36 Environment and Efficiency 



livelihood, would be better if under permanent custodial treat- 

 ment." i 



No. 9 was " decidedly weak-minded." No. 1 1 is an example 

 of a morally deficient girl doing well when subjected to special 

 treatment and segregation. 



As to the unsatisfactory cases: with regard to No. 12, 

 the superintendent suggests " that this girl's immorality " was 

 fl probably inherited from her mother, who was bad ! " On the 

 other hand, she was admitted at the age of twelve, and had 

 " previously lived in immoral surroundings." No. 13 was an 

 epileptic. No. 14 tl had no moral character " ; the father was 

 also immoral and " hardly responsible." I have not classed 

 this as a mental case, but it seems probable. 



The history and record of No. 15 are, I think, pathetic. 

 The parents of this child were deaf and dumb ; they were also 

 vagrants who tramped the country-side, so that not only was 

 the child shut out from the advantages of treatment in the 

 Special Schools, but she was cut off also from the ordinary 

 common-school education of the normal slum child. It is 

 impossible to think of a case as normal which possessed such 

 an abnormal history, but I have not classified it as mental. 



With regard to No. 16, I suppose this would be quoted by 

 the Eugenists as a clear case of inherited vice. On the other 

 hand, might not the disadvantages involved in admission at the 

 age of twelve apply almost equally to the age of eleven ? It 

 does not seem fair to imply that this is a clear case of heredity, 

 when the child during the most impressionable years of its life 

 had been living with prostitutes. 



I have purposely quoted a fair number of these doubtful 

 and unsatisfactory cases, in order to illustrate the kind of 

 failings which appear most prevalent. Many of these unsatis- 

 factory cases I would class as " moral defectives " people who, 

 to quote the definition given by Sir James Crichton Browne, 

 " have by reason of disease or disorder of the brain, undergone 



1 Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, 

 Part III, p. 9. 



