Samuel Heinicke, who died on 30th of April 1790, was a pioneer of Deaf education. He used the oral method as opposed to the manual methods of the French sign language pioneer Charles-Michel de l’Épée with whom he had an exchange of letters arguing about the best way to teach. Heinicke kicked off the exchange when he wrote to l’Épée’s pupil, Abbé Stork in Vienna, probably in 1780. It was a classic academic split, with some rather superior comments on both sides:

If you had perused a work published by me entitled “The Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, or the way of Learning laid open by Methodical Signs,” your epistle to the teacher at Vienna would not have been filled with such rigorous stricture upon this method, and his adoption of it. The signs made use of in our mode of teaching are not hieroglyphical, as you suspect: they are indeed a selection of such as are natural, or which have a raciocinative connection, if I may so express it, with the things to be signified. […]

Thus it appears, learned Sir, that you have censured a Method to which you are an utter stranger: but, so far from conceiving the least resentment at this, I am highly rejoiced that a learned Professor of the University of Leipzig should so devote himself to the vocation to which my labours have been dedicated for many years.

In Heinicke’s second letter to de l’Épée, he says, “Although I greatly esteem the letters which you lately did me the honour to address to me, I cannot but confess that our notions touching the most eligible manner of instructing the Deaf and Dumb are wholly at variance, and, I very much doubt, will never be reconciled.” He finishes, “If you suppose that I make no use of the dactylology in my tuition, you are very much mistaken”. As Garnett glosses, this completes the breakdown of understanding between the two men, for Heinicke uses Zeichensprache, the language of signs, but the Latin version l’Épée received has it as Dactylology, finger-spelling. In his third and final letter, this misunderstanding leads l’Épée to insult Heinicke by saying “this system of yours is merely mechanical” (Garnett p.46).

In the end, taking his arguments to the editor of the Vienna Realzeitung, a long assessment was made by the Rector and Fellows of the Academy of Zurich. The editor sums up, saying Heinicke “accomplishes more”, while l’Épée “contents himself with the sign language (Zeichensprache)” (ibid. p.54). In part of their assessment of the argument the academicians say,

“In a word, it appears very clear to us that, although Mr. Heinicke is so bold in his reprehensions of your method of tuition, he has very little knowledge of it; that he never read and probably never saw the publication  in which it is laid open. In what other manner can we account for his rashly confounding your system with the system of others; for his falling into the many mistakes which we have noticed; and, in particular, for his asserting and allowing it to be asserted by others who have publically adjudged his methods to be superior to yours, that your pupils are not taught to speak?

That the German method of Heinicke’s  was eventually to triumph in the 19th century over the French or manual, was of great import for the whole of the Deaf community in Germany and abroad, both at that time and right up to the present.

Garnett, Christopher B. Jr.  The Exchange of Letters Between Samuel Heinicke & Abbe Charles Michel De L’Epee. Vantage Press, New York, 1968

Schmaehl, Otto. Samuel Heinicke and the Education of the Deaf. Volta Review, 1970, 72:237-41

WILSON, Arthur James (1858-1945)

A younger version of Wilson appears on a picture in an earlier item on the National Deaf Club.  Here we see him in middle age.  He was born in Camden Town at 43 Arlington St, on 17th of February 1858, the son of a schoolmaster.  Catching scarlet fever aged 12, he became totally deaf.  His education continued at home, and Dimmock tells us that he composed an article at the age of 14 that appeared in A Magazine intended chiefly for the Deaf and Dumb (we have this journal in the library).  For a time employed as an engraver, his eyesight not being strong enough Wilson became a journalist.  With the aid of the Rev. Samuel Smith he helped found the National Deaf and Dumb Teetotal Society .

Wilson was a keen cyclist, and organised races and hill climbs in the late 1870s on one of the heavy tricycles then in vogue.  He raced in Ireland, from which came the offer of a position in Dublin on the Irish Cyclist (Dimmock).  Marrying a hearing lady in 1887, he moved back to London as manager for the Pneumatic Tyre Company.

In 1896 Wilson was the first Deaf person to purchase and drive a motor vehicle, and he was reputedly the inventor of the wing mirror.  He became wealthy and was acquainted with the Prince of Wales, getting him interested in cycling, and taught King George V to cycle.  He was an important figure in the development of Deaf Sport in the London region, which led to the establishment of the British Deaf Amateur Sports Association in 1930 (Dimmock).

Wilson was a founder of the Federation of London Deaf Clubs in 1918, and President of the Midland Counties Institutes for the Deaf (later Coventry Institute for the Deaf) as early as 1915 shortly after it was founded.  His business fell into a decline after the Great War and was wound up in 1929.  He died in 1945  in Leamington Spa.

DIMMOCK, A.F. Arthur James Wilson, otherwise Faed, 1858-1945. British Deaf History Society Publications, 1996.

See also annual reports for Coventry & Warwickshire Association for the Deaf.

Wilson and the Hospital Motor Squadron

Wilson’s Benevolent Fund

Mr. Arthur J. Wilson, Ephphatha (First series) 1898 Vol.3 p.113-4

Jack Ashley was President of Action on Hearing Loss, formerly the RNID, from 1987 when he succeeded Lord Chalfont. Losing his hearing in 1967 after an operation, in his two autobiographies Journey into silence (1973) and Acts of defiance (1992) Ashley describes how he came to be involved with the RNID. Helen Keller had recently died and there was talk of a joint Blind/Deaf fund in her memory. He hoped to bring the two groups together.

The General Secretary at the Royal National Institute for the Deaf was helpful and anxious that the venture should succeed. But he did not seem optimistic and I did not press him to explain his reservations. When I went to the Royal National Institute for the Blind I understood his pessimism. The building was far more impressive than that of the Institute for the Deaf and it was much better staffed; although by no means lavish, it was clearly better endowed. The General Secretary was pleasant, brisk and willing to consider any initiatives and attend exploratory meetings for a joint fund; but whereas the officials for the deaf strongly supported my provisional plan, those of the blind were not notably enthusiastic.

He continues further on,

I later learned that the blind have charitable donations of some £2,000,000 a year compared with £20,000 for the deaf. With public generosity biased to this extent, I began to understand why the blind chose to avoid cooperating with the deaf.

The poverty of the organisation for the deaf is a reflection of the striking difference in the public attitude to the two disabilities. The average person feels gratified helping a blind man across the road; he feels he has done his good deed for the day. But co-operation with the deaf involves positive and continuous help rather than a gesture which is soon over and done with. (Journey into silence p.164-5)

Ashley was approached by Air Vice-Marshal E.D.D. Dickson, Chairman of the RNID from 1960-1971, to go to Edinburgh and give the opening address at their biennial conference in October 1968.

The invitation posed an interesting question. Was I to begin campaigning for deaf people now that I was myself deaf, and would this be seen as special pleading? […]I thought the best thing would be to try to help deaf people in much the same way as I would aim to help all others who were disabled. (Acts of defiance1992, p.176).

Suffering from tinnitus, his memories of Edinburgh were dominated by “the shrieking and roaring in my head […] as they have on so many occasions since.” He had a warm reception, and spoke widely, including about his anger at attitudes to deafness in the public and media.

The audience responded generously, and the media coverage was extensive. At Edinburgh, I struck a small  blow for deaf people and passed another landmark in my own rehabilitation.

In Acts of defiance, Ashley devotes a chapter to deafness called Deaf World. He talks of his frustrations with patronising colleagues, the difficulties of trying to lip-read.  “In striking contrast to those prejudiced against deaf people, Princess Diana did all she could to help.” (ibid, p.344). He describes how he became RNID President –

The RNID, an old-established organisation, had an elderly feel when I first came into contact with it. After speaking at the Edinburgh conference in 1968, just after losing my hearing, my relationship with it was restricted to keeping in touch with its officers and speaking at occasional meetings.

However, in 1986, with new leaders and a more demanding membership, it became more thrusting and effective. Its Chief Executive, Mike Whitlam, gathered together a team of professional directors, clarified its image and adopted a higher profile.[…] He was supported by an energetic, intelligent Chairman, Winifred Tumin, the mother of two deaf daughters.[…] I served for a while on its General Management Committee and then, in October 1987, I was elected President.

Jack Ashley did a tremendous amount to help people in his life and we will just highlight some of his contributions in speaking out in the cause of Deaf People in Parliament and elsewhere for more than forty years –

• He encouraged the government to make television companies to have a greater percentage of subtitles under the Broadcast Bill in 1990 than was originally intended (Acts of defiance 1992, p352-3).

• Having seen how it helped his mother, in 1973 he pressed Keith Joseph to give all deaf people a behind-the-ear hearing aid free of charge (Acts of defiance 1992, p345).

• Along with RNID representatives and the consultant and tinnitus expert Jonathan Hazell, he founded the British Tinnitus Association in a room at the House of Commons in November 1979  (Acts of defiance 1992, p.351).

• He tabled an Early Day Motion calling upon the Government to give official recognition to BSL and to remedy the shortage of fully trained interpreters (EDM 943). Sign Language. British Deaf News. 1991, Sep, 5.

• The common belief that an 18th-century statute debarred ‘deaf and dumb’ people from becoming MPs was refuted by the Lord Chancellor in a letter to Lord Ashley stating that there is “nothing in common law, customs of Parliament or statute preventing a deaf person from becoming an MP”. See Hear, 1995, Dec, 6.

• The All-Party Disablement Group is a Parliamentary group that was founded by Jack Ashley in 1969 and chaired by him for forty years . BABER, P. Never a backbench issue. Disability Now, 1998, Nov, 14.

• The Jack Ashley Millennium Awards for Young Deaf People (1999-2002).  “By the end of the initiative’s three-year lifetime, 150 young deaf people had, between them, received £789,305 worth of awards.” Talk, 1999, 171, 6, and 172, 13; Talk, 2001, 182, 4. (Includes list of winners); Curtain comes down on Awards scheme. Talk, 2002, 189, 17; ‘Graduation’ ceremony honours UK’s finest. Talk, 2003, 191, 18-19.

• His wife Pauline, a governor at the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital, with the help from specialists at the hospital established the Hearing Research Trust to help fund research into deafness (now Deafness Research UK) in 1985. Jack Ashley became the President.

• The RNID and the Jules Thorne Charitable Trust had given funding to Graham Fraser, the pioneer of cochlear implants at UCL, for a programme of implants. In 1989 Ashley took a deputation that included Fraser to see the Health Minister David Mellor, who then managed to get NHS funding for a four year funding of cochlear implants.

William Shakespeare’s birthday today marks the start of the London Globe Theatre’s Shakespeare festival for the ‘Cultural Olympiad’.

Deafinitely Theatre are performing Love’s Labours Lost.

See also the translation lectures here.

You can find DVDs of Shakespeare in BSL here, and in ASL there is a Shakespeare Project – ASL Shakespeare Project.

 

 

 

London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb (1792-1902) and the Old Kent Road School (1902-1968)

The first free school for deaf children of the poor in the UK, the London Asylum was founded in 1792 by the Rev. John Townsend. Here is a brief chronology.

1792    Opened in Grange Road, Bermondsey.

1809    Moved to Old Kent Road, Southwark.

1840    The streets each side of its grounds were named Townsend Street and Mason Street after its founders.

1862    Some pupils moved to temporary accommodation in Margate.

1875    New building opened in Margate – younger pupils educated in London, older pupils in Margate.

1883    Younger pupils moved from London to temporary accommodation in Ramsgate.

1886    Old asylum demolished and new building for younger pupils erected on its site.

1902    Pupils in London moved to Margate (now the Royal School for Deaf Children, Margate), and building and site sold to the London School Board.

1903    The Old Kent Road School opened, with a school for physically handicapped children on the ground floor and a school for deaf children on the second floor. Properly speaking therefore, this school was a new foundation.

1904    London County Council took over the functions of the London School Board.

1908    J.D.Rowan became headmaster until he retired in 1932 (British Deaf Times, 29 (341-2), 56).

1965    The Inner London Education Authority took over the functions of London County Council when the latter ceased to exist.

1968    The Old Kent Road School closed and a new school, Grove House in Elmcourt Road, Norwood, opened, surviving until 1999.

Deaf Pupils Included (among others) –

ARNOLD, George (1855-1922) Deafened at the age of 8 and educated at the Old Kent Road and St John’s College, a private school in Margate; on leaving school trained as a tailor with Mr W. Fletcher, tailor to King King Edward VII.

ALLERY, Bernard (1921-93) Team manager and chairman of Lewisham Deaf Football Club; educated at Old Kent Road School and Anerley Deaf School.

ASH, Harry (1863- 1934) Deafened by scarlet fever at 18 months; sent to the London Asylum in the Old Kent Road when he was 11, and later to Margate; designer at the Hogarth Works, Chiswick.

BLOUNT, Hiram (1870?-1932) Deafened at the age of 5; educated at Old Kent Road, London; missioner to the deaf in Plymouth from 1899 until his death in 1932.

DAVIDSON, Thomas (1842-1919) Private pupil of Thomas Watson at the Old Kent Road Institution, who became an artist specialising in naval scenes.

GLOYN, John Pugh  (1830-1907) Son of a London solicitor; deafened between 2 and 3 years old and educated at the Old Kent Road Asylum ; set up in business as a mathematical instrument maker; involved in ‘deaf work’ in a voluntary capacity until 1872 when he was appointed Missionary for the Northern District of the Royal Association for the Deaf and Dumb.

POLCHAR, Mark Michael (1903-94) Pupil at Old Kent Road and Anerley Deaf Schools; founded Clapham Deaf Club’s cricket and football teams in 1925.

(There are references for all the above people  for those interested.)

Further reading:

An historical sketch of the purposes, progress, and present state, of the asylum for the support and education of the indigent deaf and dumb children, situate in the Kent Road, Surrey: with the rules of the society, and a list of its officers and governors. London, March, 1831, see Margate School institutional archive box.

History (up to 1843) The Edinburgh Messenger No.2, p.10-11, 1843

History (up to 1876). Deaf and Dumb Magazine (Glasgow), 1879, 7, 40-43. (illus)

History (up to 1880). Deaf and Dumb Magazine (Glasgow), 1880, 8, 14-26. (illus)

Quarterly Review of Deaf-Mute Education, 1887, 1, 167-78, 197-202.

History, British Deaf-Mute and Deaf Chronicle, 1894, 3, 81-82. (illus)

Teacher of the Deaf, 1904, 2, 29.

British Deaf Times, 1906, 3, 121-25. (photos)

ALLERY, B. Old Kent Road School for the Deaf. The author, 1969 and 1971. (RNID Library locastion: C5664 (REF)

also in: British Deaf News, 1969, 7(5), 148-49.

A mother and her son. British Deaf News, 1997, Jun, 7. (Mrs Creasy and her deaf son John were the inspiration for Rev Townsend’s action; John Creasy trained William Hunter, the Asylum’s first deaf teacher.)

In a previous entry we noted the role of A.J. Story in the start of the National Bureau for Promoting the General Welfare of the Deaf. Story was first head of the North Staffordshire School for the Blind and Deaf, sometimes known as the Stoke School for the Deaf. It was the first residential school for deaf children founded under the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act 1883, established in 1897 at The Mount, Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent. Below we see a lesson at the school in a curious outdoor classroom. (Fresh air was clearly considered to be stimulating, and there are other photographs in our collection that show outdoor classes.)

Later the name was changed to the Mount School for the Deaf. While we do not have any of the school records, we do have a selection of records from the North Staffordshire Society for Promoting Spiritual and Temporal Welfare of the Adult Deaf & Dumb and of the Blind (1868-1911), which became the North Staffordshire Adult Deaf & Dumb Society for Promoting the Spiritual and Temporal Welfare of the Adult Deaf and Dumb, and the North Staffordshire Deaf and Dumb Society.

 

 

 

 

The North Stafford Blind and Deaf School, Stoke-on-Trent. British Deaf Monthly, 1897, 6(70), 228-230. (with photos of school and its first headmaster, A.J. Story)

Staffordshire Mission annual Reports – 1885, 1886, 1902, 1909, 1912, 1914/15, 1924/25, 1933/34, 1935/36-38/39, 1947/48-54/55, 1956/57-59/60, 1961/62, 1963/64, 1978/79-79/80

Photos in reports 1933/34-37/38, 1952/53, 1954/55, 1957/58-59/60

The Glass Wall – A Century of Progress 1868-1968

Leo Bonn was the founder of the National Bureau for Promoting the General Welfare of the Deaf, now called Action on Hearing Loss. Bonn had what we might assume to be age related deafness. The following account is from his unpublished memoirs (p. 19). The quotation is as found in our library records, however I am unable to say where Bonn’s unpublished memoirs are now, but they are perhaps in the possession of his family. Note his mention of A.J. Story (for whom see both a previous and the next entry)

Before we bought Newbold we stayed for a season at Brighton and as I found my hearing getting worse I asked Miss Hare, a teacher of lip reading, to give me some lessons, she interested me in the cause of the deaf and after examining the question with the help of Mr. Story, head of a big school for the deaf at Stoke-on-Trent, who moved me by his enthusiasm, I promised to devote a certain sum of money to starting a clearing house to look after the interests of the deaf. This was to be called “The National Bureau for the Deaf”.

The first meeting took place at 22 Upper Brook Street, in our dining room, where I took the chair, about 100 people were present, all more or less interested in the deaf.

It would take too long to go into the different vicissitudes of the bureau. For the yearly meetings I was nearly always able to secure good speakers like Lord Fletcher Molton, Lord George Hamilton, Sir Frederick Milner, Lady O’Hagan, some of the Guinnesses (whose name I forget) and who helped to attract the public. Until the war it did very well, I felt I had to be the rallying point, for there were many different interests to be reconciled. I was founder, and remained for sometime President, Chairman all in one, too much for my time, I felt younger men ought to take on the direction, so I resigned. The Bureau is still alive, doing fairly well, the name has been changed to “The National Institute for the Deaf”.

Bonn was the son of B. Bonn of Frankfort-on-Main, born 3rd August 1850. He married Ida Amalie Eltzbacher in 1889 and they had one son and two daughters. A director of the Union of London and Smith’s Banks Ltd, 1900-13 and director of the London and Liverpool Bank of Commerce Ltd, 1886-1913, Bonn died on 28th November 1929.  You can read a short biography of him in the Dictionary of National Biography.

We recently came across a nice little selection of promotional leaflets enclosed  in this cover. They seem to be from the 1930s, and were part of an effort of The Royal Institute and Mission for the Deaf and Dumb of Glasgow and West of Scotland to get Deaf people into employment. We have a large number of what we call ‘institutional’ reports, from missions, schools and other organisations, going back into the 19th century and into the middle of the 20th century. These leaflets will be added to our Glasgow archive box. More details here –http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/rnid_hist.shtml

I should just add that this is exactly the sort or rare ‘grey literature’ that is such a great source for social history. These leaflets may be unique.