Exeter Girls: Letters from a Feeble-Minded School

In the first half of the last century, feeble-mindedness was widely accepted as a scourge to society and civilization. And though hereditary diseases or disorders of the mind and body were often factors in its diagnosis, morality and sexuality were believed equally as important and just as inheritable by birth.

For this reason, hundreds of girls and young women from broken homes, orphanages, jails, hospitals, convents, and shelters across Rhode Island were accused of being a danger to themselves and society and legally committed to an institution for the feeble-minded.

Exeter Girls is a collection of notes and letters following the true stories of three women — Evelyn, Cora, and Dorothy — whose harrowing journeys through this gauntlet of institutionalization will astonish you with confessions of injustice, tragedy, and despair.