ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a nuanced approach to the motivations for institutionalizing rural life. Drawing on oral-history accounts by residents, staff and families, it aims to explore the importance of rural life for those living and working in institutions and their relationship to local communities. The chapter also explores the significance of a rural setting and an ideology imbued with rurality for institutions for people with disabilities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The advantages of placing people with disabilities in distant rural locations were rehearsed widely; indeed, the concept held sway with remarkably little opposition for the best part of half a century. The chapter considers the way in which people with disabilities were constituted by those around them, the influence of eugenics, the theories of healthy country living and the need to find a place in society for those who were perceived to be unable to live with their families in the wider community.
