In the Quarterly Review of Deaf Mute Education for October 1892, there is an item on the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and Blind, Bath, (an institution connected with the ‘Industrial Home’ that we examined in a previous item).

In 1853, a fifteen year old ‘deaf and dumb’ girl from Sierra Leone called Mumu entered the Bath Institution.  I will let the original article tell the story –

In 1846 she had been rescued by a British Cruiser from a slave ship and placed, with her liberated companions, in the school at Charlotte, established by Government for the purpose of receiving and educating liberated slave girls, and now under the charge of the Church Missionary Society.   On hearing of the case, the committee of the Bath Deaf and Dumb Institution offered to receive this girl free of expense.  Mumu was accordingly sent to England, and very soon made rapid progress in her lessons.  She was of a very amiable, teachable, and affectionate disposition, and her health, too, was remarkably good.  The instruction she gained in a period of about five years was attended with the happiest results.  After due preparation, and at her own earnest desire, she was admitted by Baptism into the Christian Church and received the christian names of Annie Jane.  She then became deeply anxious that her mother should learn the truths of the Gospel and constantly prayed for her.  Her father, who was captured, had been cruelly put to death before his child.  She was afterwards, for a short time, in service of the Church Missionary College at Islington, but, subsequently, she returned to Bath, and remained in the Institution until her death, which occurred, after a short illness, in May, 1866.  She died beloved and regretted by her friends, teachers, and companions.  Her love of the word of God, her simple reliance on her Saviour, and her conscientious endeavours to discharge faithfully the humble duties of her station, evinced that this once heathen girl had become a Christian not only by profession, but also in deed and in truth.  Certain marks on her forehead proved on inquiry that she was a princess in her own country.

The ship that rescued her would have been part of the West Africa Squadron.

In limited time I could not find further mention of her.  It would make a very interesting dissertation for someone to research this more thoroughly – subaltern history.  If you can add anything let us know!

The charity Sound Seekers that lives next door to us in the UCL Ear Institute, has been doing work in Sierra Leone, unfortunately on hold at the time of writing due to Ebola.

UPDATE 16/2/15: Our friend @DeafHeritageUK has pointed out that Mumu appears in the 1861 census as a servant, under her adopted name & having taken the surname of Jane Elwin (see previous post) – living in Suffolk.  I am hoping to follow this up further, and will of course add any new information I discover.

Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and Blind, Bath.  Quarterly Review of Deaf Mute Education October 1892 p.1

Dene Hollow Oral School for the Deaf was a private school established by Mary Adelaide Hare (1865-1945) at Burgess Hill, Sussex, 1916.  After her death on November the 5th 1945, in accordance with her wishes, it ceased to be a private school for children of all ages, and became instead a voluntary special school for boys and girls aged 11 plus, under the control of a board of managers nominated by her.  This was approved by the Ministry of Education and the school was named after her in 1946.  The new head of the school was Edgar L. Mundin, who had taught at the oralist Northampton Private Deaf School (mentioned in earlier posts).  Mary’s sister Ethel Madelaine Hare (1874-1951) was also a teacher of the deaf, and after retirement she “became the spirit behind the work of her sister Mary at Dene Hollow, Burgess Hill”.

The school moved to Arlington Manor, Newbury, Berkshire, in 1949.

In the 1891 census Mary was living in Croydon with her mother and sister, and an assistant teacher from Ireland whose name is hard to read.  They had six pupils, Ada Harvey from New Zealand, aged (34? or more likely) 14, Mary Ramson from Hastings, aged 12, Jane Avery from Kent, aged 12, Coralie Wilson from Battle, aged 11, Henrietta Foss from Kent, aged 11, and Ethel McMahon from London, aged 8.

1891 Census – Class: RG12; Piece: 596; Folio: 42; Page: 9; GSU roll: 6095706

MAGAZINE – Dene Hollow Club/Association – Dene Hollow School Old Pupils’ Association, 1927-46 [journals, under ‘Dene Hollow’]

Silent World, 1946, 1, 16-18.

Silent World, 1954, May. (Front cover photo of pupils and teacher in classroom)

TREASURE, A.R. The Mary Hare Grammar School for the Deaf: a brief history. Mary Hare Grammar School, 1990.

50 and still going strong. British Deaf News, 1996, Apr, 8-12.

REDWOOD, F. Value added facts. Special Children, 1999, 119, 20-21.

Listen and learn. Special Children, 2002, 151, 33-35.

HARE, Ethel Madelaine

Obituary. Bluebird, 1951, 7, 2.

Obituary. Teacher of the Deaf, 1951, 49, 80.

HARE, Mary Adelaide

BOYCE, A.J. and LAVERY, E. The lady in green: biography of Miss Mary Hare 1865-1945. British Deaf History Society, 1999.

BROWN, I. Rare portraits and some memories of a great woman. Silent World, 1952, Oct, 142-43. (photos)

Miss Mary Hare. Deaf History Journal, 1997, 1(2), 10-17. (Includes text of Mary Hare’s will)

Obituary. Teacher of the Deaf, 1945, 43, 132.

Report of the NCTD Conference, Brighton, 1929. (photo – frontispiece)

RIDDELL, F. Silent world. Geoffrey Bles,  1934. (The character and appearance of Ann Deering, headmistress of Heathside School for Deaf Children “some twenty miles south of London” is based on Mary Hare, to whom the novel is dedicated – see pp. 35-36 for description of Miss Deering.)

A few years ago we covered the Anerley School, with some photographs and references to material we hold.  For some reason I neglected to include the incomplete but bound collection of  School Magazines we have for the period 1909- 29 (at present in the oversize collection of journals).

The magazines are typical in that they are full of school news, with items like “Cricket Prospects”, “The Elocution Class”, and – “The Deaf and Dumb Blues” (Summer 1925)! Here is the first verse & chorus of two verses, written by one W.H.D. –

When you wake up in the morning just about the break o’ day,
The Cock-a-doodle dooos; the donkey starts to bray.
You think about a lot of games that you would like to play,
But when it comes to think of work you close your eyes and say,
I’se got the Anerley Blues those double D Blues,
I wanna stay in bed; I wanna snooze.
Oh-dear-me! Now when I think of it,
I wanna lot of sleep; can’t get a wink of it.
Must leave my li’l bye-bye,
This is the reason why:-
Gotta peel potatoes, gotta scrub the floor,
Gotta wash the dishes, gotta do more,
Gotta do so many things – can’t pick and choose,
So I’se got the Anerley Double-D Blues!

W.H.D. contributed other similar rhymes.

In this picture below we see some exam results – presumably from L.C.C. schools.  Hugh Myddleton pupils feature, along with Ackmar Road, Tollet Street, Penn and a few unfamiliar to me.

In the same issue are some interesting ‘After-care Statistics” for the period December 1902 to July 1927 –

712 boys have passed through the school.
627 are employed.
11 are unemployed.
16 are not yet settled.
Of 18 there is no trace.
23 are unfit for work.
17 are deceased.
88% are employed.
77% are following the trade taught them at school.

The magazine converted from its handwritten duplicated format to a properly printed format in 1930.

Anerley Deaf School Magazine, 1909,

 

In our collection we have a big thick green-bound ledger, measuring approximately 13 1/4″ by 8 3/4″.  A torn bit of paper on the front cover indicates that it was used by the Poolemead Home for Deaf Women, at 9 and 10 Walcot Parade, Bath, to record names and details of the inmates.

The home, founded in 1868, became known as the Deaf and Dumb Industrial Home, then was taken over by the National Institute for the Deaf in 1932, and moved to ‘Poolemead’ at Twerton-on-Avon, near Bath, in 1933, and is now known as the Leopold Muller Deaf Home.

The Story of how the home began is related in Silent World (1946) –

An old four-page pamphlet, grubbed up from the archives of 105 Gower Street, and believed to be the only copy in existence, told me all there was to know about the beginning s of what we now call “Poolemead”.  How the Reverend Fountain Elwin, of Temple Church, Bristol, found a little deaf mute girl in his parish and took her into his home; of how the family moved to Bath; and how his daughter and her friend Miss White went about the city looking for deaf and dumb children, found several neglected little waif, and began to teach them in a rented room in Orange Grove.

A Hundred Years Ago

This must have been about 1832, for our pamphlet tells us that Miss Elwin began her life’s work among the deaf when she was eighteen, and she was born in 1814.  she died when she was ninety.

Her early efforts went so well and aroused so much interest that in 1840 a Committee was formed and premises taken over at 9 Walcot Parade.  In 1868 a home for adults was started, and by the middle 1890’s the adult work had far outstripped the school.  The State was beginning to accept its proper duty of educating the young, and by 1897 the school had been closed altogether and the Charity Commissioners had agreed to the accumulated funds and property being used entirely for the home.

So the Bath Home for Deaf and Dumb Women came properly into being.

What became of the  leaflet I cannot say –  it is possible it survives in the collection hidden somewhere.  We have very little for Bristol in general (two late 19th century reports from the Bristol Institute are ‘missing’) and nothing from Bath, so I cannot compare anything in the way of annual reports for the home.  The founder was Jane Elwin, Fountain Elwin’s daughter.  Initially I connected him with the Elwin family in Norfolk, who produced another Fountain Elwin around the same time, but census returns show he was born in Middlesex circa 1784.  I believe that they may well have been related.  Elwin was ordained in 1810 and ended up at Bristol’s large (now ruined) Temple Church.  He died in Bath in 1869 aged 85.  Jane was born in Bedminster, dying in 1904.  The 1901 census describes her as having ‘senile decay’.

The 1851 census shows a seventeen year old house maid, Elizabeth Buck, who was ‘deaf and dumb’ – surely this might be the deaf girl taken in by Elwin?   She was not described as deaf on the 1841 census.

If I discover anything more about Jane Elwin and Bath I will update this page.

The ledger illuminates other information we can find on the census (and no doubt other records).  For example, the first person listed for the Bath home is Harriet Ball – see below on the left (click to enlarge).  She was “deaf and dumb from a scald when two years old, her right arm amputated, she was one of the first to enter the home”.  An audiologist I consulted suggests that she may have had non-organic hearing loss, but it is far more likely that she had hearing loss that had not previously been detected.  The Bath Home seems to have used the ledger into the 1930s, though with only basic information on the later entries.

Prior to its use by the Bath Home, the ledger started life in Norwich as we can see from the plate in the inside front cover here.

Now look again at the front plate at the top of the page and underneath the label we can make out the words ‘Homeopathic Hospital’.  It was originally used then by one of two possible homeopathic hospitals in Norwich at that time, the first entry being for a Susan Bush in 1856, the last in 1860 by …son (name partly concealed).  Here is an example of a patient in 1856, and I have chosen one who was deaf – Eliza Landamore.  Click for a larger size.

A second example is below – and again I chose a person with a hearing problem, Susanna Denny who has ‘ottorhea’.

Another patient, Robert Rippingale, born in 1843 in Catton (near Norwich)

Septr. 9th 1856 “For the last six years has had scrofulous swellings of the neck [from?] the remains of an old sore. Perfectly adherent to the bone of the lower jaw. His general health has been tolerably good. Has been an outpatient of the Norwich Hospital but without benefit.
Silica [6?]
16th Rather better ”
23rd Still improving Sulph + Silica

Robert did not live long – sadly he died in 1864.

At some point in 1860 I would surmise, the ledger met with an unfortunate accident.  Having read the heading of the article I think you will know where I am going with this…  Someone spilt urine onto the ledger, sticking many pages together.  Sadly some idiot later attempted to part the pages, damaging many.  It still smells very strongly of the cause of this accident!  However, clearly, as it was only partly used someone decided that it still had plenty of life left in it.  Quite how it travelled from Norwich to Bath we can only guess, but as you read above there was some sort of a possible connection with the Elwin family of Bath and Elwins in Norwich (a Robert Fountain Elwin was a rector in Norfolk).

If anyone recognises the hand that the Norwich part of the record was written in, please let us know.  There is no name in the front, so I cannot be sure who first used the book.  The Bath part was probably written by Emily Walker Morgan, head of the home in 1911 (aged 45) where the handwriting matches that at the start of the Bath part of the ledger.  I surmise it was first used by her around 1910.

Later enties show the handwriting getting shakier into the 1930s before it changes, and the record is less detailed.

Silent World, 1946, October, p.112-4

1841 Census – Class: HO107; Piece: 970; Book: 3; Civil Parish: Walcot; County: Somerset; Enumeration District: 5; Folio: 7; Page: 6; Line: 20; GSU roll: 474610 (for the Elwins)

1841 Census – Class: HO107; Piece: 931; Book: 13; Civil Parish: Lyncombe and Widcombe; County: Somerset; Enumeration District: 4; Folio: 27; Page: 5; Line: 18; GSU roll: 474593 (for Elizabeth Buck)

1851 Census – Class: HO107; Piece: 1943; Folio: 464; Page: 32; GSU roll: 221102

1861 Census – Class: RG 9; Piece: 1690; Folio: 53; Page: 6; GSU roll: 542851

1871 Census – Class: RG10; Piece: 2487; Folio: 55; Page: 5; GSU roll: 835196

1881 Census – Class: RG11; Piece: 2438; Folio: 30; Page: 4; GSU roll: 1341587

1891 Census – Class: RG12; Piece: 1935; Folio: 53; Page: 7; GSU roll: 6097045

1901 Census – Class: RG13; Piece: 2341; Folio: 19; Page: 4

1911 Census – Class: RG14; Piece: 14715; Schedule Number: 333

Name

Relation to Head

Birth Date

Age

Gender

Marital Status

Occupation

Birth Place

Address

Emily Walker Morgan Head   1866    45   Female Single  Head Matron Of Institution   Dublin 10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Elizabeth Martin   Assistant    1868    43   Female Widowed   Assistant Matron   Bath, Somerset  10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Harriett Ball               1857    54        Female Single             Paddington, London, England    10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Frances Clark             1846    65        Female Single             Paddington, London, England    10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Elizabeth Chambers    1848    63        Female Single             Liverpool, Lancashire             10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Ann Rogers                1850    61        Female Single             Bridgend, Glamorganshire      10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Louisa Tickett            1857    54        Female Single             Mile End, London, England   10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Elizabeth Townson     1882    29        Female Single             Liverpool, Lancashire             10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Ellen Hillyer               1857    54        Female Single             Dorchester, Dorset                  10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Ann Adams                1857    54        Female Single             Milton Nr Lymmington, Hampshire   10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Eliza Curl                   1875    36        Female Single             Dereham, Norfolk                   10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Emily Hubbard           1864    47        Female Single             West Ham, London, England 10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Honor Ninnes             1886    25        Female Single             St Ives, Cornwall                    10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Elizabeth White          1846   65        Female Single             Devizes, Somerset                   10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Charlotte Lowndes     1871   40        Female Single             Brighton, Sussex                     10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Annie Shepherd          1872   39        Female Single             Leeds, Yorkshire                     10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Georgina Fuller           1850   61        Female Single             Norwood, Surrey                    10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Ellen Smith                1888    23        Female Single             Paddington, London, England  10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Annie Crouch             1873    38        Female Single             Hammersmith, London, England   10 Walcot Parade, Bath

Alice Turner               1872    39        Female Single             Eastbourne, Kent                    10 Walcot Parade, Bath

This is the cover of the Swedish language Finnish Deaf and Dumb association magazine for 1914, Dövstummas Jul, published by the Dövstumaförbund, towards funding the adult home at Åvik.

There is what looks to be a really interesting Deaf Museum in Finland (a beautifully produced Swedish language website).

The Finnish Deaf Association (Finnish language website).

Merry Yule 2014!

These are two old boys from the Royal School for Deaf and Dumb Children Margate,  J. Dade, and Dan Sargent, taken I suppose circa 1930.  They appear to be photographs of photographs.

Daniel Wright Sargent’s birthplace was ‘N.K.’ – not know – on the 1911 census for Margate School (that tells us he was ‘totally deaf’), but from the Free BMD we can see that he was born was born in Tendring, Essex, in the summer of 1902.

J. Dade is harder to pin down as we have no first name.  I suppose a search of the margate School magazine may turn up a record but I leave that to others.

See what more you can discover!

The Salmon family ran a tea and coffee merchant business in Reading in the 19th century.  Joseph Smith Salmon was born in Reading in 1846, son of Joseph Smith senior, who had expanded into the tea trade from his grocer’s business.  Joseph junior married Emmeline Foulger Tubbs in Stockport in 1878 (see Free BMD, Marriages Mar 1878 Stockport 8a 130).  In neither the 1851 census when 5, nor the 1861 census when he was 15, was he described as deaf, however the article on him in Ephphatha from 1896 says that his hearing loss was from Scarlet Fever aged 8 (1854)*.  In the 1871 census he is described as ‘Deaf and dumb from scarlet fever’.  He was described as ‘Deaf and partially dumb’ in the 1881 census.  He had been a pupil at the Old Kent Road Asylum from February 1857 until Midsummer 1860 according to school records (information via @DeafHeritageUK), which is how he would have known Dr. Elliott (see below).

The Rev. Gilby tells of a visit to Reading, where Salmon was starting a mission in the 1880s.

“Joe Salmon” was a devoted follower of Matthew R. Burns, and I received an invitation to go to a tea-party of his to interpret the speeches.  I accepted, and on Friday, 18^th January, 1885, Mr. J. P. Gloyn, our North London Missionary,  and myself went down to Reading from Paddington in the morning, saw the lions of the place together, and went to 11, Abbot’s Walk, where the Salmons then lived.  Here we met Mr. Richard Elliott, of the Margate School, Mr. J. Barber, of Brondesbury (who took private oral pupils: a man of sincere religious fervour whom we all respected), Mr. A. Pine Lilly, a deaf printer from London, whom I afterwards came to know very well indeed.

[…]
We were all taken to Mr. Salmon’s tea-party in carriages – to the Victoria Hall in King’s Road. Immense pains had been taken to ensure the success of the occasion : beef, ham, rabbit-pies, plum-pudding, trifle, crackers – all these things figured on the menu. There were only about forty Deaf, but there were 170 of their friends; and more came after tea.  A Rev. – Tubbs (uncle of J. Salmon) said grace, and speeches were made, with Mr. Tubbs in the the chair.  Mr. Ernest Abraham, now in Australia, turned up, and a magic-lantern show was given, which my diary describes as “childish”.**  Prizes were distributed to the Deaf grown ups for attendance, as if they were children; and Mr. G. Palmer, M.P., who came in late, said a word or two.  Mr. B.H. Payne, of Swansea, also came late, and, like myself, slept at the Lodge Hotel at Mr. Salmon’s expense. In later years I attended similar parties, and remember meeting Dr. Stainer and Dr. Buxton at one of them, as guests of the Salmons when they had moved elsewhere in Reading.

Joseph died on August the 12th 1896, aged only 50.

The obituary in British Deaf Mute tells of the discovery of his body and the inquest at the Roebuck Hotel;

For some time Mr. Salmon had been suffering from insomnia, following upon an attack of influenza. He left home on Wednesday, August 12th, without leaving any message as to where he was going.  As he did not return, inquiries were made by his friends, and advertisements inserted in the local papers […].  Nothing, however, was heard of his whereabouts until Sunday evening, August 16th, when a man named Oliver Collins found the body of the deceased in the river near Tilehurst Station, Reading […]

It was evident that the deceased had been in the water from Wednesday til the Sunday.  The Jury returned a verdict of “Suicide by drowning during temporary insanity.”

Gilby says,

He had long suffered terribly from noises in the head and polypi, and we were not very much surprised when it happened. He had called on us at St. Saviour’s about a fortnight before, in the company of his father, and hinted at it in the course of conversation.  But as he was in the charge of his father we could only rally him cheerily and bid him dismiss such ideas from his head.   His body was found in the Thames at Pangbourne in an up-right position, and his watch indicated the hour of the occurrence of the tragedy.  He was a kind, but excitable man, and we felt great affection for him.

His son, Joseph Harold Salmon would have then been 18, and he had three daughters, Katherine, Gladys, and another daughter born in 1893, Doria Notcutt Salmon.  One child died young.

His father, Joseph senior was involved in an Old Bailey court case when he was younger, which explains the ‘Smith’ in his name – see here.  Joseph Smith Salmon senior died aged 86 in 1907, and writing some thirty years later Gilby said that “Salmon’s Reading Teas were then well-known and liked but since Joe Salmon’s death little has been heard of them.”  I wonder when the business finally folded, but suspect it was in 1907, as Joseph Harold was working for the Inland Revenue in 1911, living with his mother and youngest sister in West Norwood.

It is very poignant that Gilby called him in Ephphatha, “One of the jolliest of men”, only months before his death (p.63).

*Curiously, though not unusually, for these details depended on who wrote the details down and whether someone chose to reveal information, he was not described as deaf in the 1891 census, when he was living at 46 Eastons Avenue, Reading.

UPDATED 8/12/14 to reflect the Ephphatha article for which many thanks to @DeafHeritageUK

The Late Jos. Salmon, Junr, The British Deaf Mute, 1896, p.285

Free BMD

1851 Census, HO107; Piece: 1692; Folio: 392; Page: 27

1861 Census, RG 9; Piece: 746; Folio: 75; Page: 20

1871 Census, RG10; Piece: 1281; Folio: 98; Page: 2

1881 Census,  RG11; Piece: 1305; Folio: 120; Page: 25

1891 Census, RG12; Piece: 998; Folio: 97; Page: 16

1911 Census, RG14; Piece: 2125

Gilby’s unpublished memoirs

Our Portrait Gallery, No.5, Ephphatha, April 1896, p.62-3

Robert Jones O’Keeffe (1811-75) was an Irishman who lost his hearing aged 2 ½ we are told, when he fell into a lake (Smith, 1875, from which what follows is taken).  His portrait was painted by Thomas Davidson, and the engraving here was made from that by Arthur Wilson (see previous posts).

O’Keeffe claimed to be descended from this Arthur O’Keeffe whose memorial is in Westminster Abbey.  He told Davidson that his father was an officer, later working in the ‘stamp office’ in Dublin, while an uncle was he said killed at Waterloo.  One of his brothers ran away to sea and was never again heard of, while another, a barrister, died of ‘some affection of the throat’ (ibid).

He said his aunt was the mother of Cardinal Wiseman, which would mean she was Xaviera Strange suggesting that his mother’s maiden name was Strange.  He claimed that the Cardinal’s father had told him he was sending him to Rome when ‘to be educated for a priest’, yet Wiseman’s father died in 1805 before O’Keeffe was born (unless his aunt married again?).  However the young Robert was educated we are told, at the Protestant School in Dublin, under (so Samuel Smith thinks) Mr. Humphreys.  Later he went to work at a mail coach factory, but after 15 years in 1843 he came with his widowed mother to London, working for Cubitt’s – Willam rather than Thomas – at 37 Gray’s Inn Road, not far from our library.  It seems William had known Robert’s father and uncle (perhaps from his time as a carpenter in the navy we might speculate).

Robert worked there for 32 years, then was partly paralysed, yet was not allowed a pension despite the best efforts of Samuel Smith, as after William Cubitt died (1863) the business changed hands and the new management were obviously not particularly sympathetic.

In his obituary, Samuel Smith wrote of O’Keeffe,

On our last visit to him before his death, we asked him if he was afraid to die. He shook his head, being too weak to talk on his fingers. We urged him to “look to Jesus.” […] he had been a communicant many years, and had seemed earnestly attentive to the religious instruction given at our services, and we never had occasion to reprove him for any unseemly conduct.

One wonders who the Rev. Samuel Smith did have to reprove!

He started attending BDDA run services as an attendant at lectures and received a small stipend as a result of that, really a an act of charity.  He married a deaf widow, Mary Ann Dobell, who was a little older than him, in 1853 (Marriages Jun 1853, Dobell Mary Newington 1d 236).  She was born in Sevenoaks and I wonder if she was a pupil at the Old Kent Road Asylum.  It should not be too difficult to find her maiden name – one possibility is either Mary Ann Gough or Mary Ann Leech one of whom married a Henry Dobell (Marriages Sep 1838, Wandsworth 4 449), but that is a guess and requires a bit more research.

Samuel Smith (as ‘Ed’), Robert Jones O’Keeffe, A Magazine Intended Chiefly for the Deaf and Dumb, 1875 Vol.3, No.28, p.53-4

Free BMD

 

There is not much written about finger spelling, but in April 1889 Albert Farrar, who had been educated by Arnold at Northampton, wrote an article in Quarterly Review of Deaf-Mute Education on the history of the manual alphabet;

The use of signs and pantomimic gestures is undoubtedly of great antiquity, so much so, that its origin is lost in the obscurity of the distant past. Language has various forms, speech being one, and signs and gestures another, and when we consider how permanent and universal is the faculty of expressing our thoughts in different ways, we may well believe that signs were resorted to as soon as men felt the need of some such expedients to supply the deficiencies of speech, or to facilitate intercourse with other tribes or nations. Some think they preceded speech. We must, however, look on language as a Divine gift, and probably the most reasonable conjecture we can form would be that most of its different forms existed from the first and helped one another till speech, greatly amplified and perfected, became the one medium of intercourse and the highest mode of expression. The “survival of the fittest,” if you like! Signs or gestures were, however, not entirely displaced […]

Farrar was writing only a few years after the death of Charles Darwin whose views on the origin of language are discussed here and he slips in Spencer’s phrase ‘Survival of the fittest’ that is widely associated with Darwin.  We can dismiss the “Divine gift” idea, but the idea that gesture and signs preceded language is still a major theory.  Farrar points out that the history of the British two handed alphabet was not terribly well known, but reminds us the Venerable Bede wrote about such a system in De computo seu Indigitilatione et de Loquela manuali per gestum digitorum [also described as De Computo vel Loguela per Gestum Digitorum].

Farrar concludes his article,

In usage, our manual alphabet is not quite uniform over the country, but the differences are so few and slight as to be unnoticeable, except in v and z.  Both the forms of q in Digiti-Linga are used.  Dr. R. Elliott writes me, “I have every reason to believe the manual alphabet in its present form has always been used in the Asylum (Old Kent Road).  I have met with two of the first six pupils, and the only difference they made on the present usage was, to put the knuckles of the forefingers together with the fingers spread out for v.“

We have illustrated older finger alphabets on the blog previously, but today we are inserting the alphabet from Digiti Lingua that is missing from our copy.

Bragg, Lois (1997). Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe Before 1600: A Survey of Sign Lexicons and Finger Alphabets Prior to the Rise of Deaf Education. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2:1 Winter 1997 p.1-25 [a very comprehensive survey]

BRIEN, D. Dictionary of British Sign Language/English. 1992, Faber and Faber. p. 849. Fingerspelling in British Sign language.

BRENNAN M. Making borrowings work in British Sign Language. in: BRENTARI D. Foreign vocabulary in sign languages. 2001, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 49-85. (Library location: UTB TNX)

FARRAR, A. Our manual alphabet and its predecessors, Quarterly Review of Deaf-Mute Education  1889, Vol. 2 p.33-41

SPENCE, R SUTTON-, WOLL B, ALLSOP L. Variation and recent change in fingerspelling in British Sign Language. Language Variation and Change, 1990, 29(3), 313-330. (Library location: C6845 REF)

SPENCE, R SUTTON-, WOLL B. The status and functional role of fingerspelling in BSL. In MARSCHARK M, CLARK M D. Psychological perspectives on deafness. 1993, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 185-208.

SHIPGOOD L E, PRING T R. The difficulties of learning fingerspelling: an experimental investigation with hearing adult learners. European Journal of Disorders of Communication, 1995, 30(4), 401-416.

SPENCE, R SUTTON-. Grammatical constraints on fingerspelled English verb loans in BSL. In LUCAS C. Pinky extension and eye gaze: language use in deaf communities. 1998, Gallaudet University Press. pp. 41-58.

 

I had no idea that the Margate Deaf School at one time had London offices – in Cannon Street.  I am curious as to why they needed some London presence.  From the calendar I think  the internal photo was taken at 1.18pm on Friday 13th of May.  On that day, had you purchased a copy of the Times, you could have read about the 1921 ‘coal crisis’, and the great Brixton born England cricketer and England footballer Andy Ducat scoring 131 the previous day against Warwickshire at the Oval.

Click onto the images for a larger size.  I cannot make out the face in the photo over the books, but in the second picture St. Paul’s Cathedral is visible through the haze.  Can anyone tell us the name of the ‘school officer’ in the second picture?

Update 18/11/2014 Obviously the offices were useful for administrative reasons, presumably as many pupils were from London rather than just being from Kent, but someone contacted us to say that it drops into place something that her mother had told her.  At the end of the school term they would travel to London from Kent, then be collected from the office.