Deriding the disabled was casual public amusement in pre-industrial cities.

Evidence

And everywhere children: playing in the streets, running up and down the narrow alleyways; taunting the lame and maimed beggars, poking sticks at an obviously feeble-minded man who is helpless to protect himself. Here and there they are joined in their “games” by an adult, and your modern “sensitivities” are stung by the discovery that human beings can find the suffering of others so amusing. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 167

Categorization

• XREF: The casual cruelty of children toward a helpless man in full public view contrasts sharply with the civil inattention Lofland will describe in the modern city—useful contrast for the anonymity book.
• ADDENDUM: The callous public mockery of ‘others’ could pair with the immodesty moral-panics article’s theme of public reactions to marginal figures across cultures.