ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the history of the institutional care of people with learning disabilities. It explores the everyday life of inmates at Kew and their subjective experiences of institutionalization, using the surviving archival sources. The initial determination to create a specialized training school for children with learning disabilities meant that for many patients admitted to the Idiot Asylum in its first two decades daily life was a round of classroom lessons, physical drill and employment. Developments in the training of children with learning disabilities in England were an important influence on the decision to build a specialized institution for children with learning disabilities in Victoria. The chapter describes the recollections of Edward (Ted) Rowe. Admitted to the Cottages in 1925, Ted spent the next eight years as an inmate of the institution. Fascinating in their own right, his recollections emphasize the importance of oral history in recovering experiences of people living with learning disability absent from the archive.
