Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T02:43:10.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Malingerers, the ‘weakminded’ criminal and the ‘moral imbecile’: how the English prison medical officer became an expert in mental deficiency, 1880–1930

from III - Special offenders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Catherine Crawford
Affiliation:
University of Essex
Get access

Summary

The Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 which followed the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded (1904–8) contained a clause describing a type of mental deficiency called ‘moral imbecility’. It stated that ‘moral imbeciles’ or ‘persons who from an early age display some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment has had little or no deterrent effect’ were now to be dealt with in special institutions to be created under the Act, rather than in prisons. English prison medical officers (hereafter prison MOs) regarded themselves as experts in diagnosing such cases of moral defect, and claimed that their expertise was based on their experience of observing prisoners in the normal course of their duties. In this chapter, I shall argue that this knowledge of the mentally deficient criminal was a product of routine procedures for observing, classifying and segregating prisoners that had existed from approximately the mid-nineteenth century. To demonstrate this, I shall concentrate on three aspects of the prison MO's expertise: his duty to supervise punishment, his use of techniques of observation, and his use of criminal records in constructing case-histories of mentally deficient or ‘weak-minded’ criminals.

In structuring the essay in this way I am, of course, giving priority to a study of the relationship between techniques of control employed in the prison and the production of psychiatric and criminological knowledge.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×