Though the Ladd School is often remembered as a kind of assisted-living facility for youth and adults with developmental disabilities, over a hundred years ago it was better known as a feeble-minded school — an institution more closely resembling a psychiatric hospital and reformatory.
Found, gathered, and carefully cataloged over a period of twenty years, this is the largest collection of Ladd School history and artifacts in the world.
This collection of nearly 1,000 photographs provides a broad, candid, and intimate look at life behind and beyond the walls of the Ladd School.
Captured in film between 1920 and 1924, these are some of the earliest known photographs of the Ladd School in existence.
The last known image and only painting of the original Exeter School for the Feeble-Minded
