Scope and Content: Massachusetts Resolves 1846, c 117 appointed Commissioners on Idiocy to inquire on: the condition of idiots in the commonwealth and if anything can be done for them. The commission’s report, written by Samuel Gridley Howe of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, led to the establishment by Resolves 1848, c 65 of the Experimental School for Teaching and Training Idiotic Children, located at the Perkins Institution. The school was incorporated as the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth (St 1850, c 150), located near Perkins in South Boston, with Howe serving as president until his death in 1876. It was renamed the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded by St 1883, c 239, reflecting the establishment of a separate asylum department for those beyond school age or not capable of being helped by the school’s instruction. Funds for the construction of a new facility in Waltham were provided by Resolves 1888, c 82, and occupation of the new site began in 1890, with the South Boston facility closing in 1892. St 1925, c 293 renamed the institution the Walter E. Fernald State School, in honor of the superintendent of the school, 1887-1924. A 2003 gubernatorial initiative to close the Fernald School (known as the Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center since 1993) by 2007 was contested during the subsequent decade, until the institution was shut down permanently in Nov. 2014. –In 1914 the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded instituted the first traveling clinic to evaluate children. The Wrentham State School started a similar program in 1917. St 1919, c 277 required school committees to provide special education to mentally retarded students within the public school system. In order to diagnose children in accordance with the provisions of this act, by 1921 traveling clinics were established in all fourteen institutions under the Dept. of Mental Diseases. Additional physicians and psychiatrists were appointed specifically at the institutions to operate these programs. The law was amended by St 1922, c 231 and St 1931, c 358, increasing the number of children eligible for examination. The Dept. of Mental Health mostly abandoned the traveling school clinic program during World War II due to personnel shortages. In 1952 a system of mental health centers was introduced in the state, providing consultation services to school systems. A redistribution of evaluations to school and community resources with assistance of these centers became official in 1955. –Traveling teams of psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychometrists provided physical and psychometric examinations of children and sociopsychiatric studies of the child and family, in order to identify mentally retarded children in each school, and make recommendations for their care, training and special education services. The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded hosted the traveling clinic in the district originally covering Danvers, Fall River, Gloucester, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, New Bedford, Revere, Salem, Waltham, Watertown, and Worcester. Additional towns were surveyed in the later years.
Arrangement: In two subseries: (1) Clinic case files; arranged first for Worcester, then alphabetically by municipality, thereunder by case no. (2) Extant clinic survey logs
Restrictions: Evaluative information restricted by statutory provision MGLA c 4, s 7, d 26(c) and c 66A. For conditions of access consult repository
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