Accessibility and Archives: “She Has a Place in History”

In this first blog of 2026, Philip Milnes-Smith considers different aspects of a single case study, as a reflection on the likelihood that we may not know the disability stories in our collections,  which means we are not well placed to undertake the Liberatory Memory Work of “healing, equity, peace, and/or justice” for disabled people as researchers and audiences.  It quotes historic vocabulary, which would now be deemed offensive.

With this year’s ARA conference theme being Authenticity, it is worth reminding ourselves that the stories that get told are an unrepresentative subset of the stories that could once have been told – the authentic past looked different from the simulacra we have been imagining from what we have seen represented all our lives.  In particular, disability stories remain under-told compared to prevalence in past populations.  We need to recognise the barriers that exist, and the issues to consider, if more of the untold ones are to be surfaced, or reconstructed.  This will help others find disability in our catalogues and finding aids, and us to communicate about past disabled lives through our events programming and exhibitions.

Vocabulary 1 – the search time may not mean what you think

In a past Disability History Month post, Professor Lucy Delap reminded us of one of the difficulties researchers have in finding disability in our collections.  Sometimes, in the absence of clear signposting to disability in finding aids, our search terms can waste time on archival ‘false friends’.  The idea for this blog began when I was researching a topic for DHM 2025.   My interest then was in what is now termed dementia (of the kind generally experienced by the old, see the post here) and my search presented me with a curious fact about a Victorian artists’ model and actor whose stage name was Dorothy Dene (1859-1899), supposed by some to be the original of Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle. Her real name was Ada Alice Pullan, and one obituary asserts that she had once pursued “a curious fancy for studying dementia from the life, and spent a lot of time at Bethlehem Hospital in the observation of its more dangerous patients.”  This may not have been the dementia I was looking for, and my query about any evidence at the Hospital of her visitations drew a blank, but the exchange did lead to the post about Bethlem in the artistic and dramatic imagination. 

Disability in performing arts ephemera

In that blog, we saw that there was not necessarily a close relationship between the Hospital of the creative imagination and that experienced by patients, even at the time.  In a staged performance that presents disabled characters, if the actors are not themselves disabled the presentation may mislead us about the embodiments, feelings, thoughts, and experiences of real disabled people (in the present as well as the past).  But how characters are collectively constructed by the production and the audience is invaluable evidence for how disability was imagined, which is important evidence in its own right. 

Some accounts of Dorothy Dene’s life went on to add that she had been able to put her in-patient research to good use when playing the role of Pauline in a (now forgotten) play named Called Back, based on a novel of 1883.  The title of the work probably does not alert us to an episode of mental derangement being embodied in the drama, nor would it be obvious in ephemera such as this promotional photograph, or this theatrical programme, notwithstanding the quotation from Abercrombie’s 1832 volume Inquiries concerning the intellectual powers : and the investigation of truth.  The mental illness experienced by the character of Pauline does not render her dangerous (the kind the journalists were imagining when she died) – audiences should have experienced concern and pity rather than fear. She is perhaps to be understood in more modern terms as experiencing post-traumatic stress (having witnessed a murder), which both affects her memory and leaves her quite shut down, dissociated, passive and biddable.  If audiences had hoped to see extremes of histrionic madness embodied by Dorothy Dene, that appears not to have been realised: even if she was “forcible in her scenes of madness”[i]. Another critic commented that “she avoids the fault into which some of the actors fall of overdoing their parts and tearing a passion to tatters”[ii]. Nonetheless, critics commented on the (supposed) realism: e.g. “The madness – or rather loss of memory – was rigidly maintained with a reality which was most impressive.”[iii] 

Vocabulary 2 – “for to define true madness, what is’t but to be nothing else but mad?”

There are two further facts to notice, rooted in the language of the novel itself.  First is that the disability might have been missed altogether by some: “A person… after spending hours in her society might have carried away no worse impression than that she was shy and reticent. Whenever she did speak her words were as those of a perfectly sane woman; but as a rule her voice was only heard when the ordinary necessaries of life demanded, or in reply to some simple question. Perhaps, I should not be far wrong in comparing her mind to that of a child.”  This characterisation also reminds us that disability does not exist in isolation – gender too could be disabling in a society that limited opportunities for women and girls, and (as other Sensation novels had made clear), women could be at risk of being confined in asyla because their performance of gender roles was deemed unsatisfactory by husbands, fathers and other powerful men in their communities. 

Secondly, disability can resist easy pigeonholing: one reviewer described Pauline as both “imbecile” and “demented”[iv].  This was not a failure of staging - the novel’s text too had struggled with definition: “Madness means something quite different from her state. Imbecility would still less convey to my meaning…  There was simply something missing from her intellect — as much missing as a limb may be from a body.  Memory, except for comparatively recent events, she seemed to have none.  The power of reasoning, weighing and drawing deductions seemed beyond her grasp.  She appeared unable to recognise the importance or bearing of occurrences taking place around her.  Sorrow and delight were emotions she was incapable of feeling.  Nothing appeared to move her…”[v]  In real life too, those deemed imbeciles could be confined to asyla for those deemed lunatic, even though the former were understood to be incurable. 

Disability tropes

Our focus on Dorothy Dene means that I have not mentioned that Pauline is not the only disabled character in the novel/play.  The hero has experienced blindness – although a cure means the actor had only to ‘crip up’ in the prologue.  Pauline too is cured - ”called back” to herself.  A cure, of course, is a problematic literary trope when it comes to the inclusion of disability – it centres non-disability as being inherently superior and thus the ‘problem’ of disabled protagonists is resolved by a ‘happy ending’.

Silence

The final thing I want to note about this case study of Dorothy Dene is that while her contemporaries were aware of her health issues, they chose not to name them with terms like ‘invalid’ which might alert us to think of disability.  However, one of the death notices notes that her career “was of somewhat short duration owing to her delicate health”[vi].  An interview from 1895 informs us that she had been “a very delicate child” and then, while on an American tour, had “caught rheumatic fever, and was laid up for four months”, followed by “another severe illness which compelled her to rest for many months.”[vii]  One obituary claims that “she never entirely recovered” from the rheumatic fever[viii]. The Seattle post-intelligencer’s somewhat sensational account suggests that after Lord Leighton’s death (in 1896) “she seemed to droop visibly, to grow paler and more wistful”, and claims that she “became a recluse” in her final months – in fact, Dorothy had “been in a delicate state of health for some time”, owing to “the long illness which has prevented her appearance on the stage for some time past”, and required “medical attention and careful nursing”[ix].  In other words, Dorothy Dene herself had become disabled, leaving her unable to work.

Cover image: By Henry Van der Weyde (1838-1924) - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35607941

[i] The York Herald, Wednesday, October 8, 1884 (BL_0000499_18841008_014_0003)

[ii] The Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser, Friday, March 27, 1885 (BL_0001420_18850327_061_0005)

[iii] The Citizen, Tuesday, September 16, 1884 (BL_0000325_18840916_017_0003)

[iv] The Herald, Saturday, January 3, 1885 (BL_0002896_18850103_107_0008)

[v] https://archive.org/details/calledback00conw

[vi] Yorkshire Evening Post, Saturday, December 30, 1899 (BL_0000273_18991230_002_0002)

[vii] Le Follet, Friday, March 1, 1895 (BL_0006149_18950301_044_0024)

[viii] West of England Advertiser, Thursday, January 4, 1900 (BL_0000308_19000104_012_0001)

[ix] The Glasgow Herald, Friday, December 29, 1899 (BL_0000060_18991229_009_0005)