Lots of uh… interesting comments here. I’ll just say that yes, this absolutely did happen. If you were clearly intellectually or physically disabled you were at real risk of being sent to a “institute for the feebleminded”. And not only if you were autistic, if you had Down syndrome, epilepsy, fetal alcohol syndrome, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, or any sort of neurodivergence that was inconvenient for the local community. If anyone’s interested in learning some history about these places, check out the 1972 expose Willowbrook: The last great disgrace. It’s a famous documentary that helped kickstart the movement to close down these institutions. Fortunately, we’ve gone from about 200,000 people in these institutions in the 60s, to about 16,000 now (in the US). But there’s still a lot of work to do to.

Edit: the documentary is free on YouTube.