UK Disability History Month

The 22nd November – 22 December 2012 is UK Disability History Month (UKDHM). This is an annual event which strives to ‘raise awareness of the unequal position of disabled people in society and to advocate disability equality’, as well as ‘developing an understanding of the historical roots of this inequality’. The Together Trust has a long history of working with children and adults with disabilities and as we celebrate UKDHM this month we will be looking back over our next few blogs as to how our work in disability began.

Bethesda family c.1900

“Many years ago, 65 to be exact, the men and women who were caring for children in this great city, found many crippled* children who were seen to be a burden and cast out, so they decided to do something about it. Thus it was that Bethesda was started, exactly where it is now [George Street, Cheetham Hill, 1890-1959]. It was soon realised that these children would not be able to go to school so that we employed some teachers. This is the way we have gone ever since doing our best to help the children bodily, mentally and physically."

- Extract taken from a thank you letter for Christmas gifts, 1955. 

The ‘Bethesda Home for Crippled and Incurable Children’ was the Charity’s first home for children with disabilities. Its beginnings originated in the Committee’s nightly visits to the slum areas of Manchester; Angel Meadow, Greengate and Redbank. Here they came across children sleeping on the streets or living in squalor. These ‘types’ of children were known about, they were visible, they were easy to help.

‘Going for a ride at Bethesda'

It was only when the Committee went deeper in into the slum residences that they discovered children who were less visible but just as in need of help. As well as living in abject surroundings these children also had disabilities. As they were not admissible to the hospitals, they were left alone in the slums whilst parents went to work, often in dire circumstances:

“We passed on into the back room and came upon the object of our visit, a little girl of eight, who with her little brother, between two and three years of age, sat on the floor. There was little furniture and everything was very dirty. M was unable to walk, the lower limbs being paralysed since she was four years old. She was thus hopelessly crippled* though she could move about the floor in a fashion, and she was in charge of her little brother!”

The homes already opened by the Charity could not help these children as they would need to be of a semi-hospital character. And so the Charity made an appeal to the Manchester community for £5,000 to provide a service that could take children with disabilities out of the slum areas and into clean beds, medical treatment and staff who would help teach its residents how to develop skills to overcome their disabilities. 

*original phraseology of medical terms left in.