As time progressed there were other attempts made to work with and assist people with disabilities. The New York Asylum for Idiots worked to bring “idiots” up to a productive or socially acceptable standard. It was a new effort for them, and they were answerable to the state senate. After their first year, they sent in a report.
The year 1852 saw the New York State Asylum for Idiots first annual report, created by Dr. Wilbur, reach the state senate. During their first year, the Board of Trustees for the asylum met in July to appoint committees whose task it was to look for a suitable building in a good location, as well as to find a teacher they felt was competent for the job of instruction. They found the building they desired through Mr. Stephen Van Rensselaer, Esq., who leased his building to the board of trustees for around half the actual rental value of the building. The building was in good shape, needing only small numbers of repair, and some alterations were necessary. There was plenty of pure water on the site, for drinking, bathing and laundry.
One part of the trustee committee was appointed the job of finding a teacher, and they went to Massachusetts to a private school that had been teaching idiots for more than three years to learn about what was, for them, a new subject. They learned of the school through the reputation of Dr. Hervey B. Wilbur, and through negotiation were able to convince Dr. Wilbur to come to the New York Asylum for Idiots to teach. The committee found the furniture and supplies Dr. Wilber would need, and opened the asylum in October.
The asylum was limited to twenty state students by the act that brought the asylum into being, and those students were selected from parents or guardians who were unable to care for them. Two pupils were chosen from each judicial district in the state with enough care that the asylum felt they had found the students whose age allowed them to be trained, and showed a variety within idiocy. The remaining four students, to be chosen after each judicial district had provided two students, were found throughout the state. Each trustee was assigned a district, and sent out circulars to the gentlemen in each county in that district. The circulars asked these gentlemen to find idiot children under age twelve. Parents or friends paid different sums, depending on their financial ability, for the support of the pupils. Trustees created several regulations to govern the asylum, including a very strict accounting of all the money they received and where it went, as well as an accounting of the furniture.
Some of the things accounted for at the asylum included the changes they had to make to the building, the cost for water, furniture, supplies associated with teaching and, “articles as are not in the class of annual expenses”; all of which totaled about three thousand five hundred dollars. They also had to pay for food, fuel and wages that they already had incurred, and cost about one thousand seven hundred and twenty five dollars. In their report, the trustees felt that the remaining seven thousand five hundred dollars in their budget for the year would be sufficient, in fact – they felt they could support another ten students.
After beginning to work with their pupils, the trustees began to form some opinions about them. They felt that there was no doubt that the majority of the idiots could be trained to be useful, or work in a trade or agriculture. The trustees felt that the idiots could be developed mentally and spiritually to the point where they would not only be responsible, but would be able to develop a relationship with God. In almost all cases, idiots could be taught to be “cleanly and neat in their personal habits”, and helped to enjoy the comforts of life while ceasing to be seen as “encumbrances” or an annoyance to their families. The trustees also repeatedly expressed appreciation for Dr. Wilbur’s teaching abilities and “Christian benevolence”.
New York State apparently suggested that the asylum increase their student population from thirty students to between forty and one hundred and fifty. In their report the asylum responds by saying that they don’t understand the states request, that the asylum should not go beyond forty students at any time because each student took two years to complete the program. The report also states that one hundred and fifty students are well beyond the abilities of one teacher, no matter how many assistants he might have. “Each idiot is a unique case”, the report asserted, “and needs specific treatment.” Students could not be arranged in class for a long time, and assistants often distracted the teacher from his work.
The success of the asylum, and the despair of families over how to raise and live with children who were disabled, must have been enormous during the mid-eighteen hundreds, because the state suggested that the asylum become one of many such schools for idiots. The problem, said the report, was that “The number of idiots or imbeciles in the State, and their residences, are unknown. The census returns idiots and lunatics in the same class.” The report defined Idiocy as “the want of a natural or harmonious development of the mental, active and moral powers of a human being, and usually dependent upon some defect or infirmity of his nervous organization.”
The report also described what it felt were physiological symptoms of idiocy, such as “the prominent features in the popular observation and idea of idiocy.” Muteness or imperfect speech, a wandering gaze or stare, poor hearing, defective sensation, excessive restlessness, and mechanical motions repeated among other idiots were further examples. The report also made note of “a variety of disorders of function of the various organs.” Idiots have adequate muscles, they are smart enough to know when they are hungry, but they don’t have the willpower to reach for the food, said the report.
Out of twenty-five students in the asylum, twelve could not speak. Out of the twelve that couldn’t speak, six did not understand language at all. Of the students who were not “dumb”, three of them spoke a few words, but indistinctly. Two others didn’t say a word until they were nine years old, and even then indistinctly and only a few words. Seven of the students walked imperfectly, three had a partial paralysis, eleven had seizures, eight drooled, and seven were incontinent. Several of the students had to be watched constantly because of health issues related to cleanliness, and five of the students were “irritable.” Most were unable to dress or undress themselves, and only four students could feed themselves. None of the students could read, write or distinguish colors by name.
The report also points out that these idiots were young, and that they could be taught. They were free of the habits of older idiots, and were more flexible, more susceptible to development. There was more of a chance to correct their physical defects or infirmities through diet or medicine. They were generally happy, affectionate, obedient, and easily amused.
The asylum’s first annual report made a point of acknowledging the misconceptions that surround idiocy, creating doubt over whether they can be taught at all. It suggested that these misconceptions arise from the crude observations of only a few cases, and are confirmed by the common expressions associated with the subject whenever it is brought up. The report stated that even results of efforts to teach them are looked upon as if they were training for animals, as if they had been given instinct instead of reason by God. In a show of empathy for their students, the report then said, “It should be remembered that they have a human origin; that however they may differ in physical, mental or moral organization they are yet human beings.”
The asylum’s report presented its mission ideals by saying they did not propose to create faculties “absolutely wanting”, or to bring all idiots to the same level of development, or make idiots capable of sustaining all the relations of a socially moral life. Instead, the asylum wanted to bring idiots to their greatest practicable development, to awaken their faculties to a useful purpose. At the basis of their efforts, the asylum said, “lies the principle that the human attributes of intelligence, sensitivity and will are not absolutely wanting in an idiot, but dormant and undeveloped.”
There was no mention in the report of the race or gender of any of the students at the asylum during its first year. It might be inferred that all of the students were poor, but the fact that parents and friends were paying for at least some of their education leaves room for doubt concerning their class status. There was no mention of what daily life was like for the students in the asylum with the report.
The report did differentiate between students in a couple of ways that effected their approach of the student. Students with bad habits were pursued with “judicious labors of suitable instruction”. There were students at the asylum that fell into the category of “higher grades of idiocy”; students who could begin their education at the asylum, but then move on to common schools. The asylum’s “lowest class” of pupils, who were the most challenging, were still educated as best possible in the ability to perform an occupation. The asylum’s report does admit that there was a group of idiots that were “incurable” and couldn’t be dealt with due to an incapacity to develop, caused by a “disorganization of the nervous centres, the brain or spinal cord.” The report explains that the disease couldn’t be predicted, but that they also could not define someone as “incurable” until there has been a “faithful trial of suitable remedial and educational means.”
