Born in Manchester in 1871, Abdullah J. Iddleby was the son of an Irish mother and a Syrian father.  Because his surname was sometimes transliterated in different ways, it is not easy to track him in online records, and I have not with certainty worked out his parents’ names, but it is possible that they were an Ali Ydlibi and Rebecca Hinchey his wife, as they married in Salford registration district in 1870, the year before Abdulla[h] was born.  It is possible that Abdullah’s is the death recorded as Ali A. J. B. Ydlibi in Stockport in 1952, aged 81.  If his father was Ali Ydlibi (Ydilbi) senior, he was a British subject, born in Syria which was then a part of the Turkish Empire, and I imagine may have been involved in the Lancashire cloth trade in some way.

When he was two his parents went to Egypt, and later on he was educated at a or the British Syrian School in Beirut, where he learnt Arabic (Bayrout as the article in British Deaf-Mute (1895 has it).  It was while he was there that he lost his hearing, although he did retain some.  Later on the article, which is by one ‘Agnes’, it says that he was taught by Alexander Melville, “for the past two years” as a private pupil.  He must have been a student/teacher as he is described as having taught at Llandaff.  Our records of Llandaff are not complete and a quick look did not show his name, perhaps as it was for a period when we have no annual reports.  The peculiar thing is that Melville died in 1891, so someone is confused here.

Abdullah, who would seem to have been from a Christian family, kept up a correspondence with missionaries in Egypt, who had said there were many Deaf people who were not being educated.  Arthur Upson from a previous blog entry, is not mentioned, but must have known Abdullah later on.

The Nile Mission Press for 1906, Blessed be Egypt, says this –

The Class for Deaf and Dumb Boys, which we opened about two years ago, under Mr. Abdullah Iddleby, has been remarkably successful in the matter of general instruction, and the progress of the boys has been extraordinary. But the number of pupils has always been small ; the parents will not send their boys, as they do not believe until they see for themselves that such instruction is possible, and so we recently came to an arrangement with a leading Copt at Zagazig, Paris Effendi Yusef, who will provide a house, etc., and give the opportunity of trying it as a Boys School. Any friends who know of deaf and dumb boys will do well to communicate with Mr. Iddleby, c/o Paris Effendi Yusef, Zagazig.

I suspect that he taught with the combined method, which was used at Llandaff.

He worked with the Church Missionary Society, who proveded a room in in Sharia Muhamed Ali for a year and a half, with Iddleby having five pupils.  The work was supported by Lord Cromer, but when he left Egypt it ended.  He started up again with support of the Pasha (Idris Ragheb) and Egyptian authorities, in the same street, later having 13 pupils.  “His Excellency Idris Pasha is indeed a shelter in a weary land, as far as the deaf and dumb are concerned” says “Pharos” in The British Deaf Times (1909).  Clearly there was an underlying proselytizing element to these early schools, but perhaps the children were from coptic families.

There were other earlier attempts to start education for Deaf children in Egypt.  Miles (2005, see link below) says,

Volta Bureau records (1896; 1900, 1901) noted that “Schools are also reported to exist in Algiers and Syonfieh, Egypt”, and listed three teachers and 37 pupils at Algiers in 1900, 2 teachers and 6 pupils in Egypt in 1901. A Cairo source had a school for “Blind and Dumb” [= Deaf] opening in 1874 and reporting annual data for some years (Heyworth-Dunne, 1968, p. 390).

A footnote adds the following  –

Knowledge of this 19th century work now seems absent from the deaf education world in Egypt, where it is believed that the first school for the deaf was started in 1936. However, a news item “In Cairo” (1909) noted “the establishment of a school for the deaf in Cairo, where it has for three years had a prosperous existence.” A Volta Review article tells of Mme. Sémély Tsotsou founding “L’Ecole L’Espoir” (The Hope School) for 30 deaf children at Alexandria in 1934 (“A School for the Deaf in Egypt”, 1941), with photograph and details of one deaf pupil, nine-year-old Andrée, who had made good progress in speaking French. Another item in 1947 noted that Egypt had then a school for about twenty children at Cairo, a government school “being launched at Alexandria”, and a private school run by “a Greek lady, Madame Semely Tsotsou”, who was also responsible for training 15 Egyptian teachers (“The Deaf in Egypt”, 1947). One small deaf girl, Athanassia Boubouly, is pictured there with her teacher. Lababidi & El-Arabi (2002, pp. 9, 38-43, 101-103, 146-48, 176) collate useful evidence for current activities by and for deaf Egyptians, including interviews with two deaf mothers (the artist and actress Hanan Marzouk, and the Sign specialist Hanan Mohsen), some Deaf organisations, and a Deaf Theatre director. Early information on the school at Algiers has also not been readily available. A brief note in 1927 reported the installation of M. Ayrole in place of the retiring principal M. Rolland (Lamarque, 1927).

How long Iddleby stayed in Egypt, I have no idea.  If anyone comes comes across him in any records, please update us below.

Abdulla[h] married Edith E Keay in Stockport in 1915, and she died in 1943.

http://dspace.wrlc.org/view/ImgViewer?url=http://dspace.wrlc.org/doc/manifest/2041/32130

http://dspace.wrlc.org/view/ImgViewer?url=http://dspace.wrlc.org/doc/manifest/2041/35372

Both those articles are based on British Deaf Mute and British Deaf Times articles.

Marriages Dec 1915  Keay Edith E and Iddleby Abdulla J S, Stockport 8a 82

Deaths Jun 1943, IDDLEBY Edith E 71 Hyde 8a 118 (for both see the Free BMD)

Deaf People Living and Communicating in African Histories, c. 960s – 1960s

http://www.deaf-atlas.org/index.php/en/egypt

The Deaf of Egypt, British Deaf Mute, 1895, p.39, vol 5 no.50

Pharos, The Deaf and Dumb of Egypt, The British Deaf Times, 1909, Vol. 6 no.65, p.97-99

Roe, WR., The deaf and dumb in Egypt, in Peeps into the Deaf World, 1917, p.204-6

 

 

As anyone who has read even a small amount about Deaf History will know, there is an intimate relationship between religion and mission work, and deafness, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, with positive and negative effects on those involved.   Usually this takes the form of religious missions among deaf people in the country concerned, sometimes bringing them together into communities by the formation of institutions with educational or religious aims.  A different example is Arthur Thomas Upson, who lost his hearing when a young man when he was already determined to lead the life of a missionary abroad, but whose missionary activities were in Egypt.

Arthur was born is Essex in 1874, the son of Arthur Upson of Rayleigh, a harness maker, and his wife Sarah.  In the picture we see Upson in the back row, third from the right.  We read about his gradual ‘conversion’ to mission work in his memoir, High Lights in the Near East (1936), p.14-15).  He worked as a student teacher in Rayleigh after finishing school, and in the wet summer of 1890 the new term was delayed by one week so the boys could help with the harvest.  Walking by Southend pier, Arthur was asked by Alex Nielson of Forest Gate if he was a Christian.  He replied that he hoped he was, was given a pamphlet “Safety, Certainty and Enjoyment”, which when he had read it gave his his first Damascene moment. Later, when he decided to become a missionary, he was accepted by the North Africa Mission.  His father’s response to his determination to go abroad was, “Then you’re a fool”.  He started to learn Arabic, and soon found himself engaged to Miss Kitty Philpott, but the marriage was delayed until 1901.

Upson became ill in 1899, while he was in Egypt learning Arabic.  He had ‘confluent smallpox’, which damaged the hearing in his right ear, then underwent an operation on a ‘burr’ in his left nostril (whatever that means), supposedly causing hearing problems in his left ear.  The operation did not address the problem and seemed to make it worse as he started to lose his hearing in that ear as well.

It is hard to gauge how successful Upson was as a missionary.  Then, as now, apostasy from Islam was not allowed.   The memoir is not a great piece of writing or a narrative of his life, but it is a collection of ‘episodes’ and reminiscences.

The outbreak of war in 1914 saw the start of a massive troop movement into Egypt.  Where there were soldiers there would be prostitution and Upson was greatly exercised by this.

“Brands plucked out of the fire” (Zech. 3:2). What imagery!  What urgency!  How the fire burned within me at the very thought of the thousands of troops and hundreds of officers that were being destroyed in the fires of Cairo and Alexandria. Twenty-five streets and lanes in our one city of Cairo were given over to the detestable traffic in girls and women. And still the area was continually being enlarged until much of what is commonly called the “European Quarter” was involved. Near us, a single building of about 40 rooms, formerly a well-known hotel, was used by “Officers Only.” Further, there had been almost a complete breakdown of attempts to make vice “safe” (?), and not a few of the bolder men, such as Anzacs, had taken matters into their own hands and several brothels had been burnt down in revenge for disease taken from the women.
[…]
many were greatly worried at the mounting percentage of V.D. cases.
[…]
One can hardly walk past those beautifully-kept cemeteries at Cairo, Jerusalem, and other places in the East without wondering how many were victims of Turkish bullets and how many of unmentionable diseases! (ibid p.68-9)

Upson’s answer was to distribute ‘purity’ leaflets in English and Arabic, over four years 40,000 of each.  We might wonder if his use of ‘brands’ was deliberately suggestive!

He continues,

The matron of one hospital wrote to ask my help to try to stop “Sandbagging,” a species of crime that I have never heard of in any other connection.  On going into the matter, it appeared that soldiers – Anzacs, if possible, for they carried more money – were invited into certain brothels, taken up to balcony rooms, made drunk, and then violently struck in the centre of the spinal column by something hard enough to benumb the victim but without wounding him – originally a bag of sand was used – then the poor wretch would be pitched over the balcony into the street, and perhaps killed, or one or more limbs would be broken.  Needless to say, the victim was always robbed of all he carried before he was thrown into the street.  When picked up by the Military Police, there was every evidence of drunkenness and so it became easy to conclude that he “Fell over the balcony whilst drunk.”  Terrible!  But we made urgent representations to the Authorities and the patrols of Military Police were strengthened and a better look-out was kept, and in time that particular form of crime seemed to come to an end. (ibid p.70-1)

As you will see, Upson sent copies of his two books to Selwyn Oxley, and into one, Oxley has stuck a letter from the author.  His adventures included him crossing the Gobi Desert (BDT).

Upson returned to Essex around 1936, dying there in 1958.

Abdul-fady, Evergreen and other Near East Bible Talks London ; Edinburgh : Marshall, Morgan & Scott, (1938)

Abdul-fady, High Lights in the Near East London ; Edinburgh : Marshall, Morgan & Scott, (1936)

Deaf Missionary’s Life with Arabs, British Deaf Times, vol 33, p.58, 1936

Upson, Arthur, A Deaf Publisher in the Near East, British Deaf Times, vol43, p.24, & p.46-7, p.68-9, p.83-4, 1946

[Updated 26/4/19]

The Ladies Christian Homes for Deaf & Dumb Children From Four Years of Age, on the Oral System were first established in 1875.  The first home was in Pentonville Road, North London, between Angel and Kings Cross.  Other branches were to follow in rapid succession so by 1880 there was a home at 6 Victoria Park Square near Bethnal Green, and one at 171 Grange Road, Bermondsey.  Several more opened in the following years.  The homes emerged from the founding of the London School Board after 1871, as there was insufficient provision for the education of Deaf children in London, with 300 not receiving any education (Woodford, 1999).  William Stainer of the Royal Association in Aid of the Deaf and Dumb, was approached to begin classes at Bethnal Green, in the Wilmott Street Board School with five pupils (ibid).  Children attended and boarded for the week days, but went home at weekends.  Doreen Woodford’s 1999 article is well worth reading, but despite consulting records at the London Metropolitan archive, it seems she could find none of the annual reports for these institutions.

It may well be then that this single report, with what was the earlier name of the homes, is one of the few of their records that survive.

The 1881 census shows the children were almost all girls – there are only two boys –

Harriet Mealey	Servant (Head) Widower	54	female	Housekeeper	Datchit Nr Windsor
Alice Ensor	Boarder	25	female	Assistant School Teacher	Hackney Middlesex
Sarah Barnes	Servant	16	female	Gen Servant	Clerkenwell Middlesex
Eleanor Rivers	Boarder	12	female	Scholar	Penge Surrey
Beatrice Allen	Boarder	14	female	Scholar	Marylebone Middlesex
Mary Welch	Boarder	14	female	Scholar	St Lukes Middlesex
Elizabeth Johnson	Boarder	13	female	Scholar	Finchley Middlesex
Ellen Mays	Boarder	9	female	Scholar	Kensington Middlesex
Alice A. Hale	Boarder	9	female	Scholar	Rugby Warwickshire
Steller ? Frost	Boarder	12	female	Scholar	Chiswick Middlesex
Emily Shelford	Boarder	6	female	Scholar	Highbury Middlesex
Emily Harris	Boarder	7	female	Scholar	Barnstaple Devon
Emily Alderton	Boarder	6	female	Scholar	Blackheath
Eliza Sparrowhawk	Boarder	17	female	Scholar	Hackney Middlesex
Sarah Pufferd	Boarder	Younger Than 1	female		Fulham Middlesex
Margaret Jarvis	Boarder	7	female	Scholar	Battersea Surrey
Beatrice Underhill	Boarder	12	female	Scholar	New Cross Kent
Abraham J. Webb	Boarder	9	male		Norwood Surrey
Ernest F. Howard	Boarder	9	male		Warwickshire

In 1881 Stainer was living at 1 Gore Road, Hackney, and had a number of private pupils (I have excluded details of where they were born for reasons of space) –

William Stainer	Head Widower	53	Male	Curate St Matthews Beth Gr & Inst Deaf & Dumb School Bd For Lndn
Macdonald Campbell	Boarder	18	Male	Articled Asst Teacher (School Master)
Ann Honey	Servant Widow	66	Female	Housekeeper Domestic Serv
Mary A. Miller	Servant	54	Female	Housemaid Domestic – Deaf & Dumb
Jane Faulkner	Servant	19	Female	Housemaid Domestic
Samuel Smith	Boarder	26	Male	Scholar – Deaf & Dumb
William P. Turner	Boarder	13	Male	Scholar – Deaf & Dumb
Horace E. Sharp	Boarder	13	Male	Scholar – Deaf
William Randale	Boarder	11	Male	Scholar – Deaf & Dumb
Gerard Hiel	Boarder	7	Male	Scholar – Deaf & Dumb
Florrie Mann	Boarder	9	Male	Scholar – Deaf & Dumb

Doreen Woodford pointed out in her 1999 article, that most of the sources of material on the Stainer Homes, at least early on, is partial.  Stainer was behind the Deaf Quarterly News  and as he “was one of the original promoters of the “Conference of Headmasters”, as well as being on nearly every committee, including some internal ones, most of the evidence is biased.” (Woodford 1999).

In the proceedings of the meeting, Mr. Sydney Buxton said (p.5 of 1880 Annual Report), in a particularly dull passage announcing his Oralist intentions –

I am afraid I have no special claim upon your attention for I have no particular information to give with reference to the work that is going on.  The only information I can place before you has been from attending the Committee of the School Board which has reference to this special work.  I think after the remarks of the Chairman with reference to the Report that no addition is required from me with regard to it, what he said with respect to the Oral Teaching shows that when we talk about “Deaf and Dumb” we use a misnomer.  This is rather a pity.  “Deaf and Dumb” has become a common phrase, but in point of fact, excepting a few children who have a malformation of the mouth, no child is really dumb.  Every child can really be taught to speak if sufficient attention be given to it. […] At the Conference held in Milan, the large majority of the members were of the opinion that the Oral System was infinitely better than the Manual System, and that it was the only true scientific way by which to teach the Deaf and Dumb.  The London School Board has now, after trying the two systems, practically adopted the Oral System in all its schools, and it would be a good thing if it went a little further, and declared that the Oral system [sic] was the best.

Further on, the Rev. Septimus Hansard, of St. George’s in the East adds his ha’pennyworth –

Think how fifty years ago these deaf children were left to grow up as idiots! It never entered the heads of people to educate the Deaf and Dumb.  After some time it is true education was provided for the Deaf and Dumb, but only for those who had reached nine or ten years of age, and these institutions exist to this day.  But the little ones were left to drift into imbecility. […] I have known Mr. Stainer for many years, he has devoted his life to this work.

Stainer was Hansard’s curate at this time in Bethnal Green.  Hansard looks to be a very interesting person – taught by Arnold at Rugby and F.D. Maurice in London and involved in the ‘Surplice Riots’ of East London.  Indeed, “he was a schoolfriend at Rugby of Thomas Hughes, who based the Tom Brown’s Schooldays character of Holmes the praepostor, ‘one of the best boys in the school’, on him.” (St. George’s in the East website)

The homes later went into a decline and were eventually closed.

STAINER HOMES –

The Ladies Christian Homes for Deaf & Dumb Children , Fifth Annual Report, 1880

LAISHLEY, R. Report on deaf-mute institutions. VIII. London Board Schools and the Rev. W. Stainer’s Homes. Quarterly Review of Deaf-Mute Education, 1888, 1, 300-305.

Quarterly Review of Deaf-Mute Education, 1888, 1, 320.

WOODFORD, D.E. The rise and fall of the Stainer’s Homes. Deaf History Journal, 1999, 3(2), 27-38.

http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-1124-1/dissemination/pdf/preconst1-102058_1.pdf

http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-1124-1/dissemination/pdf/preconst1-77843_1.pdf

Census returns for 1881 – Class: RG11; Piece: 353; Folio: 4; Page: 2; GSU roll: 1341076

Class: RG11; Piece: 312; Folio: 106; Page: 59; GSU roll: 1341067

 St. George’s in the East website  [accessed 19/3/2015]

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

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

Sophia Rhind (also called Sophie) was born in Belfast circa 1846 (she was 89 when she died in 1933), when her father Charles Rhind was teaching in that city.  They moved around a fair amount when she was young.  They lived in Aberystwyth for a while where her father founded the Cambrian Institution before it moved to Swansea, then on to Edinburgh, and the family ended up in London, with Charles Rhind becoming the Chaplain to the Deaf at St. Saviour’s Church after the Rev. Stainer.  She learnt teaching with the oral method from Simon Schoentheil or Schöntheil and became a teacher of the deaf, but only learnt finger-spelling properly Gilby says, when her father became the Chaplain.  Sophia taught the girls’ bible class, and the mothers’ Dorcas meetings.  After her parents died the R.A.D.D. appointed her ‘lady-visitor’ to the deaf until she retired from that work in 1916 (Ephphatha 1916).

Rose Maugham was born in Clerkenwell in 1849, losing her hearing we are told aged 10 due to scarlet fever.  The 1871 census, when she was living in Paradise Road, Lambeth with her father Alexander (a printer) and mother Ellen (a laundress) does not record her as deaf.  This shows that we should be cautious with census information because people often under-reported these things, did not know them, or made mistakes.  Additionally, the transcriptions I used have her surname as ‘Mangham’ – an easy error for someone unfamiliar with English names.*  In the 1891 census she was still living in Paradise Road, with her brother-in-law Edwin Penn who ran a laundry.  Interestingly a neighbour who was a dressmaker, Sarah Chandler (born in Effingham and aged 59), was also ‘deaf from childhood’.  There is much potential to use census returns and other records to fill out our understanding of the lives of ordinary people in the 19th century.

Of the mission work that Miss Maugham and Miss Rhind did in the 1890s, Gilby says,

The poor women of the Mothers’ Meetings were given tea and a bun, and to see them bringing their children from even Fulham some miles away made one realise how precious to them was this hour or two of human fellowship, enjoyed fortnightly. Cricklewood and Kensal Green sent their poor and the good that Miss Rhind did at Oxford Street and Miss Maugham did at Deptford will only be known in that Great Day when the Master shall reward his faithful servants who toiled for love of His children, for whom He died.

The lady we see here, is Miss Rhind, at a flag day outside St. Saviour’s Oxford Street, circa 1920.

In 1911 Rose Maugham was living in Balham*, and she lived on until 1936, dying aged 87.

*Her name is consistently wrongly transcribed as ‘Mangham’ in the transcriptions of the censuses.

Miss Maugham died in 1936, aged eighty-seven (BDT).

Miss Sophie Mary Rhind, and Miss R. Maugham.  Ephphatha, Vol. 1 1896, p.21-2

Miss Sophie Mary Rhind.  Ephphatha, 1916, no.29 p.422-3

Gilby Memoirs

1891 Census RG12; Piece: 401; Folio: 19; Page: 31; GSU roll: 6095511

Late Miss Rose Maugham, BDT p.84, 1936

Page updated 26/4/2019

 

 

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

In 1919 the Brunswick House Hostel for Deaf and Dumb Girls was founded at 19, Beaulieu Villas, Manor Gate, Finsbury park in North London.  It seems that a moving spirit behind the foundation was Mrs Herbert Jones, who was I believe the wife of the Rev. Vernon Jones, Chaplain to the Deaf in North London.  It aimed “to provide a safe and comfortable home for deaf and dumb girls who are alone in the world, or whose relations are unable, or unwilling, to look after them.” (Annual Report 1929, p.1)

In August 1930 they were given six weeks notice to leave Beaulieu Villas as they were required by “the Electric Railway Company, in connection with the new Tube Railway Station  that will be built at Manor Gate, Finsbury Park” (Annual Report, 1930 p.3), but they were fortunate to find a house opposite the St. John of Beverley centre in Green Lanes (see image below).  The house is still there.

Here is one of the worthy patronesses, Lady Barrett, Chairman of the hostel, who was “Called Home” in 1930.  Other founding members  were Lady Maxwell Lyte, Lady Baddeley (wife of a Lord Mayor of London), Mrs. Edmondson, Mrs. Firminger, Mrs. H.R. Oxley (I am not clear if this was a relative of Selwyn Oxley), Mrs. A. J. Wilson (see earlier entries for her husband), Mrs. Wise, Mrs. Hankey and Mrs. Woods.

I do not wish to belittle the efforts of these people, but for some of them at least it was clearly one of those cases when those with wealth found charitable work that sat comfortably with their weltanschauung.*

When the home closed we do not know, but I suspect that the war may have meant they were evacuated, and the improved social welfare of the post-war years saw many changes to these small charities, with closures or state institutions taking over.

Annual Reports, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1933, 1938

Update 5/11/2014: Thanks to @DeafHeritageUK for pointing out that we have a couple of photos of the hostel prior to the move, including this one with Selwyn Oxley enjoying tea with the ladies, probably in the early 1920s and around March or April from the daffodils on the table.

Edmund Symes-Thompson (1837-1907) was born in Keppel Street in London, in the house next door to that where Anthony Trollope had been born in 1815.  His father Dr Theophilus Thompson F.R.S. (1807-60) was one of the founders of the Brompton Hospital, where he was an expert in Consumption, and according to his DNB entry “is credited with being the person who introduced cod-liver oil into England”, no doubt endearing him to generations of children then yet unborn.

Edmund followed his father into the medical profession, training at Kings College London where he won several prizes.  He too went to work at the Brompton Hospital and became an expert in chest diseases.

In addition to his work as a doctor, he was Professor of Physic at Gresham College and lectured there for many years.  Although some of his ideas seem bizarre now, he was was accepting of the scientific discoveries of his lifetime, but sought to reconcile them with his deeply held religious beliefs.  He expressed this through membership of the Guild of Saint Luke, an organisation founded by some surgeons in 1868.  At it height it held annual services in St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey attended by large numbers of the medical profession.*

Symes-Thompson subscribed to the view that Deaf people were more likely to suffer from pulmonary diseases than the hearing, promoting those views at the Milan Congress in 1881 (Esmail p.245).  Here is the Symes-Thompson Milan paper.  After his death his wife gathered together materials to produced  a book about his life called Memories of Edmund Symes-Thompson M.D., F.R.C.P. A Follower of St. Luke.  In it we can read about the origins of the Ealing College for Training Teachers of the Deaf and Symes-Thompson’s links with that organisation.

The college was oralist, founded by Benjamin Ackers, and we have mentioned it before as it features strongly in the promotion of the ‘German’ system in the late 19th century.  Mrs. Ackers contributed a short history of the Society to the Mermories –

An English gentleman of high abilities, the late Mr. Arthur Kinsey, was sent by Mr. Ackers to Germany and elsewhere and thoroughly trained, and then in 1877, with the warm sympathy and aid of Dr. and Mrs. Symes-Thompson and other friends of the deaf, the ‘Society for Training Teachers of the Deaf and for the Diffusion of the German System’ was formed. Dr. Symes-Thompson threw himself the more heartily into the scheme because, as Senior Physician to the Brompton Hospital for Consumption, his long and keen observation led him to note that the deaf – in those days not taught to speak – were specially liable to consumption for want of properly exercising their vocal organs. The following year the Training College for Teachers of the Deaf, with Mr. Kinsey as Principal, was opened at Ealing, with a small practising school attached; for, needless to say, students cannot be trained unless they can see how deaf children are taught, the way in which sounds have to be developed, ideas drawn out, and language imparted.

Edmund Symes-Thompson was a member of the Society for the remainder of his life, ending as Chairman.  It may be instructive, if slightly shocking to a modern reader, to see quite how determined the Society was to stop children signing – this ‘Appendix C’ below comes from the 1906 report, the year Symes-Thompson died.

In 1899 Charles Mansfield Owen, who was a member of The Royal Association in Aid of the Deaf and Dumb, wrote a pamphlet where he set out his opposition to the views on oralism and societies for the deaf, that Symes-Thompson had expressed to the English Bishops in a circular letter on Missions to the Deaf and Dumb.  Owen wrote “His letter (however unintentionally), is likely to do considerable injury to the cause of these Missions” and proceeded to give answer in the Spiritual Care of the Adult Deaf and Dumb.

We should note that despite Symes-Thompson’s interest in the deaf, I cannot find a mention of him in Neil Weir’s Otolaryngology: An Illustrated History  and he was not an otolaryngologist.  It would be interesting to see what his contemporaries who were otolaryngologists made of his ideas regarding deafness.

Over to the researchers!

*I can find no evidence of this particular guild after the 1920s of some newspaper reports of the annual service.  Perhaps it ended with the Second World War.

Obituary

Grave

Family

Esmail, Jennifer, Reading Victorian Deafness. 2013

T. B. Browning, ‘Thompson, Theophilus (1807–1860)’, rev. Kaye Bagshaw, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27277, accessed 3 July 2014]

Christopher F. Lindsey, ‘Thompson, Edmund Symes- (1837–1906)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36398, accessed 3 July 2014]

E. Symes-Thompson, Memories of Edmund Symes-Thompson, M.D., F.R.C.P.: a follower of St. Luke (1908) – Our copy is signed by the authoress, Lilla Symes-Thompson, and inscribed to the Bishop of Gibralter

Another photograph of a document, possibly again from an old scrapbook belonging to Matthew Burns.  This society was founded by better off Deaf people in aid of poor Deaf people.  Note the annotations next to the names, indicating how many were Deaf.  Founded in 1836 as the Watson Society, named after Watson of the Old Kent Road Asylum, careful readers of this website may recall that it was later (1843) supported by Charles Dickens.

One of its objects is to grant small annual pensions to those persons, among the poor, who were either born deaf, or lost their hearing before the age of ten years, and who shall have attained the age of sixty years, or who shall have become so infirm as to be incapable of obtaining their livelihood by following their occupations. […] Another, and very important object of this Society, is to encourage industrious and provident habits among deaf and dumb workmen, by conferring further advantages ion those who shall contribute periodical sums in support of this Society; such as the right of priority in receiving pensions, and the benefit of some yearly allowance upon their contributions, should the funds of the Society permit, with a discretionary power to regulate the disposal of such contributions at their own annual meetings, subject to the approval of the Society when in general meeting assembled.

The Monthly Chronicle for 1838, in an article on ‘Progress of the Deaf and Dumb’ (from where the above quotation from the Prospectus comes, p.155 onwards), describes one of their dinners –

They hold regular business meetings, and have had two public dinners in connection with the purposes of the Society. At one of these the writer of this article was present. It was a scene alike strange and interesting. Eight or ten stewards, of whom not more than two or three could hear, received the visitors, superintended the arrangements, and performed all the courteous functions of their office, with a graceful skillthat showed how soon a quick eye may make up for long habitude. The chair was to have been taken by J.W. Lowe, Esq. of Lincoln’s Inn, a conveyancing barrister, of skill and practice in his profession, and who is himself, by that profession, as well as by the energy and attainments of a well cultivated mind, a living monument of social progress of the class to which he belongs; for he too is deaf and dumb, and the first instance of a call to the bar of any person affected by that privation. circumstances having prevented Mr. Lowe’s arrival at the hour for which the dinner had been announced, Mr. J. Hamilton, one of the deaf and dumb teachers at the asylum, was invited to preside, which he did with the ability of a practised chairman. Of about on hundred and twenty persons who dined, a considerable majority were deaf and dumb. The toasts were announced both by words and signs; the chairman having, like many others, so well profited by the artificial faculty of speech cultivated at the Kent Road Establishment, as to render his enunciation very intelligible to others, however inaudible to himself.

We see that George Edward Napoleon Towry (1804-57) was ‘a man of fortune’, as was Henry Johnson.  Towry’s grandfather George was a naval officer, who also won £20,000 in the lottery.  Towry moved to the Isle of Wight some time before 1851.  Try looking them up in the census returns or the Free BMD and see what more you can uncover about them.  As you see, the annotation (by Burns I think) says that Towry was a nephew of Lord Ellenborough, Ellenborough’s wife being a Towry, so would be well connected socially.*  He was deaf, and I suppose he would have been educated privately.  (I hope to add an item about Lowe in a future blog entry.)

By 1885 the President was Lord Ebury, who was the relative of the Duke of Westminster involved with the founding of St. Saviour’s Church.  There were two Lowes on the committee, Francis and William Ross-Lewin – I imagine they were relatives of J.W. Lowe – which also had the Rev. Stainer, Samuel Bright-Lucas, and Horatio Dain.

The annual reports list those who received pensions, for example in 1885 William George Lyon, then aged 51 and ‘infirm’ was given £4.  In 1904 he was still going , aged 70 and collected £10.  From the 1901 census returns (Class: RG13; Piece: 1245; Folio: 74; Page: 20) we see that he was born in Southwark in approximately 1833/4.

The society was incorporated in the B.D.D.A. in 1923.

Annual Reports, 1885, 1897, 1903, 1908, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916

www.ancestry.co.uk 

*Updated 4/10/2017 with information about Towry.  Note that this family needs researching further as it was the 1st Lord Ellenborough’s son, who was 1st Earl of Ellenborough, who was married to the society beauty Anne Towry (1769-1843).  That would make him a cousin of the Governor General.

Rowsell was not deaf but was a solicitor living in Norwood.