Missionaries with the hopeless? Inebriety, mental deficiency and the Burdens

Summary The late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century campaign for the treatment of ‘inebriates’ used many of the themes used by campaigners for the care of the ‘feeble‐minded’. The inebriate reformatories admitted mainly women, and their low rate of success was blamed on the inmates being ‘mental defectives’, rather than a result of the methods used. When the reformatories closed, these were reused as institutions under the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. Having been missionaries, the Reverend H. N. Burden and his wives managed inebriate reformatories and then switched to running colonies for ‘mental defectives’. The present article examines some of the links between the two movements.