In their own hands: reconstructing difference through the lives of nineteenth-century craftspeople

The material record of the lives of disabled people is fragmentary, medicalised and does not prioritise disabled voices. In addition to being missing from museum displays and store rooms, disabled people are often absent from museum audiences. This paper sits within a wider project taking an affirmative approach to both audiences and archives; improving access and inclusion for disabled people in museum contexts by combining historical research and the study of museum practices. Here I will present part of this work through a series of vignettes exploring the lives of disabled makers associated with Surrey-based institutions in the nineteenth century and the objects they might have left behind.

It is often stated that the medical model of disability was born in the Victorian period. This emphasises what a person’s body or mind cannot do and the ways in which they are different from the perceived norm. It is with this lens that many museum collections represent disability in the nineteenth century and beyond, if it is present at all. Objects and displays often centre the ‘freak’ show, medical treatment, and the institutions and charities who tasked themselves with the care of people seen as different. Where disabled people are present in our museums, they are often nameless, voiceless and their lives reduced to their impairment. What happens when we explore their lives in their own hands, if not in their words, and complicate the persistent narrative that disabled people’s lives are, and have always been, marked by their differences?