Imagining Disability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Representations of Impairment in England c.1660-c.1830

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'Imagining Disability in the Long Eighteenth Century' examines the ways in which physical impairment was defined, understood and discussed in England between 1660 and 1830. Disability history has developed over the past decade to show that meanings of impairment are not biologically determined but subject to change over time. Yet much of this research is focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and traces the historical roots of the barriers faced by disabled people in the present to citizenship. Research on disability before 1800 tends to focus on its more 'freakish' aspects, such as broadside accounts of 'monstrous births', rather than its more common manifestations. Furthermore, existing histories of disability are generally founded on institutional and top-down histories of what was done to disabled people; little is known about the experience of disability in history. Despite the view that the period from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries witnessed significant changes both in the treatment of disabled people and in social perceptions of disability, the era has not yet received detailed historical attention. 'Imagining Disability' seeks to make good this neglect, analysing cultural representations of disability and the testimonies of disabled people themselves to explore the meanings of impairment in this period. The principal output of the project will be a monograph that provides the first book-length study of physical impairment in this period. Cultural meanings of disability will be explored via a diverse range of sources, from sermons and medical texts to jokes, newspapers and prints. The book also examines how disabled men and women drew on these representations in making sense of their own experiences via analyses of elite memoirs and letters and a variety of narratives produced by the disabled poor found in pauper letters, petitions and criminal court records. It challenges dominant historical assumptions about the period as one which witnessed a transformation of perceptions of disability from one based on a 'religious' model to one based on medical understanding, by showing overlap between different modes of conceptualising impairment. It also challenges the accepted picture of the eighteenth century as a time insensitive and ill-adapted to bodily disability, contributing to wider discussions about Enlightenment society.The research is of contemporary as well as historical importance. It makes an important contribution to the broader project of restoring disabled people to history, acting as a form of empowerment to a group that traditionally has been marginalised. Key debates about disability in the eighteenth century recur in the modern era. The public perception and treatment of disabled war veterans is a current issue in Britain as part of the wider debate about the continued viability of military intervention in Afghanistan. At the same time, concerns about 'fraudulent' claimants to disability benefits (which echo eighteenth-century diatribes against 'sham cripples' begging on the streets) have resurfaced in the British media in the context of controversy about eligibility to state welfare provision. This research has potential to make an impact on policy debates about eligibility for support by examining the historical problems of defining genuine and fake claimants to relief. It draws on historical evidence to urge policy makers not to pander to media prejudices in their perception of what is 'disabling' and in judging the legitimacy of claimants. An article aimed at communicating 'lessons from history' to policy makers will demonstrate the relevance of the research in this respect. The resulting publications will appeal to scholars of disability history, eighteenth-century social and cultural history and anyone interested in human diversity.