A Disability History of the United States Read Online Free Page A

her to be insane. She died after several years of confinement at Scotchtown. 6 Her husband’s money protected her from the consequences of the poor laws, and we know tantalizingly little about her plight. Given the situation of his wife, one wonders what Patrick Henry thought of the fate of his fellow activist James Otis.
    Thomas Jefferson’s sister Elizabeth, believed to be an idiot, similarly was protected by familial resources. Her famous brother cared for her financially and she lived in his household. 7 Those in need of community care more frequently entered the domain of the poor laws and public records. Elizabeth Jefferson, protected by family resources and perversely by her legal status of
feme covert
(which meant that she could not own anything and thus had no need to be under adult guardianship), largely remained out of the public record.
    In comparison, without family to care for him sufficiently, Thomas Rathburn of Rhode Island entered the public record due to his need for community resources. He avoided the asylum and stayed in his home only by receiving a tax exemption from his local community. For sixteen years he had been unable to “walk one step on foot without crutches or two staves,” and had not found work. 8 It is likely that Rathburn, like so many others today (as evidenced by the independent-living movement of the late twentieth century) and in the past, preferred staying in his own home to life in an asylum. It is also likely, however, that Rathburn did not have significant say in the policy decisions of public poor-relief programs.
    Rathburn was lucky not to end up institutionalized. Historian Karin Wulf found that in colonial Philadelphia, poor-relief officials were more likely to force men into institutions like an almshouse, but fund women in private homes. This even included paying others to care for them. “Crazy” Mary Charton, for example, could have been sent to an almshouse but instead lived in the home of Elizabeth Heany, who received two shillings and six pence a week to care for her. Wulf also found that in poor-relief applications, men were more likely to be described as having a permanent disability, such as blindness or paralysis, and their disability linked to their inability to work. Women tended to be described simply as poor, though we can assume that many were disabled. Indeed, as mariners, construction workers, horse drivers, and simply as people who spent more time on the streets, exposed to more risks, men had far greater opportunity to be seriously hurt in an industrial accident, and their disabilities became more public. With no form of workers’ compensation, such accidents generally ushered the entire family of an injured worker into poverty. 9
    Prior to the Revolution, in the communities of European settlers, those like Coolidge and Otis, like Sara Shelton Henry and Elizabeth Jefferson, who were believed insane or idiots, were confined only if such was considered absolutely necessary. Those exhibiting madness were social irritants and annoying, but madness itself was typically not considered a dangerous threat to be isolated and ostracized at all costs—nor, as in the case of James Otis and Samuel Coolidge, did it keep one from being hired as a schoolteacher. As James Otis Sr. laid it out for his son, individuals could be held accountable for their own madness, but significant social shame did not come from it. As the famed religious leader Cotton Mather wrote regarding his wife in 1719, “I have lived for near a Year in a continual Anguish of Expectation, that my poor wife by exposing her Madness, would bring a Ruin on my ministry. But now it is exposed, my Reputation is marvelously preserved among the People of God.” 10
    Indeed, significant evidence exists to suggest that unorthodox behaviors were simply part of everyday life. Unless violent, those considered insane were accepted in society. In Brampton, Massachusetts, residents went about their daily business