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Western Australia - Glossary Term
Moral Defective (1920 - 1950)
- From
- 1920s
- To
- 1950s
- Categories
- Term commonly found on child welfare records
- Location
-
Moral 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 fourth class was moral defectives, who were 'persons in whose case there exists mental defectiveness coupled with vicious or criminal propensities or habitual delinquency, and who require care, supervision and control for their own protection or the protection of others' (Hansard, 17 September 1929, p.742).
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Annual Report for the Year June, 1927-28 [State Psychological Clinic]
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