Sophia Wilkens

She founded the Deaf and Mute Institute in Karlskrona, a combined orphanage, training school and working home for pupils with physical and intellectual disabilities, and was its manager from 1859–1877.

She was the cousin of Johan Henrik Thomander (1798–1865), Bishop of the Diocese of Lund and belonged to the social upper classes of Karlskrona, a notable city in Sweden in the mid-19th century.

[1][3] Between the years 1850–1877, she started and established three facilities in Karlskrona: the Children's Home (Barnhemmet), Deaf Institute (Dövstuminstitutet) and Protection Center (Skyddshemmet) which received people from throughout Southern Sweden.

[1] At this point in time, there had been combined schools and homes for deaf and mute children in Sweden since the pioneer work of Pär Aron Borg, who founded Manillaskolan in Stockholm.

[4] Wilkens became a strong spokesperson inclusion: she believed that the intellectually disabled should not be institutionalized, but rather be educated with the goal to be included in public society as self-supporting and valuable professionals.

Therefore, she founded an adjoining working home, Skyddshem för abnorma flickor (1869–1911), where the majority of her female former students were employed manufacturing textiles; it became very successful and managed to support itself.

This was controversial in a period when intellectually disabled people were regarded to be of no use for society, and authorities therefore generally considered it to be the task of private charity to care for them rather than the state.

A pioneer, she stated that as she had no support from science, she had to rely on her own experience, and that compassion had taught her that the disabled could and should be tutored to manage on their own rather than to be institutionalized.