Borderline Defective (1920 - 1950)

From

1920s

To

1950s

Categories

Term commonly found on child welfare records

Alternative Names

• Border-Line Defective

Location

Western Australia

Borderline defective was a term used in the twentieth century to describe people who had intellectual disabilities. The Minister for Public Health in Western Australia defined five classes of 'defectives' in 1929. The fifth class was border-line cases, who were 'persons in whose case there exists mental defectiveness, not amounting to feeble-mindedness, accompanied by instability which is so pronounced that they are rendered socially inefficient and in urgent need of supervision, treatment and training which cannot be given in the ordinary schools' (Hansard, 17 September 1929, p.742).