Defining Disability and Deformity

On 5 January 1721 the poet Alexander Pope wrote to his friend John Dan-castle begging from him an ‘Act of Charity’ with regard to a poor girl, Betty Fletcher. He described Betty as ‘so deplorable an object, as well in regard of Sickness and Disability, as of Poverty’, and called upon Dancastle to assist in securing a place for her in the service of his sister, Mrs Moore, whose ‘Benefices of this kind’ were ‘many and great’. If ‘she would please to allow her any small matter as a weekly salary, tho’ never so little, it would help her necessities much more than any larger gifts at uncertain times’. ¹ Letters written by elite patrons on behalf of poorer neighbours were not uncommon in eighteenth-century England. ² But this one, written by one of Georgian England’s most famous ‘disabled’ people, is interesting on a number of levels. Pope was left severely impaired after contracting Pott’s disease—tuberculosis of the spine—at the age of fifteen, which caused spinal curvature, mobility restriction, problems maintaining personal hygiene, and, at times, chronic pain. ³ His letter, on behalf of a young woman whose ‘disabilities’ were scarcely documented, and whose life otherwise leaves little trace in the historical record, may appear to modern readers as a touching example of solidarity between two people from very different social backgrounds but with a shared experience of impairment. Furthermore Pope’s description of Betty’s sufferings as proceeding from ‘Disability’ also seems strikingly modern. This is a letter whose simple appeal for support resonates across the centuries, the language of ‘disability’ providing a connection between past and present.