Laurel Daen

“To Board & Nurse a Stranger”: Poverty, Disability, and Community in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts

Journal of Social History, Mar 1, 2020

In 1786, Betty Trifle, a woman the townspeople described as “furiously insane,” arrived in Uxbrid... more In 1786, Betty Trifle, a woman the townspeople described as “furiously insane,” arrived in Uxbridge, MA. Lacking family, property, town settlement, and the “wherewithall to support herself,” the Uxbridge selectmen arranged for Trifle to be boarded with local residents Nathan and Nancy Tyler. For the next twenty-three years, the Tylers and other townspeople housed, clothed, fed, and nursed Trifle—sending receipts for their expenses and labor to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which issued them annual disbursements. Trifle’s experience of poverty and disability was not unusual in eighteenth-century Massachusetts nor was the town-provided but state-funded care she received. Drawing on nearly two thousand requests for reimbursement from townspeople and selectmen to the Massachusetts General Court between 1786 and 1799, this paper recovers the extensive system of boarding sick and disabled “strangers,” or people without settlement rights, in the homes of town residents—a method of poor relief that historians have almost entirely overlooked. Accounts of the intimate caregiving and receiving relationships between boarders and hosts—which often continued for years and bridged racial, ethnic, and social divides—suggest that the bounds of eighteenth-century Massachusetts communities were flexible and capacious in ways that scholars have not fully recognized. At the same time, the labor associated with nursing ailing nonresidents laid bare the hierarchies of gender, race, class, and ability within these communities, corroborating scholarship on the gendered and racialized dynamics of care. Lodging arrangements that bound strangers and residents together depended on the unrecognized and uncompensated work of women.

Art/Self: Martha Ann Honeywell And The Politics Of Display In The Early Republic

Rubens had advertised her artistic achievements and extraordinary appearance in the Baltimore Pat... more Rubens had advertised her artistic achievements and extraordinary appearance in the Baltimore Patriot, and local citizens greatly anticipated her arrival.1 Honeywell was known as an "extraordinary phenomenon" throughout the United States and Europe as much for her accomplishments in embroidery, miniature writing, and paper cutting as for her singular body, which lacked hands and had just three toes on one foot. Now, the Peale brothers could add Honeywell to their selection of artistic and scientific exhibitions. During the first week o f Honeywell's show, over 600 visitors came from Baltimore and surrounding cities to purchase her artwork and watch her perform. Some visitors, like Harriet Thomson o f the Copeley Plantation in Virginia, saved Honeywell's needlework samples and cuttings in their scrapbooks.4 Others, like the cabinetmaker George Woltz, sat for a profile, which Honeywell cut by holding scissors in her mouth.6 A 15-year old girl even dedicated a poem to her: "What skill, what taste, what neatness shine / In all thy various works o f art / They surely show the hand Divine / Has stamped his image on thy heart."6 Due to popular demand, Honeywell exhibited at the Museum for just over one year.7

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‘A hand for the one-handed’

The Constitution Of Disability In The Early United States

“The Constitution of Disability” examines the creation and implementation of bureaucratic, legal,... more “The Constitution of Disability” examines the creation and implementation of bureaucratic, legal, institutional, and cultural categories of disability in the Early American Republic. Scholarship in early American studies, disability studies, and the history of medicine has been slow to account for disability—and its status as a political, legal, and administrative classification in particular—during the period. This dissertation shows how disability became a meaningful designation in diverse venues, from the provision of federal and state pensions to wounded veterans and deaf and blind students to the restrictions imposed on those deemed to be cognitively disabled by state and federal courts. A wide range of sources underpin the study. Governmental and legal records demonstrate the role of political officials and judges in formulating and refining disability categories as well as how these constructs were negotiated by those who both claimed and rejected the designation. Institutional accounts, newspaper advertisements, patent documents, visual art, and material objects reveal how Americans developed and contested disability classifications in various sectors of the market economy. Writings by physicians expose the increasing medicalization of the category of disability. In addition, genealogical materials, such as census records and family histories, facilitate the recovery of the lives and experiences of many impaired and disabled people. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that Americans—bureaucrats, judges, institutional administrators, artists, inventors, producers, and consumers—struggled to determine what disability meant and therefore who should be entitled to the benefits and strictures associated with the classification. as a result, many turned to physicians to preside over the designation of disability. These emerging professionals used the specialized and seemingly impartial language of medicine to lend the category of disability greater shape, weight, and authority. They also used their newfound positions as adjudicators of disability to assert and claim professional status. By the mid-nineteenth century, disability was a more standardized, medicalized, and significant administrative, institutional, and cultural categorization and physicians were viewed as experts on disability policy and disabled people

Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean by Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy (review)

No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s–1930s by Sarah F. Rose

Labor, 2018

View Crossmark data Nevertheless, Fish does not solely focus upon problematic practices that exis... more View Crossmark data Nevertheless, Fish does not solely focus upon problematic practices that exist within the secure wards. She exposes the ways in which women with learning disabilities exercise practices of resistance in response to the power relations that they are situated within. She confirms that the best way to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities is to speak to people with learning disabilities. Her book offers various examples of good practice, indicating how support staff can work together with people with learning disabilities to improve their support. Also, perhaps most crucially, Fish highlights 'the contextual contingence and socially constituted nature of what is classed as "difficult" behaviour', in order to demonstrate 'how supportive relationships could transform this behaviour' (159). In providing such a comprehensive picture into a part of our healthcare system that is often left unaddressed, A Feminist Ethnography of Secure Wards for Women with Learning Disabilities makes an essential contribution to both academia and wider society. Fish's work attests to the utility of a feminist disability studies approach when researching in health and social care settings. The 'features and peculiarities' of forensic services for people with learning disabilities that she identifies are used to suggest recommendations for the unit in which she did her fieldwork, as well as for policy more generally. Thus, this book is not only a valuable resource for academics, but also for practitioners and policy-makers. Although this book focuses on secure wards for women with learning disabilities, it addresses fundamental issues that are relevant to wider sections of society. By recognising that the disabling and gendering experiences uncovered by the research were not limited to the institutional setting, Fish's book speaks to a broader societal problemin which people with learning disabilities are undervalued and societal support structures for them and their families are currently limited.

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Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America by Audra Jennings

Labor, 2018

offers an in-depth look at the early history of the modern disability rights movement by examinin... more offers an in-depth look at the early history of the modern disability rights movement by examining disability activism during World War II and its significance. In doing do, she aims to correct the widely held misconception that this movement in the United States grew solely out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, an interpretation that strips disability activism of its own important political history. The focus of this book is the story of the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped (AFPH). While Jennings is quick to point out that the AFPH was not the founding organization of the disability rights movement, she argues that it did play a transformative role in its development. Unlike previous disability groups, AFPH was a "national, cross-disability social movement organization" that brought together disabled citizens and veterans (p. 3). This created a sense of shared experiences beyond a specific type of disability and fostered an understanding that disability exclusions were attributable to systemic discrimination and not individual failures or misunderstandings. The AFPH also championed a "society in which state policy made possible disabled individuals' full participation in civic life" (p. 3). While the notion of the role of the federal government underwent a major overhaul during the Great Depression, the New Deal promise that ensured the government would provide work and security for Americans fell short for people with disabilities. Established in 1942, the AFPH was able to tap into the politics of World War II in a way that extended this New Deal ideal to people with disabilities and, in turn, shaped the disability rights movement. A strength of the book is the considerable attention given to the founder of the AFPH, Paul Strachan, and how his own personal history inspired "[t]he goals, strategy, connections and style of the AFPH" (p. 24). Strachan became disabled at an early age when childhood diphtheria left him with a hearing impairment. He also was in a deadly automobile accident during the interwar years that killed his father and left him with a damaged spine that required him to walk with a cane for the rest of his life. Strachan remarked on how the discrimination he faced shaped his views regarding disability rights. For him, the personal was political. Strachan's ability to translate his personal hardships into political activism also had to do with his previous government experience. During World War I, he moved to Washington, DC, where he worked for the Bureau of War Risk BOOK REVIEWS | 377

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Beyond impairment: Recent histories of early American disability

History Compass, 2019

Research on physical and intellectual incapacity in early America (defined in this essay as North... more Research on physical and intellectual incapacity in early America (defined in this essay as North America and the Caribbean before 1820) dates at least to the 1930s, but only in the past decade or so have historians focused on disability, spawning the burgeoning subfield of early American disability history. Inspired by disability rights activism and the discipline of disability studies, scholars in the field approach disability as a historically variable and evernuanced category akin to gender, race, and class. Departing from earlier scholarship that viewed impairment as a health condition best resolved by social welfare and medicine, recent works meld analysis of the concept of disability and its influence on structures of power with a commitment to recovering the lives and experiences of impaired people. This essay examines two areas of new research in the field of early American disability history: (a) disability in law and government and (b) disability and slavery. The essay also discusses recent works that have pushed the theoretical bounds of the field, using analytical strategies that blend past and present, foreground language, and question the concept of disability itself. The Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes Concerning the Inhabitants of the Massachuset[t]s, which was published in 1648 and would shape statutory law in this and other American colonies through the eighteenth century, had a topical entry for "Abilitie." "All persons of the age of twenty one years, and of right understanding & memorie," the legislature stipulated, had "libertie to make their Wills & Testaments & other lawfull Alienations of their lands" (Colony, p. 1). The code's treatment of ability and disability, both intellectual and physical, did not stop there. "Ideots" and "distracted persons" were not culpable for their crimes, having "dispensations in any Case, whether criminal or others, as Religion and reason require" (p. 51). In addition, individuals with "greatnes of age, defect of minde, failing of senses, or impotencye of

Download

Art/Self: Martha Ann Honeywell And The Politics Of Display In The Early Republic

Rubens had advertised her artistic achievements and extraordinary appearance in the Baltimore Pat... more Rubens had advertised her artistic achievements and extraordinary appearance in the Baltimore Patriot, and local citizens greatly anticipated her arrival.1 Honeywell was known as an "extraordinary phenomenon" throughout the United States and Europe as much for her accomplishments in embroidery, miniature writing, and paper cutting as for her singular body, which lacked hands and had just three toes on one foot. Now, the Peale brothers could add Honeywell to their selection of artistic and scientific exhibitions. During the first week o f Honeywell's show, over 600 visitors came from Baltimore and surrounding cities to purchase her artwork and watch her perform. Some visitors, like Harriet Thomson o f the Copeley Plantation in Virginia, saved Honeywell's needlework samples and cuttings in their scrapbooks.4 Others, like the cabinetmaker George Woltz, sat for a profile, which Honeywell cut by holding scissors in her mouth.6 A 15-year old girl even dedicated a poem to her: "What skill, what taste, what neatness shine / In all thy various works o f art / They surely show the hand Divine / Has stamped his image on thy heart."6 Due to popular demand, Honeywell exhibited at the Museum for just over one year.7

Download

‘A hand for the one-handed’

The Constitution Of Disability In The Early United States

“The Constitution of Disability” examines the creation and implementation of bureaucratic, legal,... more “The Constitution of Disability” examines the creation and implementation of bureaucratic, legal, institutional, and cultural categories of disability in the Early American Republic. Scholarship in early American studies, disability studies, and the history of medicine has been slow to account for disability—and its status as a political, legal, and administrative classification in particular—during the period. This dissertation shows how disability became a meaningful designation in diverse venues, from the provision of federal and state pensions to wounded veterans and deaf and blind students to the restrictions imposed on those deemed to be cognitively disabled by state and federal courts. A wide range of sources underpin the study. Governmental and legal records demonstrate the role of political officials and judges in formulating and refining disability categories as well as how these constructs were negotiated by those who both claimed and rejected the designation. Institutional accounts, newspaper advertisements, patent documents, visual art, and material objects reveal how Americans developed and contested disability classifications in various sectors of the market economy. Writings by physicians expose the increasing medicalization of the category of disability. In addition, genealogical materials, such as census records and family histories, facilitate the recovery of the lives and experiences of many impaired and disabled people. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that Americans—bureaucrats, judges, institutional administrators, artists, inventors, producers, and consumers—struggled to determine what disability meant and therefore who should be entitled to the benefits and strictures associated with the classification. as a result, many turned to physicians to preside over the designation of disability. These emerging professionals used the specialized and seemingly impartial language of medicine to lend the category of disability greater shape, weight, and authority. They also used their newfound positions as adjudicators of disability to assert and claim professional status. By the mid-nineteenth century, disability was a more standardized, medicalized, and significant administrative, institutional, and cultural categorization and physicians were viewed as experts on disability policy and disabled people

Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean by Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy (review)

No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s–1930s by Sarah F. Rose

Labor, 2018

View Crossmark data Nevertheless, Fish does not solely focus upon problematic practices that exis... more View Crossmark data Nevertheless, Fish does not solely focus upon problematic practices that exist within the secure wards. She exposes the ways in which women with learning disabilities exercise practices of resistance in response to the power relations that they are situated within. She confirms that the best way to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities is to speak to people with learning disabilities. Her book offers various examples of good practice, indicating how support staff can work together with people with learning disabilities to improve their support. Also, perhaps most crucially, Fish highlights 'the contextual contingence and socially constituted nature of what is classed as "difficult" behaviour', in order to demonstrate 'how supportive relationships could transform this behaviour' (159). In providing such a comprehensive picture into a part of our healthcare system that is often left unaddressed, A Feminist Ethnography of Secure Wards for Women with Learning Disabilities makes an essential contribution to both academia and wider society. Fish's work attests to the utility of a feminist disability studies approach when researching in health and social care settings. The 'features and peculiarities' of forensic services for people with learning disabilities that she identifies are used to suggest recommendations for the unit in which she did her fieldwork, as well as for policy more generally. Thus, this book is not only a valuable resource for academics, but also for practitioners and policy-makers. Although this book focuses on secure wards for women with learning disabilities, it addresses fundamental issues that are relevant to wider sections of society. By recognising that the disabling and gendering experiences uncovered by the research were not limited to the institutional setting, Fish's book speaks to a broader societal problemin which people with learning disabilities are undervalued and societal support structures for them and their families are currently limited.

Download

Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America by Audra Jennings

Labor, 2018

offers an in-depth look at the early history of the modern disability rights movement by examinin... more offers an in-depth look at the early history of the modern disability rights movement by examining disability activism during World War II and its significance. In doing do, she aims to correct the widely held misconception that this movement in the United States grew solely out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, an interpretation that strips disability activism of its own important political history. The focus of this book is the story of the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped (AFPH). While Jennings is quick to point out that the AFPH was not the founding organization of the disability rights movement, she argues that it did play a transformative role in its development. Unlike previous disability groups, AFPH was a "national, cross-disability social movement organization" that brought together disabled citizens and veterans (p. 3). This created a sense of shared experiences beyond a specific type of disability and fostered an understanding that disability exclusions were attributable to systemic discrimination and not individual failures or misunderstandings. The AFPH also championed a "society in which state policy made possible disabled individuals' full participation in civic life" (p. 3). While the notion of the role of the federal government underwent a major overhaul during the Great Depression, the New Deal promise that ensured the government would provide work and security for Americans fell short for people with disabilities. Established in 1942, the AFPH was able to tap into the politics of World War II in a way that extended this New Deal ideal to people with disabilities and, in turn, shaped the disability rights movement. A strength of the book is the considerable attention given to the founder of the AFPH, Paul Strachan, and how his own personal history inspired "[t]he goals, strategy, connections and style of the AFPH" (p. 24). Strachan became disabled at an early age when childhood diphtheria left him with a hearing impairment. He also was in a deadly automobile accident during the interwar years that killed his father and left him with a damaged spine that required him to walk with a cane for the rest of his life. Strachan remarked on how the discrimination he faced shaped his views regarding disability rights. For him, the personal was political. Strachan's ability to translate his personal hardships into political activism also had to do with his previous government experience. During World War I, he moved to Washington, DC, where he worked for the Bureau of War Risk BOOK REVIEWS | 377

Download

Beyond impairment: Recent histories of early American disability

History Compass, 2019

Research on physical and intellectual incapacity in early America (defined in this essay as North... more Research on physical and intellectual incapacity in early America (defined in this essay as North America and the Caribbean before 1820) dates at least to the 1930s, but only in the past decade or so have historians focused on disability, spawning the burgeoning subfield of early American disability history. Inspired by disability rights activism and the discipline of disability studies, scholars in the field approach disability as a historically variable and evernuanced category akin to gender, race, and class. Departing from earlier scholarship that viewed impairment as a health condition best resolved by social welfare and medicine, recent works meld analysis of the concept of disability and its influence on structures of power with a commitment to recovering the lives and experiences of impaired people. This essay examines two areas of new research in the field of early American disability history: (a) disability in law and government and (b) disability and slavery. The essay also discusses recent works that have pushed the theoretical bounds of the field, using analytical strategies that blend past and present, foreground language, and question the concept of disability itself. The Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes Concerning the Inhabitants of the Massachuset[t]s, which was published in 1648 and would shape statutory law in this and other American colonies through the eighteenth century, had a topical entry for "Abilitie." "All persons of the age of twenty one years, and of right understanding & memorie," the legislature stipulated, had "libertie to make their Wills & Testaments & other lawfull Alienations of their lands" (Colony, p. 1). The code's treatment of ability and disability, both intellectual and physical, did not stop there. "Ideots" and "distracted persons" were not culpable for their crimes, having "dispensations in any Case, whether criminal or others, as Religion and reason require" (p. 51). In addition, individuals with "greatnes of age, defect of minde, failing of senses, or impotencye of

Download

OUP accepted manuscript

Journal of Social History, 2018

In 1786, Betty Trifle, a woman the townspeople described as “furiously insane,” arrived in Uxbrid... more In 1786, Betty Trifle, a woman the townspeople described as “furiously insane,” arrived in Uxbridge, MA. Lacking family, property, town settlement, and the “wherewithall to support herself,” the Uxbridge selectmen arranged for Trifle to be boarded with local residents Nathan and Nancy Tyler. For the next twenty-three years, the Tylers and other townspeople housed, clothed, fed, and nursed Trifle—sending receipts for their expenses and labor to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which issued them annual disbursements. Trifle’s experience of poverty and disability was not unusual in eighteenth-century Massachusetts nor was the town-provided but state-funded care she received. Drawing on nearly two thousand requests for reimbursement from townspeople and selectmen to the Massachusetts General Court between 1786 and 1799, this paper recovers the extensive system of boarding sick and disabled “strangers,” or people without settlement rights, in the homes of town residents—a method of poo...

OUP accepted manuscript

Journal of Social History, 2018

In 1786, Betty Trifle, a woman the townspeople described as “furiously insane,” arrived in Uxbrid... more In 1786, Betty Trifle, a woman the townspeople described as “furiously insane,” arrived in Uxbridge, MA. Lacking family, property, town settlement, and the “wherewithall to support herself,” the Uxbridge selectmen arranged for Trifle to be boarded with local residents Nathan and Nancy Tyler. For the next twenty-three years, the Tylers and other townspeople housed, clothed, fed, and nursed Trifle—sending receipts for their expenses and labor to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which issued them annual disbursements. Trifle’s experience of poverty and disability was not unusual in eighteenth-century Massachusetts nor was the town-provided but state-funded care she received. Drawing on nearly two thousand requests for reimbursement from townspeople and selectmen to the Massachusetts General Court between 1786 and 1799, this paper recovers the extensive system of boarding sick and disabled “strangers,” or people without settlement rights, in the homes of town residents—a method of poo...

Martha Ann Honeywell: Art, Performance, and Disability in the Early Republic

Journal of the Early Republic, 2017

, the celebrated artist Martha Ann Honeywell arrived at Rembrandt and Rubens Peale's museum in Ba... more , the celebrated artist Martha Ann Honeywell arrived at Rembrandt and Rubens Peale's museum in Baltimore. For the past week, Rubens had intensively advertised her artistic achievements and atypical appearance in the Baltimore Patriot, and local citizens hotly anticipated her arrival. As Rubens explained, Honeywell was known as "a great curiosity" throughout North America and Europe as much for her embroidery, waxwork, miniature writing, and paper cutting as for her singular body, which lacked arms and hands and had just one foot with three toes. Along with the citizens of Baltimore, the Peales were clearly delighted with the opportunity to add Honeywell to the museum's selection of artistic and scientific exhibitions. 1 During the first week of Honeywell's show, over six hundred visitors Laurel Daen is a National Endowment for the Humanities long-term fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society. She is grateful to Karin Wulf, Jennifer Van Horn, Benjamin Irvin, Catherine Kelly, and the anonymous readers for the JER for their incisive comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Laurel would like to extend a special thank you to Laura Barry and Barbara Luck, curators at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, for introducing her to Honeywell's artwork. 1. By 1828, both Rembrandt and Rubens Peale had left the Baltimore Museum to a salaried manager; however, advertisements indicate that Rubens arranged Honeywell's show. For the Peale museums, see Charles Coleman

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Revolutionary War Invalid Pensions and the Bureaucratic Language of Disability in the Early Republic

Early American Literature, 2017

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‘A Hand for the One-Handed’: Prosthesis User-Inventors and the Market for Assistive Technologies in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

Manchester University Press, 2017

This chapter adds to historical studies of artificial body parts by exploring the reciprocal rela... more This chapter adds to historical studies of artificial body parts by exploring the reciprocal relationship between fictional texts and the prosthesis industry in nineteenth-century Britain and America. Focussing primarily on prostheses—including artificial legs, dentures, and glass eyes—in relation to female users, it demonstrates that fictional writing was a key component of nineteenth-century prosthesis discourse. The chapter argues that literary stories provided practical advice for readers on the kinds of prostheses that should be avoided for both social and functional purposes. Women in particular were targeted as consumers who should pay special attention when choosing prostheses. Popular literary sources, often packaged as marriage plots, provided kinds of advertisements not for but against certain prostheses. Meanwhile, both entire fictional works and particular representational strategies were used by contemporary prosthetists interchangeably as means through which to subtly...

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