Beauty and Deformity

Peter White draws on the latest research to reveal the lives of physically disabled people in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Today, he explores ideas of beauty and deformity which had a real impact on the lives of people with disabilities.

In the 18th century, you could be transformed from beautiful to 'deformed' overnight. We hear the first-hand account of one woman who suffered this transformation - the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a society beauty who caught smallpox when she was 26: 'How am I changed! Where's my complexion, where the bloom that promised happiness for years to come?'

Mourning loss of beauty was not just natural human vanity, because beauty was thought of as a moral quality, not just skin-deep - and ugliness was deeply shameful. The belief was that outward deformity revealed inner wickedness.

Peter explores how this idea changed under the impact of a greater scientific understanding of the world. But surprisingly, science did not encourage more tolerance - in fact, it led to a much narrower definition of what was "normal". He also discovers that disability was thought to be contagious in the 18th century, and that all women were believed to be deformed because the ideal body was male.

With historians Naomi Baker and Judith Hawley, and historical sources including manuals for parents to correct the appearance of their children as well as 18th century doctors' advertisements. Voices from the past are brought vividly to life, with actors Emily Bevan, Ewan Bailey and Gerard McDermott.

Producer: Elizabeth Burke Academic adviser: David Turner of Swansea University A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.