Accessibility and Archives: Overcoming outdated vocabulary
In this, the fourth in a sequence of blogposts around disability and inclusion from the Accessibility working group of ARA’s Diversity and Inclusion Allies, Philip Milnes-Smith attempts to tell a balanced and honest disability history. It features historic terminology which would now be considered problematic, patronising or offensive.[1]
In the previous blog in this sequence, we saw that fact could inspire fiction, and both could inform our understanding of disability in the past. In this blog we will see that fiction inspired real world action aimed at bettering the lives of disabled people. In 1885, a children’s tale was published entitled The Story of a Short Life. Written by Juliana Horatia Ewing (née Gatty, 1841-1885), who had some personal experience of illness limiting her life, this narrates the, perhaps un-promising, life of an upper middle-class boy called Leonard with patriotic dreams of military service, who is at first seriously injured an accident, endures considerable pain (with increasing equanimity), and then dies. In the interim, little Leonard announces his (socially conditioned) intention to be “a brave cripple”. Not satisfied with having a protagonist with an acquired disability, the story also features other disabled characters including a Colonel with only one arm who “has all kinds of dodges, so as not to give trouble and do everything for himself”, and importantly also a blind piano tuner who impresses the boy because he is able to “to earn his own livelihood”. Having met this piano tuner, Leonard decides to compile a day-per-person book of “Brave Poor Things”, such as he aspired to be in the face of his disablement.
Within a decade, one of this book’s readers, Grace Mary Thyrza Hannam, (subsequently Kimmins, 1870-1954) had been inspired to establish the Guild of Brave Poor Things. Commentators clearly expected readers to be familiar with Juliana’s story, from which the Guild’s name was derived. It ought to make us flinch (“Things” was already raising eyebrows in the London Gazette in 1901). It also borrowed Leonard’s patron saint and family motto (Laetus sorte mea, happy in my lot – “even the youngest can tell you what it means, and the little… faces light up as you ask them about it”). Importantly, it also made real the book’s pioneering inclusiveness of people with different disabilities: “those with sight helped the blind, those with legs helped those without”. As early as 1898, they were recording weekly attendances in Bermondsey of two. An early visitor (the American author Nora Archibald Smith) noted, “There are blind people here; there are deaf-mutes; there are paralytics who can drag themselves along, and others who must be pushed in chairs or perambulators; there are as many phases of distress and deformity, perhaps, as there are persons, and all ages are represented.” A patriotic military mindset was also carried across from the story: “in every room in which it meets, the walls are draped with the Union Jack… There are badges, membership cards, and banners, all in red, the soldier’s colour, and the true military spirit is insisted upon.” Also migrating from the novel into real life was the martial hymn Leonard loves, and the logo was a sword crossed with a crutch.
Its (non-disabled) founder characterised the Guild as “a friendly organization of afflicted persons” and it was explicitly a social club membership organisation – not a charity offering relief (if that were required, it was supplied through other agencies). By 1900, there were six branches reaching a membership of 500, with leaders visiting people in their own homes, regular meetings for “games, singing and social intercourse” and laying on “technical classes and suitable lectures;.. periodical excursions, concerts, etc., for them, together with any other means of widening their necessarily restricted lives.” It is also important to note that there were joint events with the (non-disabled) girls of another of Grace’s foundations, the Guild of Play, and a degree of integration into the community: an illustration in The Sphere in January 1903 purports to be an illustration of the Yuletide Festival of the Guild, but everyone visible in the sketch is a girl from the Guild of Play. Gender roles are clearly being reinforced when we hear that “No higher reward can be given to a Guild of Play child than to be allowed to sing and recite to the Poor Things;.. the Play Club children,.. greatly look forward to obtaining this coveted privilege”.
Grace fought the cause of education provision for the physically disabled from 1896 and would go on to found an Arts and Crafts School in Sussex in 1903 to educate London boys (and later girls) from the Guild, in the fresher air of the country, so as to enable them to support themselves in adulthood and be useful citizens rather than pitiable objects. Immediately oversubscribed, the aspiration was for it to become the “Public school of Crippledom”. An examiner noted the boys’ “progress from ignorance and helplessness to intelligence and self-reliance. So far, the school at Chailey has splendidly justified its existence, and has shown what can be done for the cripple, not only by training his intelligence as well as his hands, but in giving him hope of—at least—a decent and independent future” with graduates of the school boasted to be earning between 10 and 14 shillings a week. The surgeon Robert Jones observed of the Chailey approach that “The child’s deformities and disabilities are rarely alluded to. He is filled with emulation and a desire to excel. If he has lost an arm or a leg, he still has the one or the other so trained as to minimise disability.” This school would go on to help amputee servicemen in the first world war: “the men during their physical re-education were enabled to profit by the boys’ experience”.
Back in 1904, Grace was asserting that hers was an age affording “increased realisation of the public responsibility towards afflicted and handicapped people, and the substitution for charity of careful, scientific methods of help.” One aspect of the land fit for heroes that underdelivered was the belief that “the cripple, whether child, soldier, industrial, transport or road casualty” would no longer be the object of “hateful laughter, unutterable loneliness, and degrading charity” but equipped to “take his part in the world’s work.” Regrettably, modern disabled people remain used to being seen by others as inspirationally brave fighters[2].
There is little evidence of Guild activity in Bermondsey once Grace was no longer resident at the Settlement – and later Bermondsey Settlement reports suggest no provision for disabled people. Of course, it is important to note the almost complete absence of testimony from disabled people themselves[3] - a story repeated about a boy who had moved house to Bow asking to be carried Bermondsey (to assert the lasting impact of the motto) hardly counts. From the perspective of the 21st century, however, one can’t help but feel (from lines like “the only hopeless cripple is the deliberate shirker”) that members may have been seen by leaders and donors as the ‘deserving disabled poor’. On the other hand, the Chailey development of the Guild suggests that Grace was seeking to remove societal barriers that were needlessly limiting disabled people. Spectators claimed to perceive evident enjoyment in both theatricals and “drill in the Gymnasium… notwithstanding their bodily infirmities”, and perhaps it is reasonable to consider the Guild to have been meeting a previously unmet need. The “cripples” who helped fill the church at her wedding in 1897, and reportedly insisted on each shaking the groom’s hand, suggest her work was appreciated.
Contributions to this series are welcomed, particularly if you are working with records of disabled people or with disabled people. If you are interested, in the first instance, please email diversityandinclusion@archives.org.uk .
[1] The author would like to thank Southwark archives for access to relevant collections.
[2] See https://disabilityarts.online/magazine/opinion/brave-poor-invisible-gatekeepers-past-future-cities/