The Girls and Boys of Belchertown: A Social History of the Belchertown State School for the Feeble-Minded

A Note on Terminology

[ xiii ] A Note on Terminology Throughout history, there has been a tendency to describe people by their disabilities. Some have decried this tendency because it masks the essential humanity of those so described, making it easier for the rest of us to ignore them and to dismiss them as less than fully human—or worse. But the tendency persists, and it is part of the fabric of our language. Particular termsmaychange,buttheidentification-by-disabilitydoesnot.Individuals whom we today call “intellectually disabled” were, when Belchertown State Schoolwasfounded,called“feeble-minded”and,later,“mentallyretarded.” The earlier terms are now rightly disfavored for having become pejorative, insulting, even abusive; the latest iteration not yet so. This lexical thicket presents special problems for one trying to tell the history of an institution for intellectually disabled persons which closed before the currently accepted term—intellectual disability—gained favor. In 1922, when it was established, Belchertown State School was officially called a school for the feeble-minded. Throughout its history it was administered, variously, by the Insanity Board, the Department of Mental Diseases, and the Department of Mental Retardation. Most people—parents, friends, administrators, employees, reporters, reformers, the disabled themselves—used these terms without irony or ill willwhentalkingabouttheresidentsofBelchertownStateSchool,because that is how people—good people and bad people—talked then. For the most part, I have chosen to stay in character with the times I write about, using the terminology that was in common usage then: feeble-minded, retarded, and the like. On the one hand, it seems to me anachronistic to do otherwise; it is part of trying to make that period come more fully to life. Filtering history through contemporary moral and linguistic conventions doesn’t ameliorate past sins. On the other hand, I don’t want to demean or [ xiv ] note on terminology insult the residents whose history I seek to narrate; they have suffered enough. I hope my choices will not offend them. My title is a case in point. Most of those admitted to Belchertown State School were, at the time of their admissions, children, youths—mere boys and girls. Like other boys and girls on the outside, they eventually grew into men and women. Unlike men and women on the outside, they continued to be called children—boys and girls—and, for the most part, they were mistreated as such. My title acknowledges this grotesque fact, but it also introduces a dissonant note: by reversing genders, I mean to hint that something is not right: a school that isn’t a school, boys and girls who aren’t children. If I have told my story well, the reader should, in the end, want to celebrate with me the muted triumph of those souls buried in the state school graveyard—all former residents—who suffered unspeakable sorrows and humiliations, but the naming of whom (thanks to the efforts of Albert Warner) enshrined forever the memory of their adult humanity. The Girls and Boys of Belchertown z Massachusetts, showing the town of Belchertown and the Belchertown State School. —blackmer maps. ...