Attitudes past and present !!!!

[teddybear1843]

Well you really have opened a good discussion!

I have been working with disabled adults (both physically & mentally disabled) for the past seven years and I have met with lots of ignorance on the parts of general public and "experts".

In some ways today, the disabled are treated better than they used to be but in other ways nothing has changed.

There really are two sides to this and I could be here for ever talking about it.  Benefits are thrown at disabled people but no real thought is given to access.  One place I took a person in a wheelchair to advertised disabled access but the car park was shingle!

Put yourself in a wheelchair for a day and see how you like it.

Teddybear

[tallted]

Hi Graceland,
The poor treatment of disabled children in institutions etc. has touched my family in 1913 my dads sister then age 3 was ill with a disabling illness( not sure but suspect polio).  She was left at the hospital and it turned out she was not fed for 3 days and had chewed her fingers to bone in some place. It was horrible as my grandparents could not get to the hospital due to a blizzard.  When they got there and found out what had happened my grandfather literally chased the doctor out the hospital with the intent to kill him, as my grandmother had told me.  He did catch the doctor, beat him severly, but luckily someone was able to control him before he did kill the doctor.  Nothing was done about my dads sister, the doctor or the hospital.  My dads sister died days later.  So the stories of the past treatment for the sick and invalid must be beyond belief in some cases.
Ted

[indiapaleale]

The plight of the disabled in years gone by is hard to imagine.

My eyes have been opened since my son met his fiance, who is confined to a wheelchair. She works full time and attends college in the evenings and her biggest problem is people illegally parking in the "handicapped parking" spaces.

We have been on many outings as a family and it is outrageous to see able bodied people at the park, theater or fairgrounds, who "borrow" grandma's or auntie's handicapped sticker so that they don't  have to walk the extra 100 feet.

The fine in California for parking in these spaces illegally is $375 but it is rarely enforced and able bodied people with stickers are never challenged.

I greatly admire my son's fiance, who was born with spina bifida, and I am appalled that people would force her to struggle the extra distance.

OK...off me bike now.
Cheers,
Indi

[Paul E]

Hi

The stigma faced by people with a mental illness is also an issue.  Although attitudes have improved, there's still a tendency to treat people with caution / ignore them / fear them.

How it must have been a hunded years and more ago, I shudder to think!

Paul

[GRACELAND]

Put yourself in a wheelchair for a day and see how you like it.

Good coment Teddybear ! 

[suttontrust]

I recently found someone in my research who was born in the 1840s and was blind from birth.  This was a middle class family and Lydia seems to have stayed in the family home until she was in her twenties.  Then the family dispersed (the father was dead) and Lydia went all the way from Hull to Liverpool, to the Hardman St. Blind School.  In the 1881 census she is there along with dozens of other adults, all listed as "pupils".  Clearly there was no thought of integrating the blind into the community.  They were shut away and taught to do useful things - presumably if the family had the money to pay for their care.

[RJ_Paton]

Another aspect to remember is that education was not free and while the rate of illiteracy was high amongst the general population it was also deemed a waste of money to provide any form of education to what were termed "cripples".... if the immediate family did not provide care often there was nothing.

Indeed many pieces of legislation which prohibited begging on the streets were brought in to prohibit any physically disabled person from begging on the streets whether the physical disability arose from birth or an injury sustained by other means.
Many of the earlier pieces of legislation specifically mentioned soldiers wounded in the Napoleonic wars.

[Christopher]

Is there anything online relating to the Cripples Institutes

I've found a few pictures of the Invacar which was powered by a Villiers 147cc engine.
This vehicle was designed for people with a physical disability which prevented them from driving an ordinary car. Oscar Greeves, who designed these little cars, founded Invacar Ltd. to manufacture them in 1948. The Ministry of Health purchased them and leased them out to whoever they thought were deserving cases. These cars were banned from the roads in Britain in 2003.

[ambers]

You're right Teddybear... I think if most people tried being in a Wheelchair for just one day they would have an eye opener....it was for me!

It must have been so bad in the those days, and I wonder did they ever see light of day. I have Tin Miners in my background with various disablities from accidents at work, so I have often wondered about how they managed without arms etc, and with such large families to support....I guess the children had to take a lot more responsibility.

The strangest thing though is, why does your name alter to  'my love or love' over night when someone addresses you

Ambers