Description: By 1950, an estimated 50,000 people had been deemed ‘defective’ by the government and detained for life under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. Their ‘crimes’ were various: women with children born outside of wedlock; rebellious teenagers caught shoplifting; those with learning disorders, speech impediments and chronic illnesses who had struggled in school; and, of course, those 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 about – out of sight, out of mind. Through painstaking archival research, Sarah Wise pieces together the lives irrevocably changed by this devastating legislation and provides a compelling study of how early 20th-century attitudes to class, gender and disability have continued to shape social policy.
Price: 45.98 AUD
Location: Hillsdale, NSW
End Time: 2025-01-06T07:18:24.000Z
Shipping Cost: 24.99 AUD
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EAN: 9780861544554
UPC: 9780861544554
ISBN: 9780861544554
MPN: N/A
Format: Hardback, 352 pages
Author: Sarah Wise
Book Title: The Undesirables: The Law that Locked Away a Gener
Item Height: 3 cm
Item Length: 23.4 cm
Item Weight: 0.45 kg
Item Width: 15.3 cm
Language: Eng
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
