The Undesirables

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.

'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... Wise's book bristles with injustices.' —Sunday Telegraph, *****

'Social historian Sarah Wise has written an important, shocking book in The Undesirables: The Law That Locked Away a Generation… Wise throws light on a shameful national scandal.’ —Independent, Books of the Month

'The Undesirables is as compelling as it is shocking... It is impossible not to feel outraged by this history of wasted lives. Wise does not shy away from calling to account the authorities who enforced the Mental Deficiency Act... as well as the wider public, for allowing this grave social injustice to happen.' —History Today

'Superb. The heartrending stories Sarah Wise has unearthed beggar belief… beautifully researched and truly compelling.' —Catherine Bailey, author of Black Diamonds

'You will have heard about Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries… How surprised would you be to discover that a comparable system operated in Britain during the 20th century?… Brace yourself for The Undesirables, Sarah Wise's sprawling, shocking study of the impact of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act.' —The Times

'A masterpiece of historical research. Sarah Wise’s exposure of the ways in which we treated so many people a century ago, and still many in recent years, begs the question of who is the most morally defective.' —Danny Dorling, author of Shattered Nation

Sarah Wise is a social historian and visiting professor at the University of California's London Study Centre. Her previous books include Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England and The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum.

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