Mental Deficiency Act 1920, Tasmania

The Mental Deficiency Act 1920 established the State Psychological Clinic which diagnosed mental deficiency, now known as intellectual disability. The Act also established the Mental Deficiency Board which oversaw the management of children and adults classified as mentally deficient by the Clinic. The Act was influenced by the eugenics movement and based on similar legislation passed in the United Kingdom in 1913.

Edmund Morris Miller, the Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Tasmania, and an adherent of eugenics, was the main driving force behind the Act.

The Act specified four categories of mental deficiency. They were:

• ‘Idiots’ who were considered to be ‘so deeply defective in mind’ that they could not protect themselves from the ordinary dangers of life.
• ‘Imbeciles’ who had some capacity to care for themselves but as adults would not be able to look after their affairs and as children could not be taught to do so.
• ‘Feeble-minded’ who required ‘care, supervision, and control for their own protection or the protection of others’. Such children could not benefit from school.
• ‘Moral imbeciles’ who showed ‘some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment has little or no deterrent effect’.

Moral imbecile was a term used to describe a person with an intellectual disability who apparently had criminal tendencies that could not be deterred by punishment. Section 5 of the 1920 Mental Deficiency Act defines this term as:

persons who from an early age display some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment has little or no deterrent effect.

Officials detained some sexually active young unmarried women under this category.
Adults or children classified under the Act could be sent to an institution or placed in the care of a guardian.

Adults might include a single woman giving birth to a child while receiving an income from the state.

The Director of Education was obliged to notify the Chairman of the Mental Deficiency Board of any children suspected of having a ‘mental deficiency’.

The Act made provision for special Homes to be established where children with a diagnosis of mental deficiency could be trained to lead useful and happy lives.

Mentally subnormal was a term often applied to children who could be classified as mentally deficient under the 1920 Mental Deficiency Act. However, the act does not use this word.