Secret histories unearthed by author show how disabled people fought injustice through the centuries

A groundbreaking book that uncovers the hidden histories of disabled people who fought against injustice shows disabled people are still “locked in bureaucratic battles” for support, just as they were in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Professor David Turner (pictured), an award-winning social and cultural historian, said this week that his book, Disability: A History of Resistance*, shows how disability rights “must be fought for” but also “can be taken away”.

He told Disability News Service (DNS) that he feels “particularly despairing” that many disabled people “still find themselves locked in bureaucratic battles to get the support they need, just as they did in the past”.

Among these struggles are those “for the most fundamental right of all”, the right not to starve.

One of the disabled people whose stories he has unearthed is Thomas Bagshawe, who appealed successfully to a court in Chesterfield in 1687 for financial support, after lodging a petition in which he said he had “nothing to live upon” and was “likely to starve” if he was not granted a weekly allowance.

He had been denied support by his local parish after neighbours accused him of being a “counterfeit” who exaggerated his impairment.

The media’s current “obsession with benefit scroungers” originated in the determination of 16^th century Tudor England to divide the “deserving” from the “undeserving” poor, Turner says in his book.

And he points to recent accounts – including those by DNS – that show how disabled people are still dying after losing essential support, including Errol Graham, who starved to death in 2018.

He says these are “horrific reminders that hundreds of years later we’re still failing to protect this most basic human right”.

He adds: “Since the beginnings of social welfare at the end of the sixteenth century, disabled people have had to fight to get their needs recognised, get the support they deserve, and to be believed.”

Asked for a blueprint from the past for modern-day disabled activists fighting cuts to support, he points to the Victorian era.

Although it is often associated with “the rise of industrial capitalism, the birth of eugenics, workhouses and institutionalisation”, it was also a time when disabled people “became visible like never before”, he says.

This was partly because of the “enormous” amount of ill-health and impairments caused by labouring in factories and coalmines, but also because disabled people began to speak out publicly about their lack of support.

He points to the former factory worker, activist and researcher William Dodd, who published a series of letters from towns in the north of England in the early 1840s that highlighted the lack of financial or medical care for disabled people.

Turner says: “When a factory owner blithely told him that disabled people could always fall back on the Poor Law, Dodd replied, ‘we deserve something better’.

“That feels like a particularly resonant message today. Disabled people deserve a lot better than the constant cycle of cuts.”

He says his book seeks to “rescue disabled people from historical neglect”, uncovering “forgotten testimonies and overlooked acts of resistance” that show how disabled people through the centuries have “shaped their communities, challenged injustice and redefined what it means to live a full and meaningful life”.

A history professor at Swansea University, and a disabled person himself, Turner draws on historical documents including diaries, letters, newspaper reports, petitions, court records and institutional reports.

He argues that the absence of disabled people’s stories from previous historical accounts makes it easier for policy-makers, employers and the wider public “to ignore the needs of disabled people in the present”.

Among the other disabled people he writes about is the blind refugee and furniture upholsterer James Wilson, who wrote Biography of the Blind, the first English-language book to focus on the historical experiences of disabled people.

But there are many more included in his book, including artist Sarah Biffin; the whig MP, author and social reformer William Hay; inventor Geoge Webb Derenzy; and anti-slavery activist Benjamin Lay.

Then there is the writer and former enslaved woman Mary Prince; and in later years the activist Megan Du Boisson, co-founder in the mid-1960s of the Disablement Income Group, which she described at the time as a “fighting movement”.

Turner told DNS: “By exploring the many ways in which disabled people have advocated for their needs in the past, one of the most important things we see is that there is a centuries-old determination on the part of disabled people to be valued as experts on their own lives and to use every opportunity to educate non-disabled people about the challenges they face.

“History reinforces the need to push for better disabled representation in decision-making affecting disabled people’s lives and for building alliances not just between disabled people but with non-disabled people as well.

“For activists today, knowing that they are building on a long history of creativity on the part of disabled people in approaching the challenges they face can provide inspiration even when things feel bleak.”

*Disability: A History of Resistance, by Professor David Turner, is published on 4 June by The Bodley Head