Their Lives Their Choice? - Exploring histories of people with learning disabilities in Oxfordshire

image 14 07 2025 at 14 28
image 07 07 2025 at 18 28

                                                                                                    

In 2024 Oxford Health Histories collaborated with My Life My Choice (MLMC), Oxfordshire's Award Winning Charity for people with Learning Disabilities. MLMC service users, with academic support from historian Liz Woolley, led a scoping review at Oxfordshire Health Archive to identify how and where people with learning disabilities were treated and housed in Oxfordshire before the advent of the NHS in 1948. This was an entirely co-produced project, with the themes for researchers selected by service users questions. The process enabled service users to acquire new skills in exploring historical records.

littlemore today

Site of the Littlemore Hospital today (Credit: Sally Frampton).

 

The MLMC team uncovered new findings from their archival research. For example, their exploration of the archives of Littlemore Asylum  discovered a higher than expected intake of patients described as having learning disabilities, who were often assumed to have been treated separately to patients who had been deemed mentally ill.. As historian John Stewart, a consultant on the project comments: "I have been struck by, when 'asked the right questions', the archives throw up interesting material about historical cases of people with learning disabilities. So while that expression was yet to be coined, sensitive reading of, for example, admissions registers reveals cases which would now fall into that category, and the institutionalisation of many of the individuals concerned."

 

Explore the full report here!