Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, fascinating historical conversations from BBC History Magazine

and BBC History Revealed.

When we think about the experiences of people with learning and intellectual disabilities

in the past, we often think of discrimination, poor treatment and exclusion, and in many

cases that is accurate.

Yet, Lucy Delap, a historian at the University of Cambridge, is keen to highlight another

side of the story.

She spoke to Matt Elton about how her new research into the experiences of people with

learning disabilities in the first half of the 20th century reveals a surprising amount

of access and inclusion.

So your research explores the experiences of people with learning disabilities in the

first half of the 20th century.

If you had to sort of summarise people who are coming to this fresh, what would you say

that the main takeaway of your research here is?

A lot of the existing histories of people with intellectual disabilities has been really

focused on segregation and confinement, and that has meant that historians haven't looked

very much at the lives of people who just lived in the community.

And that was the majority of people with intellectual disabilities, although there was a kind

of push to try to get people into asylums and colonies and to get them under the control

of the authorities, actually that never really covered the majority.

So most people lived outside of those asylums, and that meant that they had to work.

This was a time when everyone who could worked and that applied to people with disabilities

...