The British institutions that locked up

by Sarah Wise

352pp, Oneworld, T £16.99 (0808 196 6794), RRP£22, ebook £10.71

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Is there any miscarriage of justice more grievous than a badly framed law? The historian Sarah Wise makes a powerful case for the prosecution in The Undesirables, a staggering study of 1913’s largely forgotten Mental Deficiency Act. Under its inhumane auspices, for almost half a century, tens of thousands of children and young adults disappeared, with little prospect of treatment or education. Their crime? In too many instances, to be classed “feeble-minded” or a “moral imbecile”.

Wise’s book bristles with injustices. Local councils employed Mental Deficiency Executive Officers – aka “ratcatchers” – to seek out youngsters. Those deemed incapable of good behaviour or “socially inefficient” were reported to a sinister government department, the Board of Control. Defectives included: unmarried mothers; homosexuals; shoplifters; hooligans; dyslexics who failed crude intelligence tests, and cheeky kids who mocked them. One wit, 16-year-old Noele Arden, was asked to prove her brainpower by explaining the difference between an orange and a lemon, and replied: “Suck it and see.” Into Rampton Criminal Lunatic Asylum she went.

Wise traces the 1913 law’s varied roots, from anxiety at Britain’s economic decline to ambitious women’s thirst for a socially acceptable campaign platform. The arguments rested on a pseudoscientific lie: that “degeneracy” was heritable. Politicians and eugenicists came together to whip up a moral panic, and in 1910, the Liberal home secretary took the issue mainstream, claiming there were “at least 120,000 or 130,000 feeble-minded persons at large”. He proposed segregation, so “their curse dies with them”, and was keen to explore sterilisation as a