Mental Boundaries and Medico‐Pedagogical Selection: Girls and Boys in the Dutch ‘School for Idiots’, The Hague 1857–1873

Abstract

In the wake of developments in France and the United States where early psychiatrists such as Pinel, Esquirol, Belhomme and Séguin advocated ‘moral treatment’ of the insane and classified ‘idiots’ and ‘imbeciles’ as incurable though educable, the Revd C. E. Van Koetsveld initiated his ‘School for Idiots’ in The Hague in 1855. Within two years, he had also opened a boarding facility that accommodated many of his pupils. Legal regulations (the Insanity Act of 1841) demanded a judicial authorization for placing a child in the institution. Thus, the admittance to the first autonomous Dutch institution for the medico‐pedagogical treatment of children with mental deficiencies involved a systematic registration of the children’s specific characteristics. A local figure of authority, often a physician, was required to fill in a short questionnaire on the condition of the child nominated for placement in the institution by their legal representative such as a parent or guardian. The first aim of this paper is to outline theoretically how physicians and educationists used medico‐pedagogical selection to develop a notion of the mental boundaries they thought could be recognized in children’s minds. The work of E. Séguin was crucial in this development. He considered these boundaries as hindrances to a ‘normal’ life, for example, for participating in education and at work. Based on his work, other physicians and educationists were stimulated to contribute to new interventions in minding and educating ‘idiotic’ children. The second part of the paper offers the Dutch example. It includes the analysis of 187 files on girls and boys who were admitted to Van Koetsveld’s institution during the years 1857 to 1873. The analysis reveals the gender and family characteristics amongst the children, as well as information on medical factors and hereditary properties, which made Van Koetsveld and his staff decide to classify these children as eligible for treatment at the first Dutch ‘School for Idiots’.

Notes

¹ Although terms such as ‘idiot’, ‘feeble‐minded’ and even ‘disabled’ have negative connotations today, I do not wish to replace them by names acceptable in a present‐day context. Rather than replacing, we need to study them in their context of time and place, and as a crucial element in the constitution of (discursive) power relations.

² Verstraete, P. “The taming of disability; phrenology and bio‐power on the road to the destruction of otherness in France (1800–60).” History of Education 34 (2005): 119–34, in particular, 123–27. See also Lane, H. The Wild Boy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976.

³ Examples of the first are Verstraete, P. Macht en onmacht in het orthopedagogische werkveld. Foucault en de zorg voor personen met een mentale handicap in de 19^e eeuw. Leuven–Voorburg: Acco, 2004; Carlson, L. “Docile Bodies, Docile Minds: Foucauldian Reflections on Mental Retardation.” In Foucault and the Government of Disability, edited by T. Shelley. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005: 133–52. See also Van Drenth, A. “Doctors, Philanthropists and teachers as ‘true’ ventriloquists? Introduction to a special issue on the history of special education.” History of Education 34 (2005): 107–11. For the second part, see Trent, J. W. Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994; Rapley, M. The Social Construction of Intellectual Disability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

⁴ See also Van Walleghem, M. “E. Séguin (1812–1880): Na een eeuw nog steeds actueel. I & II.” Pedagogisch Tijdschrift 5 (1980): 484–94, 543–57.

⁵ The transcription of the data in Excel was done by Bert van Woerden, the statistical analysis by Vincent Post, while the text analysis was conducted in cooperation with Astrid Damme and Annemieke van der Schans. On the combination of qualitative and quantitative research in the history of the asylum, see: Digby, A. “Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives on the Asylum.” In Problems and Methods in the History of Medicine, edited by R. Porter and A. Wear. London: Croom Helm, 1987: 153–74.

⁷ Séguin, E. Traitement moral, hygiène et éducation des idiots et des autres enfants arriérés ou retardés dans leur développement, agités de mouvements involontaires, débiles, muets non‐sourds, bégues, etc. (1846) Nendeln–Liechtenstein: Klaus Reprint, 1978: 107.

⁶ Kanner, L. A History of the Care and Study of the Mentally Retarded. Springfield, MA: Charles C. Thomas, 1974; Scheerenberger, R. C. A History of Mental Retardation. Baltimore, MD: P. H. Brookes, 1983; Winzer, M. The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1993; Wright, D., and A. Digby, eds. From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency: Historical Perspectives on People with Learning Disabilities. London: Routledge, 1996.

¹¹ Ibid., 170.

⁸ According to Licia Carlson, Séguin’s concept of idiocy was quantitative instead of qualitative. It stipulated a certain degree or intensity in the mental development of the individual, not a different kind of development (animal‐like, for example). See Carlson, Docile Bodies, Docile Minds, 138.

⁹ Séguin, Traitement moral, 107–18.

¹⁰ Ibid., 138.

¹³ Ibid., 331.

¹² Ibid., 205.

¹⁴ Ibid., 341–44.

¹⁵ Ibid., 347.

¹⁶ Séguin, E. Idiocy and its Treatment by the Physiological Method (1866). New York: A. M. Kelley, 1971: 93.

¹⁷ Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind, 58.

¹⁸ For the history of van Koetsveld’s initiative, see: Van Drenth, A. “Van Koetsveld and his ‘School for Idiots’ in The Hague (1855–1920): gender and the history of special education in the Netherlands.” History of Education, 34 (2005): 151–69. For more background on social care and the Dutch Réveil movement: Van Drenth, A., and F. De Haan. The Rise of Caring Power: Elizabeth Fry and Josephine Butler in Britain and the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999: 47–50.

¹⁹ Van Koetsveld, C. E. Het idiotisme en de idiotenschool. Eene eerste proeve op een nieuw veld van geneeskundige opvoeding en christelijke philantropie. Schoonhoven: Van Nooten, 1856.

²⁰ For Van Koetsveld’s classification, see: Het idiotisme en de idiotenschool, 20–25.

²¹ Social statistics were important for Van Koetsveld, as is apparent in his chapter on ‘Statistics’ in Het idiotisme en de idiotenschool, 72–79. At the time, ‘social statistics’ were gradually becoming more fashionable. See Porter, T. M. The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.

²² Van Koetsveld, Het idiotisme en de idiotenschool, 74–79.

²³ Jak, T. Armen van geest. Hoofdstukken uit de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse zwakzinnigenzorg. Amsterdam: Pedagogisch Adviesbureau, 1988: 124.

²⁴ In the Dutch context, there is no research available on the treatment of children with mental deficiencies at home. For the UK see: Wright, D. “Familial care of ‘idiot’ children in Victorian England.” In Locus of Care: Families, Communities, Institutions and the Provision of Welfare since Antiquity, edited by P. Horden and R. Smith. London: Routledge, 1998: 176–97.

²⁵ The School Rules and Annual Reports are included in The Archives of the Medical Institution for Under‐aged Idiots, 1855–1920, Municipal Archives of The Hague, 34. Quoted in Reglement van de Idiotenschool te ‘s Gravenhage, opgericht 14 mei 1855, ’s Gravenhage, n.d.

²⁶ Van Koetsveld also referred to the work of the Dutch Professor G. C. B. Suringar, who with his Opvoeding der zintuigen (Education of the senses) (1855) developed pedagogical principles in the tradition of sensualism. See Van Koetsveld, Het idiotisme en de idiotenschool, 141.

²⁷ See Van Drenth. “Van Koetsveld and his ‘School for Idiots’ in The Hague,” 1603.

²⁸ Van Koetsveld, Het idiotisme en de idiotenschool, 85.

²⁹ Phrenology was developed by Franz‐Joseph Gall (1758–1828), and was popular in France. Paradoxically, it stimulated rather than hindered the idea of the educability of idiots, as is argued by Verstraete, “The taming of disability,” 130–33.

³⁰ Van Koetsveld, Het idiotisme en de idiotenschool, 56–60. That the growth of the skull was regarded as related to the development of the brain is apparent from a case Van Koestveld described on p. 163. Here he also stipulates the importance of treating idiotism when children are still young and when their skulls are in the process of development and growth.

³¹ Annual Reports included data on the children who were collected in these procedures.

³² Derde Jaarverslag van het Geneeskundig Gesticht en de daaraan verbonden Dagschool voor Minderjarige Idioten te ’s Gravenhage over de jaren 1860–1861. ’s Gravenhage, n.d.: 46–47.

³³ Jones, K. Lunacy, Law, and Conscience 1744–184: The Social History of the Care of the Insane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955: 1.

³⁴ Mooy, A. M. De Krankzinnigenwet van 1884. Deventer: Kluwer, 1964: 12–13.

³⁵ For his biography, see: Van der Esch, P. Jacobus Ludovicus Conradus Schroeder van der Kolk (1797–1862): leven en werken. Amsterdam: s.n., 1954.

³⁶ Querido, A. Krankzinnigenrecht. Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn NV, 1939: 55–64.

³⁷ Ibid., 88. Quotation from the 1841 Act in the Appendix ‘Overzicht van de Ontwikkeling der Nederlandsche wetgeving’, n.p.

³⁸ Van der Esch, P. Geschiedenis van het Staatstoezicht op Krankzinnigen. Deel III. ’s Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1980: 49.

³⁹ In 1886, the Idiots Act was passed in the United Kingdom, empowering local authorities to build institutions for so‐called mental defectives. Jones, Lunacy, Law, and Conscience, 199–200. The Act was amended in 1913 and 1927.

⁴⁰ Verslag over den Staat der Gestichten voor Krankzinnigen in de jaren 1869–1874. ’s Gravenhage, 1878: 191 (National Archives, The Hague, no. 2. 15, 40 / 185).

⁴¹ These 187 files are part of a larger set of files on 356 children, admitted to the institution between 1857 and 1886. The questionnaire changed after 1873, which made us decide to focus this first analysis on the period 1857–1873, the first 17 years of the institution. See the Archives of the Medical Institution for Under‐aged Idiots, 1855–1920 in the Municipal Archives of The Hague, no. 34/14–27.

⁴² This interpretation of ‘human’ shows the ‘pastoral power’ that motivated Van Koetsveld in his work. Van Drenth, A. “Kind in gevaar: risico’s in de ontwikkeling van kinderen in historisch perspectief.” In Eén kind, één plan. Naar een beter afstemming van jeugdzorg en onderwijs voor jonge risicokinderen, edited by van der Aalsvoort, G. M. Leuven: Acco, 2004: 147–61, in particular 155–57.

⁴³ Van Drenth, “Kind in gevaar,” 157–69.

⁴⁴ Tweede Jaarverslag van het Geneeskundig Gesticht en de daaraan verbonden Dagschool voor Minderjarige Idioten te ‘s Gravenhage over 1859. ’s Gravenhage, n.d.: 21.

⁴⁵ Some 20% of the children came from Catholic families, and some 5% from Jewish. These percentages are based on two‐thirds of the population for whom we know their religious background.

⁴⁶ These 34 cases represented only some 18% of the total population.

⁴⁷ Of the total population, some 15% of the questionnaires were not filled in properly.

⁴⁸ Van Koetsveld, Het idiotisme en de idiotenschool, 299.

⁴⁹ Blanton, Richard L. “Historical perspectives on classification of mental retardation.” In Issues in the Classification of Children. Vol. 1, edited by N. Hobbs. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass: 164–93.

⁵⁰ Mulder, E., and F. Heyting. “The Dutch Curve: The Introduction of and Reception of Intelligence Testing in the Netherlands, 1908–1940.” Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences 34 (1998): 349–66.

⁵¹ This is comparable to the distinction between ‘congenital’ and ‘non‐congenital’ made in Duncan, P. M., and W. Millard. Manual for the Classification, Training, and Education of the Feeble‐minded, Imbecile, and Idiotic. London: Churchill, 1866. At the end of the century, W. W. Ireland based The Mental Affection of Children: Idiocy, Imbecility, and Insanity (London: Churchill, 1898) primarily on an aetiological basis. See also Blanton, “Historical perspectives on classification of mental retardation,” 166–70.

⁵² Dekker, J. “An Educational Regime: Medical Doctors, Schoolmasters, Jurists and the Education of Retarded and Deprived Children in the Netherlands around 1900.” History of Education 25 (1996): 255–68; Weijers, I. “Educational Initiatives in Mental Retardation in Nineteenth‐century Holland.” History of Education Quarterly 40 (2000): 460–76.

⁵³ Klootsema, J. Misdeelde kinderen. Inleiding tot de paedagogische pathologie en therapie. Zutphen: Thieme, 1904: 80.