A Social Study of Mental Defectives in County 
H., Indiana, in 1918 
By Hazel Irene Hansford, Ph.D., Head of the Out-Patient Departvieyit, 
Southeastern Indiana Hospital for the Insane 
PROBLEM AND METHOD 
For a number of years the increased number of those need- 
ing institutional care, of those needing outdoor poor relief, 
of criminals, and of backward children has attracted the at- 
tention of public officials all over the state of Indiana. 
In 1915 the governor of the state appointed a legislative 
committee to study the problem of the mental defective and 
to make a report to the next legislature. This committee 
secured the services of Dr. Arthur Eastabrook, who, with two 
assistants from the Eugenics Record Office, made a survey 
of two counties. The results of this survey are to be found in 
the Report of the Committee on Mental Defectives, published 
November 10, 1916. 
Ten more counties were then chosen for study, of which 
number County H. was one. This county was given over to 
the State University for a special investigation. Professor 
Ulysses G. Weatherly, head of the Department of Economics 
and Sociology, was appointed director of the work. 
The most valuable sources of information were those fur- 
nished by the State Board of Charities and Correction. This 
information consisted of the names of all those people from 
County H. who were receiving or had received institutional 
care in the past 2 years. These names were all classified ac- 
cording to township. The above-mentioned records were sup- 
plemented by a careful study of all jail, poor relief, health, 
county poor asylum, and insane inquest records and a list 
from each physician in the county containing the names of 
all epileptic, insane, and feeble-minded persons known to them. 
All the county outside the city of Stonetown was then 
taken township at a time and carefully studied. The school 
district was then made the unit within the township. Each 
questionable school child was tested by the Stanford Revised 
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