Step by Step: The Curative Violence of Stockings and Shoes at the Syracuse State School

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Environmental and Social Issues within Historical Archaeology (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 1851, the New York State Legislature sponsored the opening of the Syracuse State School for Idiots (further referred to as the School), a publicly funded asylum school for disabled children, in hopes of creating economically productive, governable members of society. Every year, the School’s superintendent, Dr. Hervey Wilbur, wrote a report to the State Legislature describing the “improvements” students made at the School. The State Legislature assessed these reports to determine if and how much public funds the School would receive the following year. Due to 19th Century cultural notions of proper dress, many of these improvements center around the use of stockings and shoes, which School administrators forced pupils to wear even when they physically protested them. Due to the ubiquitous forced use of stockings and shoes amongst pupils, they provide an excellent material avenue to examine curative violence in the mid-19th Century education of disabled children at the School.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Environmental and Social Issues within Historical Archaeology (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology