The Mental Deficiency Act (MDA), the related colonies and their inmates have been a rich seam for historians wanting to examine eugenicists and ideas of social defectiveness or tell misery stories.

Prof. Sarah Wise has now published a series of historical books on social victims, designed for a wide readership: starting with body snatchers, then London’s Nicol Slum, she covered women wrongly confined in lunatic asylums and now has moved into the non-intellectually disabled confined under the MDA. Her theme is summarised in her final chapters – ‘Thousands of lives were wasted in the mental deficiency system in the 46 years of the Act’s operation – a colossal squandering of human potential’. She is clear that she is concentrating on the group involved in the MDA for social and moral reasons and uses many anecdotes and case stories to illustrate her account. However, at times it is unclear what time period is being referred to, and her generalisations appear to include everyone detained under the MDA.

I found this book an easy read, and one that both informed and annoyed. It has a simple story to tell – that the MDA of 1913 was inevitable, coming from a fear of recidivist criminals, social delinquents and fallen women, powered by a small but very effective eugenic group that spread messages such as that a pauper delinquent mother (but not a hardworking one) gives birth to children who (because of their genes) inevitably become delinquent paupers. The MDA was targeted to include the undesirables and only avoided enabling sterilisation of the unfortunates because of fear of public opinion. The book then goes on to present stories and messages up to the 1960s.

This is not a book that discusses alternatives – there is no discussion of what care alternatives were practical in 1910 or 1930, no discussion of the social effects of the National Health Service removing the mental deficiency colonies from local authorities and turning them into hospitals. There is a lot on how someone becomes incarcerated in a colony and very little on how the law discharged people.

The book has lots of information to arouse and shock you. Through this book I discovered that Richard Berry, the medical director of my old hospital/colony Stoke Park, wrote to The Times advocating killing mental defectives. Also that the Board of Control had to tell a doctor he must stop castrating his patients – the doctor was quietly reprimanded, the patients left gonadless. However, then the public (and parliamentarians) often thought that a vasectomy had the same effect as castration on a person’s behaviour.

This book will not leave you bored. You may disagree with parts, but you will feel compelled to finish it once started.