Health and Mental Development
Derek Bentley had a series of health and developmental problems. During World War II, the house in which Bentley lived was bombed and collapsed around him, leaving Bentley with serious head injuries and concussed.
Kingswood Approved School administered diagnostic tests to Bentley during the time of his detention there. In December 1948, Bentley's mental age was estimated at 10 years, 4 months; his actual age was 15 years, 6 months. Bentley scored 66 on an IQ test in December 1948 and 77 in 1952. After his arrest in November 1952, further IQ tests were administered to Bentley at Brixton Prison. Bentley was described as "borderline feeble-minded", with a verbal score of 71, a performance IQ of 87 and a full scale IQ of 77.
As of December 1948, Bentley had a reading age of 4 years, 6 months. He was still "quite illiterate" at the time of his arrest in November 1952.
Bentley was examined twice by EEG: a reading on 16 November 1949 indicated he was an epileptic and a reading on 9 February 1950 was "abnormal".
In February 1952, Bentley underwent a medical examination for national service, where he was judged "mentally substandard" and unfit for military service.
Read more about this topic: Derek Bentley Case
Famous quotes containing the words health and, health, mental and/or development:
“My long sickness
Of health and living now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and independence of the experience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was at a particular moment in the history of my own rages that I saw the Western world conditioned by the images of Marx, Darwin and Freud; and Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western world. The simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)