An address on the education of idiots : delivered at the annual meeting held at the Guildhall, Exeter of the Western Counties Idiot Asylum, Starcross, near Exeter on January 26th 1883 / by George Pycroft.

  • Pycroft, George, 1819-1894.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address on the education of idiots : delivered at the annual meeting held at the Guildhall, Exeter of the Western Counties Idiot Asylum, Starcross, near Exeter on January 26th 1883 / by George Pycroft. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    refers to it by saying that Providence has given to some n.< a wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the fiddle, and, in this,music differs from the sister arts. Moreover we have a youth about 18 or 19 years of age, who is stone deaf and yet will sing in tune. I do not know positively if he has never heard, but I do know that he is deaf now and yet he picks up the tunes the other boys learn. It is difficult to get him to sing by asking, but if he is quite alone he will tune up im- mediately. In Essex Hall there is a totally deaf mute who has been taught to talk on his fingers, and if you ask him to imitate the cries of animals such as sheep, oxen, donkeys, fowls, &c, he will do so. I mention these cases for you to puzzle over, and when you have solved the difficult problem I hope you will communicate the solution to me. Then again sometimes an idiot has great imitative powers; we have all heard of the boy at Earlswood who made a model in imitation of the Warrior Frigate, and there is on the table before us a fair pencil copy of another pencil drawing. It is but a copy, and copying is not art, it is simply imitation, and this power our boy has to a considerable extent. Sometimes the memory is perfect. We have a youth who can repeat all the hymns in Bickersteth hymnal three hundred in number; if you ask him any number, say the 5th, the 110 or 280th he will repeat the whole hymn immediately, or if you give him the opening line of the hymn he will give you the number. We have got beyond Bickersteth now—we must go with the times— we use Hymns Ancient and Modern, and the boy is rapidly learning those. Dr. Forbes Winslow mentions a man who was a complete fool, yet could remember the day when every person had been buried in the parish for the last thirty-five years, with the name and age of the deceased and the mourners at the funeral. But out of the line of burials his mind was a blank, he had not one idea. A boy at Earlswood is reported to have great power of mental arithmetic, so you see we have often often something to work upon and we must do the best we can with the materials at our command. We must make the most of what is there ; we must take up and concentrate the scattered ideas; we must strengthen by exercise the useful tracts of the brain, and employ what is serviceable to the best advantage. And now I will let you into the secret and mystery of Idiot education and training :— When a child is entered at our Asylum he is in the beginning brought before me, the Medical Officer.