Epilepsy Through History

Asylums, Workhouses and Epilepsy Colonies

For many people with epilepsy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the consequences of the diagnosis extended far beyond seizures. Poverty, stigma, limited work, institutional care and the belief that people with epilepsy needed to be separated from society shaped where many people lived and how they were treated.

Why institutions became part of epilepsy history

Before modern treatment and social support, recurrent seizures could make steady employment difficult and could leave people dependent on family, poor relief or charitable care. In Britain, people with epilepsy might be found in workhouses, general asylums or charitable institutions. By the late nineteenth century, specialist epilepsy colonies were promoted as an alternative: communities where residents could live and work in a controlled environment, often in rural settings.

The movement was not driven by one single idea. Some founders genuinely wanted to provide safer housing, meaningful work and care away from overcrowded workhouses and asylums. At the same time, the model also reflected a wider belief that people with epilepsy were a separate social group who could be managed by being removed from ordinary community life.

Britain: from poor relief to specialist colonies

The organisation now known as Epilepsy Society began in 1892 as the National Society for the Employment of Epileptics. It established a colony at Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire. The aim was to provide work, accommodation and a more supportive environment for people with epilepsy who were struggling to live independently in Victorian society.

That history is important because it shows both sides of the period. Specialist colonies could be presented as more humane than the alternatives available at the time, yet they still grew from a social system in which epilepsy could lead to separation from ordinary employment, housing and community life.

The United States: institutions and eugenics became entangled

In the United States, some institutions created for people with epilepsy later became closely connected with eugenic policy. Virginia’s State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded is one of the best-known examples. The institution became part of the legal and political machinery that supported compulsory sterilisation in Virginia.

Carrie Buck was committed to that colony and became the plaintiff in Buck v. Bell, the 1927 United States Supreme Court case that upheld Virginia’s compulsory sterilisation law. Her case is now widely recognised as a central example of how institutionalisation, disability labels, poverty, gender and eugenics could combine to remove a person’s reproductive rights.

Not every institution was the same

It would be inaccurate to describe every epilepsy colony or asylum as identical, or to assume that every resident had the same experience. Conditions varied by country, institution, period and management. Some institutions were created by reformers who believed they were improving life for people with epilepsy. Others became associated with coercion, segregation or eugenic policy. The historical record has to be read institution by institution.

What this history tells us

Institutional history helps explain why epilepsy stigma became so deeply embedded. For decades, society often treated epilepsy not simply as a neurological condition but as a reason to question a person’s ability to work, marry, live independently or have children. Even when institutions were founded with charitable intentions, the broader system could still reinforce the idea that people with epilepsy belonged apart from everyone else.

Sources

Epilepsy Society — History of Epilepsy Society
Encyclopedia Virginia — Eugenic Sterilization in Virginia
Encyclopedia Virginia — Carrie Buck
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Forced Sterilization