'A menace to the good of society': class, fertility, and the feeble-minded in Edwardian England.

During debates on the Feeble-Minded Persons (Control) Bill in 1912, Josiah Wedgwood expressed concerns that legislative provisions to compulsorily detain the feeble-minded would be used primarily to restrict the liberty of women and the working classes. Wedgwood's objections to legislation proved futile. In 1913, the Mental Deficiency Act invested local authorities with the powers to confine mental defectives in certain circumstances. In spite of contemporary efforts to expose the class and gender assumptions evident in the legislation, historians have paid relatively scant attention to the impact of class and gender (or the interaction between the two) on debates about mental deficiency. The aim of this chapter is to redress this imbalance by unravelling the complex interplay of class and gender in framing Edwardian understandings of feeble-mindedness. Focusing on a particular set of exchanges that took place in Manchester in 1911, this chapter highlights and analyses crucial incongruities in the logic of Edwardian reformers and exposes the conflict between the rhetoric and practice of pioneers of segregation.