Those They Called Idiots

ThoseThey Called Idiots traces the little-known lives of people withlearning disabilities from the communities of eighteenth-century England tothe nineteenth-century asylum and care in today's society. Using evidencefrom civil and criminal court-rooms, joke books, slang dictionaries, novels,art and caricature, it explores the explosive intermingling of ideas aboutintelligence and race, while bringing into sharp focus the lives of peopleoften seen as the most marginalized in society.