In 1909 the Finlands Dövstum-förbund produced the first of their special ‘Jul’ – ‘Yule’ – editions.  This was a Swedish language journal.  Finland has a large Swedish population, having been a part of Sweden for hundreds of years. Below is the cover from 1918, & below that an article on the sign counting system used, from the 1909 issue.  It was developed partly from foreign example, by the first teacher of the Deaf in Finland, himself deaf, Carl Oscar Malm (1826-63).

I hope to write about him at greater length next year.  If the fates allow!
Dövstummas Jul 1909-29

In 1905 the King and Queen went to Salford to open the New Dock.  They also stopped at Henshaw’s Blind Asylum, and The Royal Schools for the Deaf and Dumb, where the pupils did what children do when they meet royalty – they gave them bouquets.*  The girl here from the Deaf School, whose photograph first appeared in the Penny Illusatrated Paper, is Mary Hickman (1890-1978), who was Head Girl at the school.

When told that she was to present the Queen with a boquet, Miss Hickman was naturally both proud and elated, and it goes without saying that her mind was fully occupied until the very auspicious Thursday dawned.  According to the newspaper reporters, she played her part in the little ceremony very neatly; and to our representative she naively confessed that sh “did not feel a bit nervous.  The Queen was very lovely and the Kinglooked very jolly.” (British Deaf Times)

Born on the 17th of November, 1890, Mary Hickman lost her hearing aged five and a half according to the 1911 census and the school annual report (1903), from meningitis.  When she was seven she entered the Manchester school, on the 28th of January, 1898.  She was due to leave on the 17th of November, 1906 when she was sixteen.  When she was at the school her father, salford born Walter, was a clerk.  He later became a newsagent and tobacconist according to the 1911 census, when they lived in 224 Ashton Old Road, Openshaw.  They were presumably in long gone terraced housing, as the two daughters and son shared a four room house with their parents.  Mary had studied for certificates with the College of Preceptors, the oldest professional body for teachers, but we find that in 1911 she was working as a ‘tracer’ for engineers – presumably in a drawing office.

I found that her sister married in 1915, but she seems to have stayed at home, and in the 1939 register she was in Station Road, living with her father.  It seems a pity that she never got to teach, but we cannot be sure that she did not – we really have too little information.  Perhaps schools would not contemplate taking on a Deaf teacher in the first decades of the 20th century.

Mary died in Manchester in 1978.

If you know anything of her life, please comment below.

*I think someone could probably write an interesting study on the history and sociology of children giving royalty bouquets!

NB I thought this is funny – on the 1911 census her father filled in the nationality – not required unless foreign –

Deaf Girl’s Unique Experience, British Deaf Times 1905, vol 2 (22) p.217

Census 1891 – Class: RG13; Piece: 3938; Folio: 95; Page: 35

Census 1901- Class: RG13; Piece: 3667; Folio: 208; Page: 8

Census 1911 – Class: RG14; Piece: 23729

1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/4546A

Penny Illustrated Paper – Saturday 22 July 1905

Robert J. Smithdas was the first deaf-blind person to gain a master’s degree when he graduated from New York’s St. John’s University in 1953.  Born in 1925, Smithdas caught cerebro-spinal meningitis aged four and a half, and lost hearing and sight as a result.   He became director of Services for the Deaf-Blind at the “Industrial Home for the Blind,” and at the Helen Keller National Center.

We have a signed copy of his poetry book, City of the Heart (1966).  In the preface he says,

I composed these poems because my heart sang them to me over the years – because poignant moods, or powerful emotions, made me crystallize my thoughts and feelings into verbal expressions.  Sometimes inspiration was so spontaneous that the words came flooding into my consciousness and shaped themselves into song; but far more frequently I found myself searching through the labyrinthine meanings of language to find the most convincing words , and the most plausible rhythms, to serve as crucibles for my themes.  Yet I always knew the intrinsic essence of the thing I wanted to express in a sonnet, or a lyric, or the nobler passion of blank verse.

This is a clip from an interview theat Barbara Walters did with Bob Smithdas.

Barbara Walters: The lives of the deaf-blind have changed remarkably since the era of Helen Keller. She was never able to live by herself without sighted help, never able to be independent.

Bob: And today, it’s a tremendous difference, we can communicate, we can cook, we can go out and it is a wonderful type of progress

Barbara Walters: In spite of the good things Bob, what is the hardest part of be being deaf and blind?  What is the most frustrating?

Bob: At this stage of life, I am very used to being deaf blind, but I will admit that I miss not being able to see my friends’ faces or hearing their voices. Remember deafness takes you away from sound, from music. Blindness takes you away from scenes. But deafness takes you away from people.

Robert Smithdas died in 2014.

His poetry book, Christmas Blessing and Other Poems, (1959) is available on Archive.org –

“Gently the snowflakes fall

Fragile and thin and light…”

https://nationaldb.org/pages/show/in-memoriam-robert-j-smithdas-advocate-for-the-deaf-blind

The photo of him above is the same as that at the back of the poetry book.  Unfortunately, when an external contractor tagged all of our books, the #### people doing the task were so slap-dash that they place the tag neatly over the photograph.

Please note, the chief U.K. deaf-blind charity is Sense.