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In 1838, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital was founded for the surgical
treatment of cripples. In 1851, a Cripples' Home and Industrial School for girls was
founded in St. Marylebone, and in 1865 the National Industrial Home for Cripple Boys
was established at Kensington.
Physically
handicapped
children
In 1891, the London School Board considered the recommendations of the Royal
Commission on the Instruction of the Blind, the Deaf, etc., and resolved 'that special
schools for those children who, by reason of physical and mental defect, cannot be taught
in the ordinary standards or by ordinary methods, be established, and that the schools
be designated "schools for special instruction In July, 1891, the School Management
Committee of the Board decided that the Sub-Committee on the Blind and Deaf should
also undertake the provision of special instruction for mentally and physically handicapped
children. The name of the sub-committee was altered to the 'Special Schools
Sub-Committee Combined centres for mentally and physically defective children
were first set up by the Board in 1892, at which time there were no statutory arrangements
governing the conduct of the classes.
Although physical as well as mental defect was mentioned in the scheme approved
by the Board in 1891, children suffering only from physical defect were not then looked
upon as a separate class, but they were from that time onward frequently admitted to the
special classes with the mentally defectives. A Departmental Committee (of the
Education Department) on Defective and Epileptic Children, appointed in 1896, issued
its Report in 1898. The report included a section on physically defective children in
which it was stated:
'We recommend that physically defective children shall be admitted to special
classes if, owing to chronic ill-health, they are not capable of receiving proper benefit
from instruction in the ordinary school while capable of benefiting from instruction
in the special classcs.'
Later in the same report a class for physical defectives then being carried on at Southwark
was referred to as 'a fair field for voluntary effort' but for which the recognition
of the Board was not recommended.
The Departmental Committee had come to the conclusion that one per cent. of the
children between the ages of 7 and 14 needed special instruction. The London School
Board accepted this estimate, but declared that it was not expedient at once to make
provision for this number of children. It was agreed that the accommodation to be
provided should be considered on the basis of the needs of the locality. It was further
agreed that no class should contain more than twenty scholars; but no centre should, if
possible, be for fewer than two classes or more than five; that if only one class
could be formed in any locality, it should be conducted in the ordinary school building
and not in a specially erected centre.
The commencement of this work was not unattended with difficulties. No child
was taken out of the ordinary school and sent to a centre unless it had been examined
by the Board's Medical Officer and the Superintendent and had been certified by them
as requiring special treatment. Parents were often unwilling to admit the deficiency of
their children; more particularly in mental cases. It was a question, too, whether the
Board, although it had power to compel a child's attendance at school, was empowered
to compel it to attend any particular school. It not infrequently happened, therefore,
that parents protested against the classification of their children as defectives, and
demanded, as of right, that they should continue their education in the ordinary school.
The cost of the education of defective children was necessarily greatly in excess of the
cost of the education of the normal child, but at first the Government did not recognise
this fact and the centres for defectives could earn no greater grant than the ordinary
schools.
These difficulties were overcome by the Elementary Education (Defective and
Epileptic Children) Act, 1899. This Act was framed upon the same principles as the
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