Fr Vincent McNabb writes to "The Tablet"

Just browsing the Tablet archive,  I found this gem:

6th May 1911

THE FEEBLE-MINDED

 

SIR,—In your issue of April 15, mention is made of a Home for Feeble-minded girls over 16 years of age, to be opened at High Wycombe. It will be under the charge of the White Sisters (daughters of the Holy Spirit) and an organising Committee. Nothing but thanks could be offered to the Sisters and the Committee for their timely effort to deal with a social problem. May their zeal receive the better thanks of imitation elsewhere throughout the country.

 

I wish every other contribution of your correspondent merited the like gratitude.

 

Let me set down some statements that seem to me to be pernicious.

It is hoped that girls will remain in the Home for the greater part of their lives for this very grave reason : when a feeble-minded girl arrives at maturity, and is not under organised supervision, she becomes a danger to herself and to the community, ending in the workhouse, an inebriate reformatory, a rescue home or a jail. Liberty to the feeble-minded is only liberty to lead a life of misery and degradation, whereas segregation means a life of happiness and utility. Without this segregation the British public must in time consist of more mentally deficient than normal people as the feeble-minded give the world more children than do the normal in the ratio of 7'3 to 4. This is a mathematical fact from which there is no escape.  

This is such an unveiled "casting of stones" at a self-defenceless class of the community that I, their brother, may be allowed on their behalf to call a spade a spade—with emphasis.

 

I. From internal evidence I conclude that your correspondent is either not a "White Sister—a daughter of the Holy Spirit," or she has forgotten of what spirit, and colour, she is. Her voice may be the voice of a daughter of the Holy Spirit, but her words are the wearisome fallacies of the Eugenists.

 

II. There is a confusion between the " feeble-minded " and the "sexually feeble-willed." To argue that the feeble-minded are a danger to the community lays your correspondent open to an overwhelming tu quoque. It would be such a display of lack-logic that a defender of the poor might be pardoned for calling it "feeble-minded." A witty defender of the poor might even suggest humorously that your correspondent's mental state deserves permanent custodial treatment—as a danger to the community.

 

III. I have underlined the passage beginning "without this segregation." A few days ago Mr. Chesterton, on a memorable occasion expressed our thoughts and relieved our feelings by the monosyllable "Bosh !" On reading the passage underlined, I fly for shelter to leeward of Mr. Chesterton's strong sense—and vocabulary.

 

IV. Your ordinary run of readers will be swayed by the "7'3 to 4," with its delicate air of scholarly precision. All the terrier within me yearns to rise up and worry this appalling assumption. Instead of anger I will be content with authority. Many might be brought to bear ; one will do my work.

 

In his evidence before the Royal Commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded, Sir J. Crichton Browne said :

No definite opinion can be expressed as to whether the number of idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, feeble-minded, and defective persons is increasing out of proportion to the population. . . . A consideration of the causes of mental defects might lead us to infer that they are a diminishing quantity ; for they are undoubtedly of more frequent occurrence where there is a low standard of health dependent on poverty and insanitary conditions. (Report of Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded. Vol. I.)

I confess to the feeling that Sir J. Crichton Browne's wise ignorance is a more scholarly attitude than the precise "7'3 to 4."

 

V. I will end with two grave thoughts. If this custodial treatment and enforced celibacy bad been meted out to all the feeble-minded of the past century, how many of our reigning sovereigns would be in existence ?

 

To be quite consequent your correspondent would have given Francis Thompson permanent custodial treatment at Storrington, years before he went there to find himself a poet. We should thus have been without the "Hound of Heaven" ; though I agree we should have had the proceedings of the Eugenist societies and the long paralogisms on heredity.

 

I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,

VINCENT MCNABB, O.P.

Holy Cross Priory, Leicester.

 

 

The article Fr McNabb's letter refers to is here.

There's a further letter from him here.