Hast ever seen an eagle chain’d to earth? A restless panther in his cage immured? A swift trout by the wily fisher checked? A wild bird hopeless strain its broken wing
The imagery of an eagle chained to earth provides a look into the experience, which I feel adequately parallels the protagonist of my pop culture source.
A poison’d sting in every social joy, A thorn that rankles in the writhing flesh, A drop of gall in each domestic sweet, An irritating petty misery, That I can never look on one I love, And speak the fullness of my burning thoughts?
Very pervasive and ever-present level of grief being expressed in relation to his disability.
However, both Peevey's memoand his ordinance (which says nothing specific about disability or "unsightliness")appear over a month after the City Council of the City of Chicago passed revisionsof its 1881 municipal code in which the firstversion of Chicago's ugly law ap-pears. Therefore they cannot be the origins of Chicago's ugly law.
Great distinction. Understanding the history behind it is unclear, therefore exact origins cannot be determined: What does this say about the society of the time?
Four series of photographs, each with between twelve and forty five frames, show people with disabilities, naked, in various stages of locomotion. There is a man on crutches walking, a man with no legs getting on and off a chair, a disabled child crawling, and a woman with an orthopaedic disability walking with the aid of a clothed attendant.
Primary source: Photography
By arranging the photographs in this way, Muybridge positioned those with disabilities lower than those with ‘healthy’ bodies and just above animals.
Reflective of the sentiments of the time period
As Nayan Shah haspointed out, studies of law and society in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States tend to isolate various forms of accusation,regulation, and prosecution from one another: vagrancy is understood as aseparate problem from sodomy, say, or prostitution, and the designation ofthe unsightly beggar never even enters into the lists. Yet the history of theunsightly as what Shah calls a “distinctive social body” is tangled with otherhistories
In researching I wanted to narrow down my topic to only the physical disabled, but as I continue it becomes apparent that the category of 'disabled' encompasses many and that discarding others from that lens can really limit what it is that I'm finding.
Like other petty behavior laws, theugly law emerged in response to new disciplines of the body in post–CivilWar urbanization.
First, New Orleans shared with Chicago and its sister cities that passedugly laws an open culture of disgust—particularly open, in New Orleans’scase.
Beginning with disgust, come back to this.
Indeed, a historically particular conjunction of compassionand disgust in equal measure produces ugly law.
Both opinions had to be present to influence the law
In this proposed exemption clause,war injury (at least in the form of single amputation) trumped industrial ac-cidents like being drawn into wool-carding machines; begging masculinitytrumped begging femininity; and the mayor’s mendicant or peddler per-mit system—which, as we shall see, coexisted (though not peacefully) withugly ordinances in many cities—overrode blanket prohibition. The ques-tion of fairness, of worthiness, was “left open.
Clear example of there being social differences between disabilities -- The argument being made that disabled veterans deserve to be an exception to the laws due to notions of 'fairness'.
“the second half of thenineteenth century lives in a sort of frenzy of the visible” (122). In late-nine-teenth-century America, a particular form of visibility gained attention,associated with the politics of identifying and controlling the “ugly.” Thisdisciplinary politics reflected specific social and economic developments.In the early 1880s and the years immediately before, the nation underwenta period of prolonged economic depression; many disabled veterans ofthe Civil War were still alive and aging; disabled foreigners were notice-ably present in the city, since immigration restrictions were not as tightlydeveloped as they soon became.
Economic depression after the Civil War, coupled with immigration, led to increased visibility of disabled individuals.
That same year, across the continent in New York City, one amputeeveteran proclaimed, “I have that mark, and so conspicuous, that all cansee it. . . . No man can say, that Allen was a coward and hid from danger”(Clarke, 379). Historians who have examined photographs of amputeeCivil War veterans note that the majority of men photographed enactedAllen’s principle in their poses, prominently displaying tightly pinned-upempty sleeves and pants legs (Figg and Farrell-Beck, 467–468). For them,being maimed seems to have constituted a badge of honor, not unsightli-ness. Though Allen explicitly distanced himself from the figure of the beg-gar—“There is no man who has lost an arm or a leg,” he insisted, “but canearn a good support with the limb left him”—veterans on the street mightstill exploit the right to say “I have that mark, and so conspicuous” whenthey asked for, or demanded, alms (Clarke, 385).
Example of pride in one's disability -- Veterans were actively arguing against the label of 'ugly' and being grouped in with 'beggars' who would fall under that category as well.
averaging approximately 250 persons per institution in 1890 and over 500 per institution by 1905. In a relatively short time, practices shifted from compassionate education and training to segregation.
uptick in the decade and a half - clear cultural value shift.
Doctors were also influenced by popular ideas of eugenics in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Eugenics is the misguided belief that controlling genetics could improve the human race.
good to note the link between treatment and popularity of eugenics at the time.
However, individuals with disabilities-- whether physical or cognitive-- were commonly sent to "lunatic" and "insane" asylums.
Specifically noted BOTH physical and cognitive