'The Royal Albert’: Childhood Idiocy and the Institutionalisation of Children’s Care in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. (360G-Wellcome-212778_Z_18_Z)

This PhD will investigate the social and medical history of children’s care in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, using the Royal Albert Institution as a case study. By the turn of the nineteenth-century, this establishment was one of the largest institutions in the UK devoted to the care and treatment of children deemed ‘idiots’ and ‘imbeciles’. The PhD intends to document the evolution of the Royal Albert from its inception in 1864 to 1913, providing a broad chronological overview of its development and contribution to wider debates about childhood and disability in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historical studies of childhood have undergone something of a renaissance in the late twentieth-century, forging new understandings of the ways in which childhood as a social condition and temporal state were shaped in different contexts. The PhD intends to extend these exciting developments and provide an innovative contribution to contemporary advancements in disability studies which seek to 'dislocate' conventional views of the disabled and the marginalised. It will develop our understanding of how children with disabilities and mental disorders intersected with emerging healthcare systems, and refine our view of the interplay between the state, families and medical professionals in managing their care.