I came across a very short item in the British Deaf Times for October, 1906, p.225, which led me to discover more about a Lincolnshire family from over a century ago, and a tragic event.

Harriet Shaw was born in Grimsby in 1826/7, and christened on the 27th of February. According to various census returns she was born deaf. Her parents were Elizabeth, or ‘Betsey’, and William Shaw, who was a shipbuilder, neither being described as deaf on the census. In 1848 she married a Hull man, Robert Matthews, a ship’s carpenter who later became a shipwright like his father-in-law. They had at least six children, William Joseph, born in 1850, who became a boilermaker, Robert, a carpenter, born c. 1853, George, also trained as a carpenter, born c. 1856, Emma born c. 1860, Hannah born in c. 1864, and Elizabeth born in c. 1868. William, Hannah and Elizabeth, were all, like their mother, born deaf, according to the census returns. The 1861 census says that George was also deaf, but he is not described as deaf in the 1871 census. Clearly census returns are not infallible, relying on the information of informants who may not have been thorough in their admissions to the enumerator, and enumerators were also mistaken or careless on occasions. It is a great pity that we have few early reports from local deaf missions, and those we have for Hull, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire are rather patchy. Local papers might tell us more, and there must have been an inquest. It seems very likely (I would stress without firm evidence) that in a family like this where mother and many children were deaf, that they would have signed.

William, the oldest child, never married. The tragedy is that, on the 6th of September 1906, his sister, probably the youngest sister Elizabeth who was still living at home with her brother, found him hanged in a workshop. One can only imagine what desperation, despair and disillusionment, led him to this, but the truth is that Deaf people are more vulnerable to isolation and mental health issues. 

In 1882 Emma Matthews married a Deaf man from Sheffield, Thomas Gilley Bentley, an engraver, and they had at least one Deaf child, Victoria Maud Bentley, born in 1887. That is the third generation from Harriet Shaw. The 1911 census shows that the Bentleys had ten children, six surviving at that time. Victoria married Albert B Clarke in 1918. Albert, born c. 1889, was also Deaf from childhood. From the above annual report for Sheffield, we can see that Thomas Bentley was involved with the Sheffield Association in Aid if the Deaf and Dumb. Perhaps we have the sort of idea of ‘deaf ethnicity’ here in the Matthews/Shaw/Bentley/Clarke families – see Lane et. al for a discussion of this.

At that time George Stephenson was still working with the Association, which leads me to suggest that anyone interested in the history of Deaf people in the late 19th and early 20th century, may be interested to read Nick Waite’s new book, Alone in a Silent World, which covers this period and the long association of the Stephensons with the Sheffield Deaf community.

FURTHER INFORMATION

I have heard of a recent case which resonates with the story of William Matthews, although of course we know very little other than the outline of William’s story.

This open access article from 2007 is a review of the literature on Deaf people and Suicide up to that point – Suicide in deaf populations: a literature review.  That article has been widely cited.  This links to PubMed article abstracts using the search terms mental health and deaf.  The British Society for Mental Health and Deafness (BSMHD) “focuses entirely on the promotion of the positive mental health of deaf people.”  Additionally the Samaritans have an email contact jo@samaritans.org

Lane, H., Pillard, R.C. & Hedberg, U. The People of the Eye : Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry.  2011

1851 Census – Class: HO107; Piece: 2113; Folio: 202; Page: 13; GSU roll: 87742

1861 Census – Class: RG 9; Piece: 2389; Folio: 55; Page: 15; GSU roll: 542964

1871 Census – Class: RG10; Piece: 3414; Folio: 63; Page: 22; GSU roll: 839406

1881 Census – Class: RG11; Piece: 3270; Folio: 36; Page: 24; GSU roll: 1341780

Hannah and Emma in the 1891 Census – Class: RG12; Piece: 3815; Folio: 133; Page: 8; GSU roll: 6098925

William in the 1901 Census – Class: RG13; Piece: 3089; Folio: 62; Page: 36

Albert in the 1901 Census – Class: RG13; Piece: 4375; Folio: 57; Page: 26

To disappoint you, the person who features today had no exciting adventures, and was probably not significant to anyone outside his friends and family. He was an ordinary person. He probably led an ordinary life, but honestly, while we usually have some additional source to the online genealogical information, such as a short obituary or a story in a paper, I have nothing for Thomas except this rather nice photograph of him with his pinking shears. On the back it says “80 years old” in pencil, then in ink, but not Selwyn Oxley’s hand, “Thomas Henry Jones died Dec. 26 aged 86 at Ashford Mddx Tailor”. Printed below in very small type – the photo is on a postcard backing as are most of our collection – is “Freeman, Photo, Ashford, Staines”.  The photo probably dates from circa 1915 (he was 84 when he died rather than 86 – see below).

Born in Deptford in 1837, Thomas Henry Jones was baptised on the 23rd of July that year, the son of John and Mary Ann Thomas. His father was a shoemaker, and the family lived then in Grove Lane according to the baptismal records (lodged at the London Metropolitan Archives and also on line). He attended the Old Kent Road Asylum, and was there in the 1851 census when he was 13.

In the 1861 census he was living with his married sister and her family in Deptford.  That census tells us he was deaf from birth. Towards the end of that year he married a deaf lady called Susannah or Susan Anderson, daughter of Irish immigrants and, according to the 1861 census, deaf from birth. She was born in Chelsea, circa 1834, and worked as a dressmaker. In 1861 she was living in Carteret Street by St. James’s Park supporting her mother, and with a lodger nineteen year old Hannah Rowe, a deaf shirtmaker from Tiverton. I wonder if they met through being a dressmaker and a tailor, or through the deaf community? They had at least four children, Alfred, Walter, Caroline and Albert, born in Deptford, Rotherhithe and then Deptford, which suggests that the family did not move too far away from where Thomas grew up. Susannah must have died a little after the 1881 census, as Thomas married again, to Eleanor Thompson (b.1851), in Bethnal Green in 1882 (see Free BMD). She too was profoundly deaf, but I have not certainly identified her in the 1861 or 1871 censuses, although there is a Thompson family who might fit in the Hackney workhouse in 1871.

In 1901 the family was living in Staines, with their three surviving children of six in total, and with a deaf boarder, William Lake (b.ca 1881 in New Brompton, Kent).  The youngest daughter, Beatrice, was born when Eleanor was 44. Beatrice Eleanor (b. 1895) married a George Matthews in 1915 and only died in 1974.

By 1911 they were living at 5 Vine Cottages, Ashford, Middlesex.  Thomas died at his home in London Road, Stanwell, on the 26th of December 1921, and was buried on the 31st, aged 84.

Thomas –

1911 Census Class: RG14; Piece: 6755; Schedule Number: 220 

1901 Census Class: RG13; Piece: 1175; Folio: 37; Page: 24

1881 Census Class: RG11; Piece: 701; Folio: 17; Page: 28; GSU roll: 1341164

1871 Census Class: RG10; Piece: 743; Folio: 84; Page: 24; GSU roll: 824719

1861 Census Class: RG 9; Piece: 397; Folio: 127; Page: 1; GSU roll: 542630

1841 Census Class: HO107; Piece: 484; Book: 9; Civil Parish: Lewisham; County: Kent; Enumeration District: 5 6; Folio: 9; Page: 11; Line: 2; GSU roll: 306876

Susannah –

1861 Census Class: RG 9; Piece: 53; Folio: 73; Page: 15; GSU roll: 542564

1851 Census Class: HO107; Piece: 1480; Folio: 353; Page: 46; GSU roll: 87804-87805

London Metropolitan Archives, Deptford St Paul, Register of Baptism, p75/pau, Item 007

London Metropolitan Archives, Death records Call Number: dro/022/a/01/020

Maurycy Minkowski (1881-1930), sometime known as Maurice Minkowski or Minkovski, was a Polish Jewish artist, born in Warsaw. He seems to be an early 20th century artist who has been largely forgotten.

When one of his works, “After the Pogrom” appeared in a 2002 exhibition in The Jewish Museum (New York), it was bracketed with several other paintings by the critic as putting “a specifically Jewish spin on the worst excesses of 19th-century sentimentality” (Prose, 2002).  That seems a little harsh, but Richard Cohen says he was one of the Jewish artists who “remained deeply anchored to the cataclysmic events of the day”, namely the terrible pogroms that broke out in Eastern Europe and European Russia at the turn of the century (Jewish Icons, 1998).  If you search for his paintings on line you will get a flavour of the types of image – women, children, old men, the victims of dislocation and hatred.

It is hard to find solid details about his life, at least in English. His family were it seems middle class, and according to Cohen were “acculturated” (1998, p.245).  He had an accident when he was 3, falling off a table (see comment by Ruth below) which entailed hospitalisation and left him deaf. Aged 12 he was talented enough to be asked to paint a portrait of the Governor of Warsaw (Jewish Chronicle obituary).  From 1900 to 1904 he trained at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under Jozef Mehoffer, Jan Stanisławski, and Leon Wyczółkowski (ibid and his Polish Wikipedia entry). Cohen tells us that they awarded him with a gold medal at his graduation (ibid p.245). He is called ‘deaf and dumb’ which suggests that he had no spoken language, but as I have found no proper interviews and only one contemporary account of him, it is impossible to say whether he signed in Polish sign language or had to use lip-reading or other forms of communication. His Polish Wikipedia entry says that he attended the Institute for the Deaf, as well as having private tuition in drawing, but it cites no sources for that. He had a brother, Feliks, and at some point married Rachel Marshak (Baker, p.108). His obituary in the Jewish Chronicle, despite calling him ‘well-known’, runs to a mere 16 lines.

The pivotal period of his life that influenced his art seems to have been the events of the Polish Revolution in 1905.  There were attacks on Jews, and a pogrom at Bialystock where Cohen says (p.245) the “plight of the children left the artist shaken”.

He travelled around western Europe in the following years, and the Polish Wikipedia article says he settled in Paris in 1908, though he continued to travel. Another source says that it was in 1924 that he moved permanently to Paris, where he exhibited (Stevens, 1925).  Interviewed by Kelly Stevens, it seems that, as he knew no French they communicated with gesture and “signs”.  He left Paris for Argentina in August 1930, taking 200 of his works with him. One work, that seems to me to be very fine, a portrait of Mosheh Oved, is in the Ben Uri collection in London. When crossing a street near his house in Buenos Aires on Saturday the 22nd of November 1930, Minkowski was struck by a taxi that he failed to hear because of his deafness, and died almost instantly (Baker p.109). His funeral was attended by thousands of people. About ten years after his death, some of his art was sold to cover the debts of his heirs. Much was bought by a Jewish cultural association in Buenos Aires, the IWO (Baker, p.117). The collection narrowly escaped total destruction when there was a terrorist attack on the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) building in 1994, that killed 84 people. You can read more about that in Zachary Baker’s article.

The short obituary cited above, quotes the Jewish Chronicle’s art critic from an earlier exhibition review:

In the work of Maurice Minkowski…. We see a splendid example of the East European Type of Jewish genius…. We find the penetrating grasp of character and the absorbed interest in human emotion which is to be expected in a Polish Jew: it is the high intensity with which these are developed which is remarkable.

Cohen says,

The reception of Minkowski’s work in the pre-World War I period remains enigmatic. Hardly any Jewish newspaper that popularized Jewish artists singled him out, and he is referred to only fleetingly until the appearance of the Hungarian Jewish journal Múlt és Jövő in 1911. This journal gave his work extensive coverage, publishing many of his paintings. After World War I, Minkowski staged several large exhibitions in the west, which were introduced by the French cultural figure, Anatole de Monzie (Cohen p.250-1).

The photograph of the artist, from our collection made by Selwyn Oxley, is the only image of him that I have seen, and is what set me off trying to find out a little about him.  It comes from The Silent Worker article.  His seems a fascinating story, and probably requires the research skills of an art lover who can read Polish, Hebrew, French, and Spanish.  Please add any interesting information you can contribute in the comment space below.

UPDATE 1/7/2016: I put the wrong birth date in the heading and first paragraph from an early version – it was 1881 NOT 1888 as one or two sources suggested. I have also expanded a few bits and added a couple of links and a quote from Cohen.

UPDATE 15/5/2019: I added the age at which he lost his hearing – thanks to Ruth for her comment, & this reference http://www.jpress.nli.org.il/Olive/APA/NLI_heb/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=DHY%2F1931%2F01%2F23&id=Ar00202&sk=6DF6C216

Baker, Zachary M.  Art Patronage and Philistinism in Argentina: Maurycy Minkowski in Buenos Aires, 1930. Shofar Vol. 19, No. 3, Special Issue: The Jewish Diaspora of Latin America (SPRING 2001), pp. 107-119

Cohen, Richard I., Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe. University of California Press, 1998. p.245-51

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19622/lot/27/

Unlike most of the South American countries, Cuba was one of the last to break away from Spain, and not without a bitter struggle.  One of the heroes of the struggle was Captain Juan Fernandez.  Juan Fernandez (born circa 1868) was U.S. born  to Cuban parents, and had been educated at both the University of California and at a college in Barcelona (Ephphatha).   For three years he served under General Antonio Maceo Grajales, second-in-command in the Cuban Army of Independence, as aide-de-campe.  It was in the course of this stuggle that he was deafened by an explosion near Bahia Hondo, when a mine that was being laid to disrupt the movement of Spanish troops on the railway there, exploded early, killing several insurgents.  It forced him to leave the army.

In 1896 he travelled to Europe to represent the army of liberation.  While in London, Fernandez spoke to meetings of deaf people on several occasions (Ephphatha).

In 1899, when Fernandez was in Paris,

while he was smoking in front of the Hotel Terminus, he was approached by three Germans, who knew his name and all about him, and began to rave about the selfishness of the United States Government in its relation to Cuba.  In the course of their talk one of them showed Fernandez a photograph of a German officer, whom Fernandez recognized as the man speaking to him.  The German went on to say that through Fernandez he could get the Cubans 250,000 francs at once and plenty more when required, with all the arms and ammunition necessary for a prolonged rebellion against the United States Government, if Fernandez would work in Germany’s interest.  At this Fernandez replied: “Gentlemen, I am a Cuban by blood, but I am a citizen of the United States, and will see you and Germany in — before I would raise a finger against the land of my birth.  I shall make this public, if it costs me my head.  Good day.”

Exit three Germans in great haste and confusion.

In addition to talking about the revolution, Fernandez also pronounced on other subjects regarding Cuba, for example the beauty of the Cuban ladies.  He was careful to distance the revolutionaries, who he described as being a mixture of all Cubans as well as being supported by Europeans, from anarchists, who were widely active at that time.  He condemned the assassination of the Spanish Prime Minister Cánovas del Castillo whose repressive policies helped foster political instability in Spain.

I was about to say that have not been able to find out much more about Juan Fernandez, then discovered an article in The Illustrated Police News, that says he married in St. Mary’s Islington one Maud Ashton, a deaf lady. That would have been in July 1898.  In actual fact, the records show he married Julia Ayshford (June Quarter 1898) –

The article also says that the ceremony was conducted by the Rev. Dr. Kibley, Chaplain of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum.  The marriage certificate, were you to obtain a copy, would show that the newspaper made another mistake and that the ceremony was conducted by our old friend, the Rev. Gilby, chaplain to the Royal Association in aid of the Deaf and Dumb.   The extraordinary thing is, when I started writing this I had no idea that there was a deeper connection.  I just discovered this, in Ephphatha, for July 1898. p.115 –

Julia Ayshford, previously Julia Franklin, was deaf from an accident aged 15 (see 1911 census).  She married the St. Saviour’s church stalwart and friend of Gilby’s, H.G.G. Ayshford, who died in 1893.  They had a daughter, also called Julia, who Juan adopted.  In 1901 they were living in Eastbourne.  Julia Fernandez died in Edmonton in 1933, aged 73.

In 1898 he held a commission in the U.S. Army – but perhaps that was related to the Spanish-U.S.A. War.  If that is the case, I would expect that there are U.S. Army records that would be worth checking.  From the record of his marriage online, I see that his father was a Presbytarian minister, also called Juan Fernandez, and that he was a widower.  If his father trained formally as a minister there may well be a record of that at some college.

Any Spanish speaking readers out there who would care to find out more about him and fill in some more details, please leave a comment below.  It would make an interesting addition to the history of Deaf people.  If you can tell us when or where he died that would also be of interest – he was certainly dead by the 1911 census when Julia was a widow working as a servant.
THE STRUGGLE IN CUBA . Glasgow Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), Friday, December 11, 1896; Issue 297. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900

Daily News (London, England), Friday, December 11, 1896; Issue 15821. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900

The Sheffield & Rotherham Independent (Sheffield, England), Friday, December 18, 1896; pg. 4; Issue 13178. British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900

The Morning Post (London, England), Saturday, August 14, 1897; pg. 5; Issue 39060. British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900

The Illustrated Police News etc (London, England), Saturday, July 2, 1898; Issue 1794. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900

Ephphatha Vol 3 1898 p.37, p.62, and p.115

1911 Census Class: RG14; Piece: 2294

1901 Census Class: RG13; Piece: 880; Folio: 107; Page: 8

NB One of the witnesses at their wedding was Frank Hodgkins.

George Frankland  was born to middle class parents in Liverpool on the 9th of September, 1866 (British Deaf Mute p.290, from which much of this is taken).  The article goes on,

It is not quite clear whether George’s deafness was congenital ; his mother considers it due to falls and shocks to head in infancy.  This, by the way, accounts for his poetic tendencies.  The deafness, however, was only partial.  Consequently, George was treated in most respects as a hearing child – to his sorrow often enough.  He was sent to the ordinary hearing schools, but owing to his infirmity, and the conventional methods of education, learned comparatively little. (ibid)

However he did learn to read at an early age, which led him to writing.

Life became more difficult when his father died in 1881.  George worked for a time for his older brother, as an office boy,  but found the work too little to kindle any interest.  He went to Liverpool School of Art, but “did not distinguish himself”, although he there came into contact with another deaf person for the first time, Mr. J.R. Brown, one of the masters.  John Rowland Brown (1850-1923) had trained under T.M. Lindsay c 1864-67, and later moved to Liverpool where he was an assistant master at the college for 30 years. “Returned to Ght [Graham’s Town] on retirement c. 1902 where he held a one-man exhibition in 1916.”  (p.129, Pictorial Africana by A Gordon-Brown, via Google Books)

In 1884 George came in contact with James Wilson Mackenzie (1865-95), a gifted young deaf artist, some of whose paintings are still to be seen in the Wirral.  He and his brother introduced George to the Liverpool Deaf community.

With money short and his father’s estate tied up in the court of Chancery for may years, and failing to make his way in the world of art, George pursued a literature, learning shorthand, playing the piano to some degree, was supposedly “a genius at the organ” (Fry, 1936), and becoming enthusiastic about chess.  He stayed with his brother, trying to follow his trade as a shoemaker, but again felt he was wasting his time with too little he could do.  When his sister moved to London to study the piano, George studied typewriting “at Miss Day’s, and, through Mr. J.R.K. Toms, whom he met there, came into contact with the London deaf.” (British Deaf Mute, p.291)

He bought a typewriter but did not have the speed for office work.  Poor George seems to have really struggled to find his niche, but he continued to write, and had a safety net of a small income from his father’s property when the estate was settled.  In London he attended St. Saviour’s church, and helped organise the Cricket Club.  Gilby says that in 1894, “It was during this year that our first real Cricket Club secured a ground at Neasden, and George Frankland became its first Secretary.  It ran for several years at Bishop’s Avenue, Finchley.  Many happy afternoons did we spend there while the ladies with my assistance got tea ready and made huge out of it which went towards the rent of the pitch.” (Memoir, p.132-3)

He became a full time reporter for British Deaf Mute and The Church Messenger/Ephphatha from 1893.  In his obituary, M.S. Fry recounts that Frankland was much the quietest of the small group of journalists who worked for Joseph Hepworth on the British Deaf Monthly and The British Deaf Times.  “A brilliant scholar, deep thinker and one of the finest writers of prose, and a most lovable man” (Fry, 1936).

British Deaf Mute, 1896, 5:290-1 (with picture)

Fry, Maxwell S., Obituary: the late Mr George Frankland, British Deaf Times, 1936 vol.33 p.104

Picture, British Deaf Monthly 1896 vol 6, p.36

Please note, I have followed the original article in the B.D.M. fairly closely.  Please chip in with any additional information.

Although the vast majority of our books are about audiology, deaf history or deaf culture, we have a few anomalies which seem at first glance to have fallen into our collection by happenstance. The Comenius book we blogged about a couple of weeks ago, for example, has little to do with our core remit. Another book which does not immediately seem to have anything to do with deafness is The Adventures of Stumpy (1938), purportedly by one Stubby. The connection, perhaps rather tangential, is that Stumpy has a preface by Selwyn Oxley, Organising Secretary and Librarian for the Guild of St John of Beverley for the Deaf, and the source of many of the books and photographs in our collection*.

THE CONVASLESCENT STUMPY

Stubby tells Stumpy’s story from his infancy to middle age, observing his progress with a sardonic eye and wit: which is no surprise from a published Feline Author (Stubby’s previous books include Stubby – Story of a Cat and More About Stubby).

As you’d expect from the author of two volumes of autobiography, Stubby is a very self-centred narrator: when Stumpy is struck down by a particularly nasty illness, Stubby declares ‘it was only then that I realised I was not the only one [his owner] loved’. Stumpy wasn’t the luckiest cat: apart from a clot on the brain, for which there’s an X-ray in the book, he also broke a leg, scorched himself walking into a fire, lost his whiskers, and lost his sense of smell (this last though fortunately regained). The book describes the first ten years of Stumpy’s life, and I hope I don’t spoil anyone’s appetite for the book when I reveal he’s alive at the conclusion of the narrative albeit with rather fewer than nine lives left.

THE FELINE AUTHOR, STUBBY

This is a charming book, for cat lovers: and seems to descend from Hoffman’s (fictional) Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr.

You will find The Adventures of Stumpy in our biography section, under ‘S’ for Stubby.

*Selwyn Oxley’s wife Kate, who was herself deaf, was the compiler.

Samuel Bright Lucas (1840-1919) was born in London into a notable family of Quakers.  An uncle of his was the radical M.P. John Bright, famous for his opposition to the Corn Laws.  His mother, Margaret Bright Lucas, was a temperance league worker.

He lost his hearing as a child (Ephphatha, 1899).  He was tutored privately, and also taught by a ‘Dr. Webster’ of Bristol.  Thomas Webster was born in Ireland, around 1818 – I say around, as the census returns vary with both the place of birth and his age.   The place seems to be Gorey in Wexford, but one census says Cork.  Trained at the Claremont School, he was a male assistant teacher in 1834 when he was earning £20 (Pollard, 2006 p.67).  The Claremont 20th annual report says (p.33) he was appointed on the 29th of July, 1835 because of the increase in the number of pupils.  The Claremont school had major problems, and in 1842 Orpen resigned for health reasons and the superintendent the Rev. Charles Stuart Stanford also resigned.  Stanford must have been influential enough on Webster for him to later name his son Charles Stanford Webster (b.1861).  Webster took responsibility for the junior teachers at that time, but the place was in a state of chaos.  We do not have Claremont reports for that period unfortunately – you can read more about this in Rachel Pollard’s book.  Webster left around this time – perhaps he was partly responsible for the dismal state of affairs there at the time.  At any rate he got a place at the new Bristol Institution, and was there by 1844 (Quarterly Review p.67).  He replaced Matthew Robert Burns, and was head when they moved to Park Row, Bristol.  He was head there in the 1851 census.  He left the school in 1852.  There is a Bristol website here which calls him Robert Webster and says he was booted out by the governors when they discovered he had plans for a private school in Redland.  The same website points to Webster’s private school in Malvern House, Redland.  However the Quarterly Review article says that he left to pursue medical studies, and was still practicing in Bristol in 1892.  I was initially suspicious to see he described himself in censuses as a doctor, but this seems to explain it, though the Bristol website pages above suggest that he was something of a quack doctor.  He died, in Bristol, in 1910.  Quite when Lucas was his pupil I cannot say, but if it was at the school it would be before 1851, if as a private pupil perhaps between 1852 and 1856.

According to Gilby’s obituary of him, Samuel also trained at the Royal Academy School of Art (Ephphatha, 1919).  That should be possible to find out more about his time there, but as Gilby says , ‘he never followed it up as a profession in life’ (ibid).  At one time he seems to have been involved in a photographic business, at least that is what this website suggests.  Otherwise it seems he was able to live on his inherited wealth.  He was a friend of Gilby’s father, and knew Matthew Robert Burns and Samuel Smith, the chaplain to the Royal Association in aid of the Deaf and Dumb, on whose committee Samuel served for many years.  He was President of the National Deaf and Dumb Teetotal Society, and Hon. Sec. of the Charitable Provident Society for granting Pensions to the Aged and Infirm Deaf and Dumb (Ephphatha, 1919).   Gilby says of him, “Very quick in his sympathies, he would blaze out against what he imagined to be any injustice or wrong of any sort” (ibid).

His first wife was Welsh, Jessie Oliver, daughter of a farmer from Merionethshire.  She was born in Dolgelly (Dolgellau).  They married in 1868, but she died on the 1st of January 1900, and he married again, to a Mrs. Parker of Passage West, Ireland.

His daughter, Margaret, married Wellesley Edward Rudston Read (1852-1934), who was deaf from aged 5, according to the 1911 census.  Rudston Read was on the committee for the Royal Association of the Deaf and Dumb.   Like Bright Lucas, he was of independent means.  Samuel’s son Charles, a journalist, predeceased him.

The 1899 Ephphatha article takes the form of an interview.

“Some people allege,” said I, “that the work of the Royal Association will soon be rendered unnecessary by the general adoption of the Oral Method of teaching deaf children.”
Mr. Lucas smiled.  “The work of the Royal Association will,” said he, “will be going on long after exclusive methods have been dropped.”
[…] “I believe in teaching the deaf to speak and lip-read wherever the probable results seem to justify the labour and expense involved, but to put them all through the same mill, regardless of their capacity or inclination, is utter foolishness.”
“Have you ever met with , or heard of, a deaf person who could follow an ordinary sermon or address by watching the lips of the speaker?”
“No, never – I do not think it is possible.  By the way, I was myself taught speech when young, and can make use of it to intimate friends; but with strangers I much prefer writing or the manual alphabet.  It is so much more certain either way.” (Ephphatha, 1899)

Born in London, 4th of July 1840, died in Cork, 6th of November, 1919.

F.W.G.G[ilby] ,Samuel Bright Lucas, Ephphatha 1920, no. 44 p.568

Historical Notes of our Institutions, xv. xiii The Bristol Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.  The Quarterley Review of Deaf Mute Education vol.3 July 1892 p.65-78

Pollard, Rachel.  The Avenue – a History of the Claremont Institution, 2006.

Samuel Bright Lucas, Ephphatha 1899, Vol. 4, p.24-5

20th report of the Claremont Institution, 1835-6

1851 census Class: HO107; Piece: 1503; Folio: 44; Page: 36; GSU roll: 87837

1851 census Thomas Webster – Class: HO107; Piece: 1951; Folio: 134; Page: 42; GSU roll: 87351

1891 census Class: RG12; Piece: 209; Folio: 32; Page: 16; GSU roll: 6095319

1911 census Rudston Read – Class: RG14; Piece: 12106; Schedule Number: 237

Poems on the Deaf and Dumb was written, or rather compiled by William Robert Roe, and published in 1888.

Jennifer Esmail says that Roe’s book reprints American Deaf poetry without refering to the author’s nationalities, but not all of the poems are American.  Roe must have scoured all the sources he could find, in order to fill his pages.  The sources include poems by Eliza Cook, the Church of England Magazine, and the American Mrs Sigourney.  Usually I stand back from direct comment on works which appear in the blog, and perhaps I am being unfair, but I have no hesitation in calling much (not all) of this collection, mawkish and sentimental!   Judge for yourselves.  The whole book is in the link above, and a few selections are below.

ABSENT FROM THE BODY.  PRESENT WITH THE LORD.

Written at the death of Miss F., a Deaf Mute.

By Miss M.M.F.

I gazed upon her beauteous form,

As in death’s clasp it lay,

The smile still hovered on the lips

With which she passed away.

 

And n’er before had that sweet face

So lovely seemed to me;

The heavenly calm reflected there

Was beautiful to see.

 

Her wish at length was realised –

She’d seen the glorious face

Of Him who shed for her His blood,

Who saved her by his grace.

 

She’s watching for her dear ones now,

With others gone before;

And one who since has crossed the flood

And joined her on that shore.

 

Her unstopped ear shall catch the strain

That will our advent greet;

Her loosened tongue with ours shall join

In halleljahs sweet.

 

O, hasten, Lord, that meeting time,

We long to be with Thee;

To leave this world of grief and sin,

And all Thy glory see.(p.22)

One of our many copies was owned by Edwin Parry, 25 Primrose Terrace, Bower House, Blackburn, dated May 12nd [sic] 1888.  In 1911 there was an Eliza Parry, aged 54, widow, described as deaf from aged 6 (circa 1863), though the 1861 census says she was deaf ‘from birth’.  It seems her maiden name was Eliza Gladstone and that she married Edwin Parry in Blackburn in 1885.  Eliza was born in Hunslet, Yorkshire, daughter to James and Jannet(t) Gladstone, who had moved to England from Roxburgh.  We may question whether she had any formal education at all, other than at home, but it is possible.  The Leeds Deaf Institute only opened in 1876, when she was an adult.

In 1901 Eliza, already widowed, was working as a cotton winder, living with Margaret Walker, aged 67, and Jane Clara, aged 65, both deaf.   I wonder if they used signs at work, or ‘meemawing’, a combination of mouthing and mime employed in noisy Lancashire Mills, which Les Dawson famously used with his characters Cissie and Ada.  I have not been able to find Edwin on a quick look at the census records.  Perhaps he was not deaf, though I suspect he may have been.  It is also possible that, like his wife, he was not born in Lancashire.  Hunslet was a town that had mills which wove flax, and presumably Eliza moved to Lancashire seeking work some time in the 1880s.

I think our Eliza Parry died in 1915.  Do add anything you may discover in the comments below.

Esmail, Jennifer, Reading Victorian Deafness.  2013

The invalid’s hymn book [compiled by H. Kierman] with preface by H. White

1911 census Class: RG14; Piece: 25107

1901 census Class: RG13; Piece: 3915; Folio: 130; Page: 3

1891 census Class: RG12; Piece: 3416; Folio: 145; Page: 3; GSU roll: 6098526

1861 census Class: RG 9; Piece: 3357; Folio: 79; Page: 10; GSU roll: 543119

Dundee Deaf draughts champions of East Scotland, from a match at the Dundee Mission Hall between Dundee and Arbroath.  February 1900, from the British Deaf Monthly, Vol.9, p.164.  Apparently the result ‘was an easy win for the Dundonians’!

Dorothy STANTON WISE,  (1879-1918) was a talented sculptor.  Born on the 20th of October, 1879,* one of four children, Dorothy was deaf from birth.  Her birth name was Dorothea rather than Dorothy.  Her father who ran a small boarding school with his wife, taught mathematics, her mother Elizabeth taught Dorothy to draw.  Elizabeth wrote an extensive article, “How a mother educated her own deaf child,” published in The Association Review in 1909.

We had no fears about her until she was two years old.  She cooed and laughed like any other baby, looked up when I entered the room, and was particularly lively and happy; but when she reached that age, and still only cooed and laughed, I was afraid she must be tongue-tied.  The doctor soon settled that point, and, after a few minutes’ careful watching, broke to me what the real trouble was.  He talked about my waiting a while, taking her to an aurist, and so on, and casually remarked, “I suppose you know now the deaf are taught to speak, and to understand by the movement of the lips.”  I did not know; we had no deaf friends, and the matter had never interested me; but suddenly, at that one sentence, the whole horror of the shock fell away, and a future of infinite possibilities opened out.  The doctor was kind and sympathizing; I stood by the window looking down the familiar street, but I saw all the old objects under a new light required for their interpretation to Dorothy, and her education began from the moment we skipped out of his doorway. (p.104)

When she was five she attended a kindergarten for two years (circa 1886), but then inexplicably says, “there was no school for the deaf within fifty miles of us” (p.104) – yet Margate school was only a few miles away.  At any rate, Elizabeth consulted the oralist teacher in Northampton, Mr. Arnold, who gave her some help in learning his methods of education.  When they moved to London, Dorothy had a short course of lessons in lipreading every spring at the Fitzroy Square School.  Straight after kindergarten Dorothy “went twice a week to a school of art for the usual course of freehand and model drawing” (p.106).  She decided to pursue art, wanting to study under Lantéri in the Royal College of Art.  To qualify, the whole family contributed to her art education, her father teaching her perspective, her mother helped with lessons in anatomical drawing that Dorothy developed further on her own, and her younger brother sat and worked with her on geometrical drawing (p.107).  After five years study under Lantéri she obtained the sculpture degree in 1906, the only girl in her year to do so.

The family ended up living in Hendon, and she remained with her parents, working on commissions.

She died on Christmas Day 1918**, possibly the victim of the influenza outbreak.  Regular readers may recall the words of  Yvonne Pitrois – “My heart was nearly broken when I heard of the passing away of Miss D.S. Wise!”

There is certainly sufficient material on Dorothy to make an interesting article, especially if the writer has an interest in art and can track down her original works.  Perhaps the Royal College of Art Archive has interesting records of her.

**[not 1919 as Lang says – see probate records and death index]
*Dorothy Stanton Wise, Døves Blad, No.3, 1922, p.4-5

The Late Dorothy Stanton Wise, A.R.C.A., Ephphatha 1919 no.42 p.550-1

Lang, Harry C. & Meath-Lang, Bonnie, Deaf Persons in the Arts & Sciences, 1995, p.381-4

Pitrois, Yvonne, Dorothy Stanton Wise, The Silent Worker, 1916. 28 (7) p.121-2

Ray, Cuthbert Hamilton, A Clever Deaf Sculptor, BDT 1911, vol 8 no.90 p121-3Roe, W.R., Peeps into the Deaf World, p. 1917

Wilson, Miss Edith C., Note to “How I Became a Sculptor”, The Volta Review 1913, Vol.15, 406-7

Wise, Dorothy Stanton, How I became a Sculptor, The Volta Review 1913, Vol.15, 403-5

Wise, E. A., “How a mother educated her own deaf child,” in The Association Review, 1909, vol.11 p.103-8

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