed defective by the British government and detained indefinitely under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. Their crimes were various: women with children born out of wedlock; rebellious teenagers caught shoplifting; those with epilepsy, hearing impairments and chronic illnesses who had struggled in school; and many who were simply different.


Forcibly removed from their families and confined to a shadow world of specialist facilities in the countryside, they were hidden away and forgotten out of sight, out of mind.


Through painstaking archival research, award-winning historian Sarah Wise shines a light on this shameful chapter. Piecing together the lives irrevocably changed by this devastating legislation, The Undesirables provides a compelling study of how early twentieth-century attitudes to class, gender and disability resulted in a nationwide scandal and how they continue to shape social policy to this day.


'The heartrending stories Sarah Wise has unearthed beggar belief beautifully researched and truly compelling.'Catherine Bailey, author ofBlack Diamonds

Reviews

'Is there any miscarriage of justice more grievous than a badly framed law The historian Sarah Wise makesa powerful case for theprosecutioninThe Undesirables, a staggering study of 1913's largely forgotten Mental Deficiency Act... Wise's book bristles with injustices.' Sunday Telegraph, *****

'Social historian Sarah Wise has written an important, shocking book inThe Undesirables: The Law That Locked Away a Generation Wise throws light on a shameful national scandal. Independent, Books of the Month

'The Undesirablesis as compelling as it is shocking... It is impossible not to feel outraged by this history of wasted lives. Wise does not shy away from calling to account the authorities who enforced the Mental Deficiency Act... as well as the wider public, for allowing this grave social injustice to happen.' History Today

'Superb. The heartrending stories Sarah Wise has unearthed beggar belief beautifully researched and truly compelling.' Catherine Bailey, author ofBlack Diamonds

'You will have heard about Irelands Magdalene LaundriesHow surprised would you be to discover that a comparable system operated in Britain during the 20th centuryBrace yourself forThe Undesirables, Sarah Wise's sprawling, shocking study of the impact of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act.' The Times

'A masterpiece of historical research. Sarah Wises exposure of the ways in which we treated so many people a century ago, and still many in recent years, begs the question ofwho is the most morally defective.' Danny Dorling, author of Shattered Nation

Author Bio

Sarah Wise is a social historian and visiting professor at the University of California's London Study Centre. Her previous books include Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England and The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum.


Her new website misssarahwise.co.uklists the dates and venues where she will be speaking about The Undesirables plus links to some of her other, shorter, writings and a list of her history and literature courses. Follow Sarah on Twitter/X:@misssarahwise