Mary Dendy

Mary Dendy (28 January 1855 – 9 May 1933) was a promoter of residential schools for mentally handicapped people, i.e. institutionalisation.

Dendy believed in separate development to avoid crime and these people passing their problems on to their children.

In October 1898, at a Memorial Hall meeting addressed by the Duchess of Sutherland the Lancashire and Cheshire Society for the Permanent Care of the Feeble Minded was established.

She believed that these children were the result of alcohol and poverty and without the intervention of society then these weaknesses would be inherited by future generations.

This society ran the homes until the local authority took over en route to becoming part of the National Health Service in 1945.

Dendy believed in separate development to avoid crime and these people passing their problems on to their children.