Deaf Photographers

Here we have the three leading Deaf Photographers of the interwar years, lunching at Blackheath, Whitsuntide, 1921. From left to right, Mr Veysey, M.P.S., Mr Oxley, Mr.G. Brooks, and Mr. Hallet.

(Click for a slightly larger image)

In the library we have a fantastic collection of photographs taken for or sometimes by Selwyn Oxley, or perhaps more often by taken by one of these three photographers with whom he worked in the 1920s. There is a photograph which is dated to May 10th 1915 in Filey, taken by “George H.Brooks, Photographer, 11 Leake Street, Lawrence Street, York”, so they were obviously acquainted and working together by that time. George Hume Brooks was born in Rotherham in 1877, son of a cabinet maker Samuel Brooks. He learnt the same trade as we can see from the 1901 census (see 1901 census*). In the 1911 census he was living in York working as a framer and photographer.

Through the Great War Oxley took his growing collection of lantern slides around the country, promoting his mission interest. In his wife Kate’s biography of him, A Man with a Mission,  Veysey is mentioned after Oxley’s trip to South Africa in 1921;

He got the various photographs made into a Lantern Lecture set of slides, the work being done by the Deaf photographer, Mr. (now the Rev.) J.V.Veysey , who was very glad of the job at this period of after the War depression.

The M.P.S. after Veysey’s name suggest membership of some photographic society – possible the Manchester Photographic Society? (I am not sure if our Veysey is the same as the Rev. Veysey who later worked at the Warwickshire Mission in the 1940s.)

The third photographer, George Hallett, lived at 101 Penwith Rd, Earlsfield in 1921, as can be seen on the reverse of the picture postcard sent by him to the Rev. William Raper (who later married Selwyn and Kate Oxley).  Hallet lost his hearing aged seven, according to the 1911 census.  His wife Emily Jane Wise was also deaf.  Hallett was a machinist who worked before the Great War making gas meters at a company in the Kings Road, Chelsea.  During the war he worked in Willesden making bombs for Lyon & Wrench.  We do not who the man is, pictured with his wife and child on the postcard Hallett sent, but perhaps it is a relative or mutual friend.

*1901 census Class: RG13; Piece: 4391; Folio: 110; Page: 37

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