Dorothy Atkinson
How people’s own stories led her to a career in learning disability history
Dorothy Atkinson, Emeritus Professor of Learning Disability at the Open University and a crucial early pioneer of the history of learning disability, reveals what led her into this field of study.
My route into the history of learning disability was through my work as a social worker in Somerset in the mid-1970s/80s. Initially my interest was triggered by my appointment as a hospital social worker to two long-stay institutions, both apparently ex-workhouses. I was curious to know by what turn of events these former workhouses had become hospitals for people with learning disabilities. Subsequent visits to the Somerset Record Office in Taunton to consult relevant documents, revealed the changes in policy and practice that had led to the changed use of the old institutions.
Important stories
At the same time, my day job was to help people living in the two hospitals to move out and live, with support, in the community. It was during these major transitions in people’s lives that I began to hear their stories – about what had happened in their lives that had led to their incarceration in hospital and about their day-to-day experiences of living there. It became apparent that people with learning disabilities had important and revealing stories to tell, accounts that could – and often did – challenge the official versions of events.
This early interest in oral and documentary histories of people and places was given scope to develop when I joined the staff of the Open University in Milton Keynes in the mid-1980s. A collection of around 200 stories (as part of an OU course) in an anthology, entitled Know Me As I Am (1990) demonstrated the importance of people’s stories in the telling of history and confirmed their capacity to tell them. The subsequent founding of the Social History of Learning Disability (SHLD) group with Jan Walmsley in 1995 led to 20 years of inclusive conferences and publications which have drawn together life stories and documentary evidence.
Inspirational
My interest in people’s stories has continued over the years and includes my work with Mabel Cooper on researching and telling her life story and helping her promote it. Mabel’s life history encompassed early loss and separation from family, years spent in children’s homes and St Lawrence’s Hospital and her later life as a self-advocate, conference speaker and published author. Her story has proved inspirational to many people in this country and beyond. Sadly Mabel died in 2013 but her account of her life lives on in her book I’d like to know why.
I am now Emeritus Professor of Learning Disability, having retired from the OU. However, the work of enabling people to tell their stories continues. Since retiring to Somerset, I have had the opportunity to work with a local organisation, Open Story Tellers, on an oral history project to reveal the history of the two hospitals where I was based all those years ago – a real coming-together of two strands of my life. Meanwhile, the SHLD group, with colleagues from Leeds University and the University of East London, have received a grant to develop a digital archive of people’s stories – so that Mabel’s story, and the many other stories already told as well as those still to come, can be archived for the future.
Dorothy Atkinson is the co-author of many publications on the history of learning disability including Forgotten Lives – exploring the history of learning disability’ (1997), Good times, bad
