From Ugly Laws to Institutions in New York State: Colonized Othering, Bias, and Systemic Baked In Ableism.

“Some persons believe that it is ableism that prevents disabled people from participating in the social fabric of their communities rather than impairments in physical, mental, or emotional ability” (Albrecht, 2006)

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Introduction

          The scope of this paper (although a deeper historical analysis is absolutely warranted) briefly gives context to the birth and application of ableism through its current affect and societal use in modern society. It focuses on our societal widespread and indoctrinated bias of ableism (although unidentified and unnamed till the mid 70’s) and how ableism created an understanding that gave permission for the abled to expel from visible society those considered unable. From the creation and birth of legalized othering, known as “Ugly Laws,” here in the United States, to state run institutions built to hide and confine the othered we examine the language, behavior, justification, and practice of othering in New York State. For the purposes of this project, we focus on the historical othering and subsequent treatment of the Intellectually and Developmentally Delayed in NYS.

History

The historical evolution regarding the way in which certain populations, referred to here as “others” were identified, labeled, separated, hidden, contained, and treated by dominant patriarchal authority can be understood by following the historical timeline of American oppressive ideology used to control and oppress subjects who were considered unable to contribute meaningfully to the building of a civilized and normalized culture. The skewed or polluted rhetoric, used by the ruling class to persuade, control, and oppress the othered, intentionally created a weaponized sociological narrative that created our understanding of “normal society” rooted in anti-dialogical behavior (Lechuga, 2020).

The Greeks called those with intellectual or developmental delays idiots and Aristotle believed that men were superior to all other beings while women were considered sub-human and perceived to be the first step along the road to deformity (A History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023).  Aristotle also recommended that there be a mandate that “prevents the rearing of deformed children” and that there should also be a law that “no deformed child shall live” (A History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023). The Greeks and Romans believed they exemplified the perfect human body or type, and that disability of any kind was a curse or mark of the devil. Any Roman baby born with a physical, mental, or emotional defect was thrown into the Tiber River or left in the woods to perish with their feet tied together. It was a legal requirement to abandon or kill deformed and sickly infants (A History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023).

During the Middle Ages Leprosy had almost been eradicated during the Crusades and the empty institutions used to house those considered afflicted were then used to house all “deviants”. Deviants included children, the homeless, madmen, the incurable, widows, and criminals. Called the “cities of the damned” the governing authorities had the power to use whatever means available including “stakes, irons, prisons and dungeons” to control the othered (History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023). Anzalone traces the history of ableism to as early as the 1500’s in America. She suggests that those with a “mental illness and epilepsy were thought to be possessed by evil spirits and were whipped and burned at the stake regularly” (Anzalone, 2023).

Circa 787 A.D. the privileged could own (buy) a person with disabilities and use them as a form of amusement for themselves. In order to entertain villagers those labeled with any disabilities were locked in “idiot cages” that were left in the street to amuse passersby (History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023). There was a strong desire to segregate the disabled due to perceived economic hardship they might bring to their community. The “Essay on the Principle of Population”, written by Thomas Malthus in 1798, magnified his fear that population rates were growing too quickly, and that humanity was in real danger of having no food.  He advocated for “all people defective in any way should be eliminated so that only the “normal” could live and prosper” (History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023). In 1910 the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, NY, created a book titled “Record of Family Traits”. Its intention was to use eugenics to record any family traits that might be considered unsavory to the family line. The eugenics movement believed it could improve the “stock” of humans through proper breeding. The movement advocated for forced sterilization, institutionalization and criminalized marriage and procreation for those individuals considered poor stock (Record of Family Traits, 1910).

Physical disabilities, chronic illness and identifying those “bodies that do not fit in”, justified being separated from “normal society” (Schweik, 2010). Schweik elaborates her own view and perspective on how normal society creates and chooses outsiders including the terms that people use to identify those considered disabled. These terms included “imperfect”, “ugly”, ‘impure”, “contaminated”, “contagious”, “deceased”, “soiled”, and “possessed”. Schweik suggests that disability was and is criminalized and represents egregious discrimination.

This project follows the development of “Ugly Laws in New York State”, and why it was believed that Ugly Laws needed to exist. Furthermore, the project describes why eugenics played a role in the process of validating the need for an able-bodied society and the need to control the disabled and “othered” through various egregious practices (Manoukian, 2023, Resnick, 2023). Following the threads of similarity throughout the research provides the pathway and continuity that follows western history regarding, eugenics, ugly laws, ableism, and institutions.

Ableist Theory suggests that our present-day society and understanding of “normal” is built upon the skewed and polluted scaffolding and rhetoric of settler colonialism through discrimination and separation of the “othered” and the disabled (Lechuga, 2020). Lechuga suggests that “assemblages were the organizing logic of settler colonialism” allowing for the grouping, removal, and disposal of the othered to maintain control through power relations of domination and suppression (McKerrow (1989) and Foucault (1989). Being able to dictate, create and control the rhetorical narrative, the ruling classes were able to create “public memory” not based on knowledge but in agenda-based persuasiveness rhetoric (Lechuga, 2020).

Ableist Theory suggests a decolonial approach to understanding the motives of settler colonialism rooted, glorified, and passed on through the suppression and domination of the ruling class. Ableism is our unconscious or conscious preference to socially, economically, politically, religiously, and educationally interact with those we perceive as normal. Our nation’s infrastructure (socially and physically) being built for the normal and able-bodied is evidence of dense Ableism (More, 2023). The political and privileged created our perception of normal through skewed rhetorical narratives and oppressed the “other” thus separating them from the normal-abled society. The disabled and othered were hidden behind a curtain that the normal had no desire to pull back. Marx referred to this as The Veil between us and them (Bellamy, Holleman & Clark, 2020).

More (2023) addresses ableism and discrimination needing to have an “intersectional approach”. She suggests that ableism and its relationship to classism, racism, sexism, discrimination, and oppression should be researched through a theoretical lens that connects intersectional and ableism theory. More advocates for beginning the discourse on how to approach, understand, analyze, and find meaningful solutions to a severe form of discrimination that most don’t realize affects or influences them.

This societal bias of a “learned normal” that did not include the “othered” became a form of discrimination called “ableism”; a name given to our bias towards only being comfortable interacting with the able-bodied. Ableism is not necessarily an intentional form of discrimination but rather an “unconscious or unintended action that perpetuates ablism and has a negative impact on people and environments” (More, 2023). “With other forms of oppression, people do not always know they are thinking or behaving in an ableist way” (Sullivan, 2023). They exhibit learned bias and implicit bias. Ableism created general disregard for people’s (othered) lives.

Ableism Theory can be used to trace and understand historical discrimination of the othered. It creates the framework for interpretation of how the unable were intentionally separated from the abled. Ableism is also an analytic lens for situating behavior related to why ableism exists, its historical roots and present-day expressions (More, 2023). The process of creating two different societies based on the abled and the disabled, as we have discussed, began during the Middle Ages but was given its formal name, Ugly Laws, the separation, and segregation process became law in the United States (Wilson, 2015).

Tracing how the value of a person directly affected the worth, identity, and level of normalness of the individual, we learn how the othered were hidden away from general society and treated (Emery, 2017). Ableism could be considered a form of ideological brainwashing that became socially inherited and passed down from generation after generation over a period of 500 years.  We can still see and feel the “aftershocks” of ableism and bias of settler colonizers desiring or even demanding through weaponized rhetoric and weaponizing of the Bible, a “normal” society. The first settler colonizers, it is suggested were not intending for all people (certainly not women, slaves, indigenous populations, or children) to be free or free to practice the religion they believed and had faith in. Christianity was “the way” and the only away allowed to create a “civilized” controlled culture. Using the Bible to validate patriarchal oppression, repression, and consequence the governing patriarchy intentionally formed an ideological social and cultural framework. In other words, the ideological and cultural framework of anti-dialogical practices is the bones upon which ableism and bias were built, and subsequently became “baked in” norms of our cultural development.

Outlining the history of ableism, the term is formally adopted by feminists in the United States in the mid-70’s. Resnick follows the connection from ableism to its relative, eugenics. Ablism can take the form of outright discrimination or micro aggression. Resnick offers that “it’s tough not to be complicit in ableism when you live in a world that has been built into its very systems and structures” (Resnick, 2023). Resnick describes how to recognize the possibility of your own ableist mind set and recognizing behaviors in our society from the obvious to the subtle (Resnick, 2023). Our entire social framework is built on unconscious or conscious bias that has been baked into us since the Middle Ages when the unable bodies were removed and separated from the abled.

Poor Farms and Poor Houses

Schweik examines the “unsightly intersection” of human labeling that combined the implementation of ugly laws to control the disabled (Schweik, 2010). The enforcement of the law guaranteed the removal of those not welcome in normal society. Becoming accustomed to being physically separated from the othered or disabled became imprinted on societies internalized moral compass, and represented the natural progression of the abled building an abled-bodied only society while reinforcing and cementing that the othered did not exist and did not belong with general society. Needing a physical facility to send the othered to, far from normal society, poor houses or poor farms were created (Blakemore, 2018). Specifically designed to house the disabled bodies of those not wanted or considered worthy in general society, the facilities were described as bare bone and serving unpalatable food in unsanitary conditions. It was normal for residents of these farms to have rats crawling all over them and left to wander “around like forgotten animals” (Blakemore, 2023). In England during the 1600’s the concept of the poor house or poor farm was initiated. There was a clear desire to separate the abled from the othered or disabled. The poorhouse and poor farm satisfied the need to contain and control the disabled. That desire to house and separate the othered traveled across the ocean with the arrival to the English colonists with the first poorhouse/poor farm opening in Boston Mass in 1660 (Chen, 2022). Soon the validation for the abled to be separated from the disabled became a law.

Ugly Laws

          Ugly laws, in the United States were designed to lawfully separate and remove those who were considered disabled to contribute meaningfully, from a settler colonized culture, rooted in ideology. The ugly laws allowed the intentional division of the disabled or othered based on a lawful “diagnosis” of being possessed by the devil, contagious, physically intellectually, developmentally, or mentally unfit, being a poor single mother, the elderly, epileptics, abandoned children, petty thieves, and anyone who the able-bodied did not want to see in public or thought was a menace to a “normal” society (Wilson, 2015). Any person found guilty of being ugly were all housed in the same location (Wilbur, 2010).

In 1881 the Chicago City Council passed an Ugly Law that stated, “no person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself in public view” (Wilson, 2015). If lawfully convicted of being ugly, the othered or disabled were sent to poor houses or poor farms. Anyone who was deserted or sentenced there was called an inmate. Inmates were separated from their communities and housed together regardless of diagnosis, condition, or situation. All of the oppressed and marginalized were contained together in one place.

Ugly Laws had great longevity in the United States, from 1867 through 1974, in fact it was commonplace to treat the “Ugly” poorly (Emory, 2017). In Chicago the Ugly Law was not removed from the law books until 1974. States that also had ugly laws on the books were Omaha, Columbus, Cleveland, Portland, and Oregon. San Francisco was the first state to have the law enacted in 1867 (Emory, 2017). The enactment of the San Francisco Ugly Law was a horrific crusade against the hate of public ugliness. A newspaper, the Weekly Mercury, tells the story of an editorial that was printed. Dowd shares a quote from the editorial that states: “As one treads our streets, the eye is shocked at the frequent appearance of maimed creatures, whose audacity is only paralleled by the hideousness of their deformities” (Dowd, 2017). The Ugly Law in San Franscico further states that “a lady in delicate health” should be able to walk the street safely and not fear deformed monstrosities that hung out by the nooks” (Dowd, 2017). It was suggested that if “you could hold a job, you were worthy. If not, you were ugly” (Wilson, 2019). The able-bodied grew accustomed to only interacting in public with other able-bodied people at work, school, in communities, political settings and also defined how our entire social, economic, educational, religious, political, physical, and operational infrastructure was designed and built. Little to no regard was given to where the othered or disabled were, or how they were treated. The Ugly Laws were not removed from law by every state in the United States until 1974 (Wilson, 2019).

Institutions

Needing a more effective way to house and control the othered, the building of state institutions began (Stearns, 2011).  In 1848, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe opened the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth in Boston. The same school where Anne Sullivan and her brother would be abandoned and abused twenty-eight years later.  In 1876 Anne Sullivan, known as the Miracle Worker for Helen Keller was ten when she and her brother was abandoned in a Boston Massachusetts poor house due to her disability. She recalls her experience there as a “crime against childhood” (Blakemore, 2023). Inmates roamed throughout the facility like wild and cast out animals. Anne and her brother slept on iron cots in a massive dorm like room watching rats run free between the beds (Blakemore, 2023). In the following years many institutions were built and opened on the East Coast. Hervey B. Wilbur opened the first “school” (institution) in New York in 1848. In 1855 another school for “feeble-minded youth” opened in Albany, NY (History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023). The model around which NYS and other early institutions were built and utilized implied a school like environment when in fact they simply became warehouses of the disabled (Blakemore, 2023).

The Unites States government compiled a census for the first time to accurately calculate the number of mentally retarded (language used in 1890). The census concluded that in 1890 the number of disabled in the U.S. was approximately 95,571. The “Training Schools” (institutions) where the disabled were housed claimed to be able to transform the “deviant, to undeviant” (History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023) but this also implied an increase in cost to the country to cure the disabled in institutions. After the Civil War and the resulting economic strife and challenges to society, Historian James W. Trent wrote “In a growing and increasingly industrialized nation, communities did not need idiots, even educated ones”. Spending money to cure the institutionalized deviant was not a priority and considered a waste of financial resources (Wilson, 2019).

In the continuing egregious discrimination and treatment of the disabled and the othered, training schools, synonymous with institutions, became asylums and its residents referred to as “inmates” who received the bare minimum of custodial care. Vail described this as a dehumanizing process which Ginsburg and Rapp agree with. By researching disability studies, eugenics, and institutionalization the dehumanization process of the othered can be witnessed globally (Ginsburg and Rapp, 2013). The “inmates” could also be auctioned to the lowest bidder as personal property to the privileged. “Inmates” with mild disabilities were used as free labor at the institutions and they became focused on “curing” the sick inmates (Vail, 2023). By 1890 the state institutions in New York State each housed 250 disabled persons and by 1905 there were over 500 per institution. This increase in institutionalized individuals can be attributed to the era base idea that “putting a child away” was best for the family in order to live a normal life unincumbered by the needs and demands of a disabled child (Vail, 2023). Voluntary committal by the family of the individual was considered normal. Rome State Custodial Asylum for Unteachable Idiots opened in 1894. Overcrowding, underfunding and under staffing became worse and “inmates” could spend the entire day sleeping on the floor in a single room (History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023).

The “othered” populations were separated into different physical locations based on “diagnosis”. As institutions grew New York State political officials began to separate and classify the othered through diagnosis and classification. It led to housing the intellectually and developmentally delayed in institutions by themselves. They were helpless to choose, helpless to advocate for themselves, helpless to have any control over their environment.

The massive institutions, asylums, prisons, detention centers and hospitals were specifically built far removed from where normal society would navigate on a daily basis. They were often built on the outskirts of town on huge pieces of property that were gated, and the buildings not visible to the passerby. Institutions housed all ages of the developmentally delayed including infants who were “put away” if diagnosed as a burden to the family. With the building of massive institutions, the disabled were denied agency, individualism, equity, and self-determination. They became an assemblage of subjects or objects that needed to be moved where they could be controlled and not interrupt “normal society” (Lechuga, 2020). In 1963 an outbreak of Hepatitis at Willowbrook State School led to using children as test subjects. Dr. Saul Krugman, in a newspaper article from 1963, suggested he was “serving mankind by producing hepatitis in mentally retarded children” (Museum of disABILITY, 1963). The children were injected with hepatitis virus to measure the “effects of gamma globulin as a possible method” to attack the disease (Museum of disABILITY, 1963).

During the Depression the number of residents at state run institutions compounded while state and federal funding dropped significantly (Museum of disability, 2023). Families suffering from the economic effects of the Depression willingly put their disabled children in institutions and were never seen again. World War Two only made the overcrowding issues worse due to Unites States economic conditions. To save space and money the disabled were combined in spaces, rooms, and beds. Infants were raised and grew up in institutions where many babies to a “crib” was common (Museum of disability, 2023). Cribs were wooden or metal cages closed in on all four sides. Life in an institution is the only normal the babies ever knew before dying. They were buried in the institution’s graveyard with a T stake and identification number engraved on the top of the T grave marker (Encyclopedia of Disabilities, 2023).

Systemic biased and ableist fear of the institutionalized becoming a menace to society created a narrative that the disabled were “dangerous, immoral, and capable of ruining the American gene pool” (Sullivan, 2021) (History of Disabilities, 2023).

Now perceived as a menace to society, the charge of the institutions was to protect communities from the feeble minded that needed to be controlled, surveilled, and handled. Labed as defective delinquents’ new terms were used to measure the level of intelligence in the intellectually and developmentally delayed in NYS. A new category of mental retardation was labeled “moron, backward and moral imbecile” (History of Developmental Disabilities, 2023). During this time most believed that mental retardation was heredity and that any form of education of the disabled was pointless.

It was a common community understanding that “mental retardation” (Encyclopedia of Disability, 2006) was caused by “genetic defect, poverty, drunkenness, prostitution, crime, and violence” (Wilson, 2019).

The grave concern over the “mentally retarded” reproducing or engaging in physical intimacy supported the declaration of the 20th century eugenics movement that advocated for the forced sterilization of the disabled believing that if they reproduced, they would ruin the human species. The disabled underwent forced castration, vasectomies, and tubal ligation due to displaying “obscene habits”. The eugenics movement supported the “survival of the fittest” ableist mindset that strongly believed in forced sterilization, marriage restrictions and the “warehousing” of those with disabilities in institutions. It is estimated that tens of thousands were forced to be sterilized (Wilson, 2019). Wilson suggests that dehumanizing those who were considered unsightly, or disgusting supported the concept that some lives are more valuable than others.

Between 1848 and the late 90’s there were approximately fifty institutions in New York State alone. Nationwide, 556,000 intellectually and developmentally delayed persons lived in State Institutions. Geraldo Rivera, an American investigative journalist broke the story of Willow brook, a New York State institution in Rockland County, New York in 1972. He secretly went to Willow brook, after secretly interviewing a doctor employed at the institution. Located in the archives of the Museum of disABILITY is a photograph of one metal crib with nine babies in it. Overcrowding in New York State institutions was common as infants at birth who were born with what was considered an impingement were immediately given away to an institution (Museum of disABILITY, 1960). He took video of the deplorable and egregious conditions that the developmentally and intellectually delayed lived in. This event was considered the beginning of a painfully slow reevaluation of how the othered are treated and identified in New York State.

Conclusion

As a member of the New York State Museum of disability publications department, T. Stearns curates the archival museum that creates access to the locations, timeline descriptions, photos, books, and new paper articles, regarding the history of NYS institutions. The terminology is raw and sad. One exhibit, Idiocy in America, shares relevant information regarding how those with disabilities were referred to and identified as. A New York State Map Exhibits every location in New York State (approximately 50) that had an institution from 1650-1950 and what that institution’s reputation was and why (Stearns, 2023).

Ableism Theory framed and examined how society determined a person’s worth or value in our western colonized society. The abled used a skewed metric soaked and saturated in a settler colonialism metric of measurement that decided who was able, and therefore able to contribute to society in a meaningful way, glorifying capitalism above common-sense humanity.

Our cultural history of othering the developmental and intellectually delayed, in New York State, our most vulnerable, must be de-colonized in order for a new epistemological bridge between the abled and the disabled that illuminates a new pathway towards awareness and understanding. Addressing and eliminating our own ableist mindset and subsequent bias (pulling back the veil) will create a cultural understanding of what inclusion, diversity, equity, and diversity should look like.

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