New York City’s rapid growth in the 1880s and 1890s meant a dramatically increasing number of children in the city, and in schools. Not every child in New York attended school. Starting in 1874 New York State had laws that required students of some ages to attend school, but there was little enforcement and there were loopholes that allowed families to keep children out of school if the family said they needed the child to work. Continued racial segregation by law in some parts of the city limited Black students’ access to some schools. Meanwhile some Disabled children were not considered eligible for schooling, so these young people were excluded from school.1
In the 1830s, the City purchased Randall’s Island to use as a remote burial ground for the poor and as an almshouse. Blackwell’s and Wards Islands were purchased later, and more institutions were built on the three islands to house and care for “various indigent, criminal, ill, poor, and disabled populations.”1 Journalist W. H. Davenport visited the “Insane Asylum” and “Orphanage and Idiot Asylum,” publishing his accounts of the residents and life in those facilities.2 The articles give a view of the conditions in these early reform institutions. Non-disabled children at the orphanage were taught in classes overseen by the NYC Department of Education. Children with physical disabilities (of which there were many) were taught how to craft products that could be sold. Children at the “Idiot Asylum” also had classes with a goal of preparing them for “useful occupations.”3
Édouard Séguin learned how to teach children with intellectual disabilities when he lived in France. Later, Séguin moved to the US and helped found schools around the country.
