THE PROBLEM OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED.
[To Tin EDITOR OP TIIII "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In reply to the letter from your correspondent " Conservator," may I point out that the recommendations of the Royal Commission with regard to the feeble-minded included the consideration of those cases in which parents might be able and willing to keep a defective child in safe and happy seclusion at home P Where this is possible, it will only be necessary to show that it is done. With regard to the poor, all experience goes to show that the better and more loving the parents, the greater their anxiety that their child shall be cared for. I have had a great deal to do with parents of this class, and I say, quite confidently, that when they are what they ought to be there is little difficulty in persuading them to entrust their weak-minded child to proper care. Constantly they themselves put forward the plea : "I can look after him while I am alive, but what is to become of him when I am gone P" The greatest hard- ship is in asking them to take the burden upon themselves of deciding that their child shall be segregated. "The neighbours will say I never ought to have put him away" is a not infrequent excuse for refusal. If there were no choice the hardship would be much lessened and the relief would be very great. The class who of all others give the most trouble with regard to their defective children are precisely those who least merit con- sideration ; themselves either weak-minded or wicked, they cruelly neglect their offspring whilst in ehafge of them; they readily promise anything in order to be rid of the expense of maintaining them whilst little, and then, when they arrive at man's estate, persuade them to leave a happy home in order that they may earn something, not believing that the work in which they have seen them employed is possible only in the special circumstances provided for them. There is another very large class concerning whom there need be no distress on account of family relations ; that consists of the children who find their way into workhouses or have been born there. These boys and girls are either illegitimate children, knowing only one parent, who is, as a rule, quite incap- able of caring for them, or they are orphans. With a properly graded system of care, beginning with the special school and ending with the farm colony, there will be no need for any sudden decision as to the ultimate destination of any particular child. Should it turn out, at any point in its career, that there has been a mistake (and that is what many people fear) nothing irrevocable will have taken place. The child will have received only benefit from its treatment. With powers of detention it will not be necessary to say to any parent that his child is to be segregated for life. It will be enough to say that his certificate carries his schooling to the age of eighteen, and then to twenty, and so on, as may be finally arranged. The possibilities are great of a far more humane and tender system of dealing with the weak in mind than now obtains, when, except in the case of the rich, who very commonly do send them to institutions, they are for the most part left to the care of their parents until these die and then have to struggle against—or, as they cannot struggle, to submit to —all the hardships which must of necessity be their lot.—I
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