186 proceedings of the indiana academy of science. 



Indiana's Feeble-Minded. 



Dr. Geo. S. Bliss 



The first recorded attempt to educate a feeble-minded person was made 

 in the year of 1800 by Dr. Itard, a French physician, connected with one of 

 the Institutions near Paris. In 1836 an attempt was made to educate ten 

 idiots at the School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. The first public 

 institution in the United States was established at Massachusetts in 1848 

 in connection with the Perkin's Institute for the Blind in South Boston. 

 Gradually this work was taken up by state after state until in 1879 Indiana 

 established its first institution for the care of the feeble-minded as an adjunct 

 to the Sailors' and Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Knightown, Indiana, under 

 the name of The Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children. In 1887 the Legis- 

 lature gave the institution an independent existence and changed its name to 

 that of Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth. It appropriated $10,000.00 

 to buy land at or near Fort Wayne, and gave the Board of Trustees $40,000.00 

 for buildings thereon, and authorized the Board to rent temporary premises 

 and take charge of the feeble-minded children then in the Knightstown Home. 



Until 1887 there were received only feeble-minded who could be improved. 

 The law of 1887 broadened the scope of the institution to care for feeble- 

 minded, epileptic, and paralytic. The Trustees tried to find temporar3' 

 quarters in Fort Wayne without success. The buildings of the new Eastern 

 Hospital for the Insane at Richmond, Indiana, were almost completed, and 

 upon recommendation of the Governor permission was obtained to occupy the 

 uncompleted buildings by the school. 



Maj^ 1st, 1887, the sixty children at Knightstown were removed to Rich- 

 mond. In the beginning of the year 1888 plans were made and completed 

 for the Institution to accommodate about four hundred inmates on the 

 present site at Fort Wayne. That same year approj^riations amounting to 

 $187,300.00 were made to build the main building, and on the 8th of July, 

 1890, about three hundred inmates were moved from Richmond to their new 

 home in Fort Wayne. This institution has gradually grown until there are 

 present today 1,388. 



Children are admitted to the institution under two acts. An act allow- 

 ing children from six to sixteen to be sent to the institution for the purpose 

 of training, and an act allowing adult women from sixteen to forty-five to be 

 sent there as a protection to themselves and the community. 



This, however, is only a very small part of the number of feeble-minded 

 in Indiana that should today have State care. The most conservative 

 estimate that can be made is that there are at least six or seven thousand 

 in Indiana today requiring State care. This leaves between four and five 

 thousand at large in the State now needing institutional care but receiving 

 nothing. 



