William Barnes Smith (1840-1927) was a younger brother of the Rev. Samuel Smith, first vicar of St. Saviour’s, and missioner to the Deaf of London.  He was born in Leicestershire, and spent 54 years teaching up to his retirement in 1908.  His older brother was the Rev. Samuel Smith, of St. Saviour’s London.  William trained under Charles Baker of Doncaster, then worked under Andrew Patterson at Manchester before spending 12 years with Dr. Buxton at Liverpool.  In 1873 he was appointed headmaster of the Bristol Institution (see obituary).  He also acted as Secretary to the Bristol Mission for the Deaf after retirement.  His son Alfred G. Smith trained at the Fitzroy Square Training College, then became headmaster of the Osborne Street  School for the Deaf, Hull (Teacher of the Deaf, 1915, vol. 13, p. 27).

On the 20th of June, 1864, William B. Smith bought a copy of The physical, Moral, and Intellectual Constitution of the Deaf and Dumb: with some practical and general remarks concerning their education.  I know this as he wrote that in ink on the title page, pencilling ‘Liverpool’ underneath.  Later, he wrote his name and address inside the front cover – 5 Rokeby Avenue, Bristol .  He later gave the book to Selwyn Oxley.  This book, which had been published in London in 1863, was written by James Hawkins (1830- after 1891).  Hawkins was born in Wolvercut, Wolvercott, or Wolvercote, Oxfordshire, in about 1830.  I do not know how he came to become a teacher of the deaf (perhaps a thorough search of various surviving records might illuminate that), but by the 1851 census he was an assistant teacher at the Old Kent Road Asylum, along with George Banton, (b.ca. 1812), Edward J Chidley (b. 1819), Edward Buxton (b.ca. 1826), William Stainer (b. 1828), Charles Toy (b.ca. 1832), Alfred Large (b.ca.1835), and Emma Rayment (b.ca.  1829).

The present crude state of all physiological, as well as pathological science, necessarily renders very conjectural any remarks upon the origo mali, or the phenomena of disease.  The fall of Adam is one of the most favourite of the theories which are nursed by Divines and others, in an excess of Hutchinsonian zeal; and to this ‘excellent foppery of the world,’ as Shakespeare has it, they like to attribute every bodily affliction and mental evil that can happen to mankind.  Argumentative reasoning, however (of this kind especially), shows ‘an indiscreet zeal about things wherein religion is not concerned,’ as weak as it is undoubtedly fallacious, and affords them but a poor ‘coigne of vantage;’ for the majority of our inborn  and acquired calamities are ofttimes none other than the ‘surfeit of our own behaviour,’ the spontaneous results of injury done to the functions of the body, by throwing its natural and complex organization out of gear, and not, as many would make us believe, always direct constitutional imprints of the Creator’s anger on his creatures. (Hawkins, 1863, Preface, p.iii-iv).

Hawkins must have had a good education.  In his preface alone he mentions Paley and Malthus, as well as quoting Ovid and, perhaps ingenuously, “no cormorant for fame,” Peter Pindar.  The names of more classical authors are dropped in when opportunity allows.  He cites Niebuhr, who

called the office of the schoolmaster one of the most honourable occupations of life.  He could well have added, and one in which a thorough manliness of character is also most essential; for there is not one where all the manly virtues are more called into exercise.  Moral courage, unsullied reputation and integrity, sound religious principles, firmness of purpose and gentleness of demeanour ought ever to be his most distinguishing traits, if he aspire to any degree of eminence in his profession. (ibid, p.98)

It is all the more poignant then, that for some reason, by 1871, when he was living in Greenwich with Charles Henry James, Harbour Master at the Port of London, he was ‘unemployed’, and ‘formerly Assistant Teacher to the Deaf & D. Institute’.  I wonder what caused him to be dismissed.  Did his book upset people?  It would seem unlikely that a book published eight years earlier might cause his dismissal.  Is it possible he was tutoring Ellen James, who was deaf, though by then aged 25?  In the 1881 census he was a ‘wholesale stationer’ visiting the James family.  It looks as if something or someone destroyed his life as a teacher.  If you discover more about James Hawkins, who does not seem to have married, and who I cannot find after the 1891 census when he was a visitor in St. Pancras, please comment.

Here is a page from the text.  Click to enlarge.

Smith

Obituary, Mr. W.B. Smith, The Teacher of the Deaf, 1927, vol. 25 p.35

Hawkins 

Hawkins, James, The physical, Moral, and Intellectual Constitution of the Deaf and Dumb: with some practical and general remarks concerning their education. 1863, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, London

1871 Census – Class: RG10; Piece: 758; Folio: 34; Page: 31; GSU roll: 824727

1881 Census – Class: RG11; Piece: 1509; Folio: 41; Page: 5; GSU roll: 1341364

1891 Census – Class: RG12; Piece: 139; Folio: 71; Page: 1; GSU roll: 6095249

*”This is the excellent foppery of the world that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting-on.” Edmund in King Lear.

The Sermons (1791 edition) are not what I would call my literature of choice, but John Wallis was notable for us in his attempts to educate a deaf boy, Alexander Popham.  It was the cause of a huge row in the early Royal Society, as William Holder said that he had taught Popham, and this was not acknowledged by Wallis.

A memoir of Wallis, with additional notes by the Rev. C.E. de Coetlogon, says:

About the year 1653 he published his Tractatus de Loquela Grammatici-Physicus, since reprinted many times; wherein he gives a particular account of the physical or mechanical formation of sounds used in speech, or expressed by the letters of several languages: a design which is not known to have been (before him) undertaken by any person; in pursuance of which, he hath undertaken, with success, to teach some dumb persons to speak.  To which is added, a letter of the Doctor’s to Mr. Thomas Beverly, concerning his method of instruction, which he says he had taught Mr. Alexander Popham, born deaf, to speak distinctly, and to express his mind tolerably well by writing, and to understand what was written to him by others, as he had also done to Mr. Daniel Whaley. (p.lvii)

Our copy came from the library of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the celebrated playwright. Quite why he was interested in Wallis I cannot say – perhaps he bought his books in bulk, perhaps Sheridan was just interested in the ideas and use of language. Selwyn Oxley also bought a collection of Wallis’s essays on ‘The Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, ex libris one John Bedford, and Number 61 of the Philosophical Transactions from 1670, which contains the letter of Wallis to Robert Boyle “concerning the said doctors Essay of Teaching a person Dumb and Deaf to speak, and to understand a Language” etc.’  Wallis does tell us that Popham may have been able to speak previously, having lost his hearing ‘by accident’ aged about five, ‘but doth scarce remember it’ (p.1093).   I attach the complete short essay here – A Letter of Doctor John Wallis to Robert Boyle Esq.

This is the first page below, sadly covered with Oxley’s spidery hand!

An audio file of a Royal Society talk by David Cram on Wallis and his dispute with Holder is to be found here.  Unfortunately there is still no video for some reason – see comments below – https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2012/wallis-holder-dispute/

Also, if you read the comments you will note that David Cram and Jaap Maat are writing a book on the notebook of Popham.

 

 

 

James Kerr Love was one of the leading British otologists of the early 20th century, but will be remembered more for his involvement with deaf children and his friendship with Helen Keller than for his surgical skills (BMJ, 1942).

It was this less spectacular work that lay nearest to his heart, and he spared himself nothing in its pursuit. […] In Dr. Kerr Love they had for many years a sympathetic and tireless champion, who wrote, lectured, and organized on their behalf with unflagging energy (ibid).

He was born in Beith, Ayrshire, a ‘son of the manse’. He was educated in Glasgow High School and the University of Glasgow, becoming an M.D. in 1888 writing his thesis, The Limits of Hearing (ibid, & BDM p.128). He was a surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary for thirty years, and worked for the Glasgow Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. It was with his colleague, Dr. Addison, head of that Institute, and later Missioner for the deaf in Salisbury diocese, that he wrote the book Deaf Mutism (1896). His father-in-law was the Rev. Joseph Corbet or Corbett. He died on the 30th/31st of May, 1942, at Sunnyside, West Kilbride, Ayrshire.

It is hard to summarise Kerr Love’s views on education, and he does stress that it is a matter for teachers. Let us look at a couple of passages with his own words.  At the end of his 1906 book, Diseases of the Ear, he says:

So far as State arrangements for the education of the deaf and dumb are concerned, it seems to the author that in every large community two schools for the deaf should exist:

1. One containing all the semi-deaf, the totally deaf with much residual speech, and the ordinary deaf mute who makes good progress on the oral method. Nothing but the oral method should be adopted in this institution. Signs should be used as little as possible, and finger spelling should be prohibited. All deaf children should pass their first year in this school.
2. A school min which the finger method or a combination of the oral and finger methods is taught. It is the writer’s opinion that at least half of the deaf-mute children would ultimately find their way into this second school (p.320).

He seems to have maintained this view that sign language was only good enough for those unable to learn spoken language, writing in 1936 (in The Deaf Child, p.109):

Some of the schools describe themselves as oral schools, some as combined schools. But if it is difficult to define a combined method, it is more difficult to define a combined method school.

I am now speaking of the institutions and not of the day-schools, and I state that, apart from those in Manchester and London, all the residential institutions I have visited are combined schools. Only in these two cities do arrangements exist for the separation of the defective deaf, who should be taught manually, from the ordinary deaf child, who should be taught orally (p.109).

It is probably unfair to give a couple of quotes out of the full context of his thought, and his views seem more nuanced than these quotations might make him appear. His work is worthy of consideration in the history of deaf education in the period from 1890 to the 1930s, as he was well known and widely read, being involved in the foundation of the National Bureau for Promoting the General Welfare of the Deaf. They published his monograph consisting of four essays, The Causes and Prevention of Deafness (1912).

We see him here with his friend, Helen Keller. She was such a celebrity, perhaps one of the first modern celebrities, that everyone wanted to meet her or be seen with her, poets, politicians, doctors etc. Selwyn Oxley contacted Kerr Love when she came to the UK in 1932, as he too wanted to meet her. I love Kerr Love’s reply: “I cannot see what she can make of your library unless it be in Braille.” These notes were later stuck into a copy of one of his books by Oxley.

Kerr Love, J. & W.H. Addison.  Deaf-mutism.  1904

Kerr Love, J. & W.H. Addison.  The education of the deaf and (so-called) dumb: two papers, by James Kerr Love and W.H.Addison. Glasgow: Philosophical Society of Glasgow, 1893.

Kerr Love, J. & W.H. Addison.  A statement on the subject of methods of education, by James Kerr Love, with remarks thereon by W.H.Addison. Glasgow: James Cameron, 1893.

Kerr Love, James (ed).  Helen Keller in Scotland, a personal record written by herself.  1933

Kerr Love, James. Deafness and Common Sense. 1936

Obituary: James Kerr Love, M.D., LL.D. The British Medical Journal, Vol. 1, No. 4250 (Jun. 20, 1942), p. 775

Deaf-mutism, by J. Kerr Love, & W.H. Addison, (review) The British Deaf-Mute p.126-8, Vol. 5 1895-6

From our ancient library record cards, which probably date from the late 1940s and may well have been the work of Mrs Oxley, we have gleaned the following information (all quotations from the cards, including question marks where they were unsure). Because of time constraints I will not fill out details of all of the schools now, but pick out Dundee:

Scottish Residential Deaf Schools in Order of Opening:

1760 Braidwood’s Academy at Dumbiedykes moved 1783 to London

No Deaf education from 1783-1799 that we know of.

1799 Johnson’s School in Canongate, Edinburgh

1810 Edinburgh Deaf School

1819 Glasgow Deaf School

1819 Aberdeen Deaf School

1846 Dundee Deaf School.

“A small Deaf School was known to exist in a flat in Nethergate as early as 1845 or before, Mr Barlow tells us, although the actual date of its foundation and name of teacher is unknown. A local Deaf man with his hearing wife Mr and Mrs Drysdale, rented a house in Meadow Street and opened it as a Deaf School on March 9th 1846, it being a combined Day and Boarding School. Its maintenance was assured by fees, subscriptionsand donations and in 1848, it was moved to Sunnyside House, and in 1870 the Drysdales built the well known Institution on Dudhope Bank, Lochee Rd. The tenants became owners and paid the fees for the poor Deaf and Dumb to be educated. Mr Drysdale died in 1880 and was succeeded by Mr J. Barland, a deaf man, who had been educated at Swansea Deaf School, and was an assistant there for 16 years. The house was then purchased and governed by the Directors. He in his turn was succeeded by Mr Hansell, the son of the Rev.W.J. Hansell, Chaplain to Edinburgh Deaf. Mr Hansell was Head for several years up to 192- and was followed by ? who was succeeded by Mrs ? in 1946.”

Another card has the following, “Drysdale’s day School for Deaf Children. This was founded about 1830 and known to be under Mr Drysdale in 1839, although it was thought to be in the Leith district and probably founded by the late M.R. Burns who did some pioneer Deaf educational Day School work previous to his labours in Aberdeen, Bristol and London.”

We can add that Drysdale was a pupil, later assistant teacher, at the Edinburgh Institution. With his wife, (referred to in the Dundee Institution minute books as Mrs Susan Drummond or Drysdale (nee Pattison), who was also an assistant at the Edinburgh Institution), he founded the Dundee Institution. When he died in April 1880, his wife died only a few weeks later, bequeathing the Institution buildings to the Association. As was said above, J.Barland, one of his pupils, became the Governor/Superintendent ‘immediately afterwards’ (Ephphatha, 1896) with Miss Montgomery as Matron. Mr Barland tendered his resignation in Feb 1902, to take effect in August 1902.

Mr Barland has acted as Superintendent and teacher for over 22 years, and during that time has discharged his dutied with great ability. The directors would like to take this opportunity of thanking Mr Barland for his long and faithful services. [School report for year ended 31st May 1902]

Robert Hansell from Bristol became headmaster and Mrs Hansell became Matron, replacing Miss Close who had been Matron and assistant teacher since c.1894. [See the references at the bottom of the page for further details].

1850 Donaldson’s Hospital – joint Hearing and Deaf School

Below we see the minutes for the meeting of the 30th of April 1880 where they discussed the legacy. Note that someone has put a red mark next to the section that mentions Mrs Drummond or Drysdale. Perhaps she was widowed before she married Drysdale? Click onto the picture for a larger image.

Dundee minutes 1880

If there is any information here that you think is incorrect please let us know and we will update accordingly.

Branson, J. and Miller, D., Damned for their difference : the cultural construction of deaf people as disabled : a sociological history. Gallaudet University Press,   c2002

Brief history (written on its 50th Jubilee). British Deaf-Mute, 1896, 5, 180.

Brief history of the Institution. Annual report, 1930, pp. 2-3.

The Dundee Institution’s minute books for 1866-1891, 1894-1905, and 1905-1928, RNID Library.

Historical notes of our institutions. XVIII. Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, Dundee. Quarterly Review of Deaf-Mute Education, 1894, 3, 263-264.

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

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

1792    Opened in Grange Road, Bermondsey.

1809    Moved to Old Kent Road, Southwark.

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

1862    Some pupils moved to temporary accommodation in Margate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deaf Pupils Included (among others) –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further reading:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teacher of the Deaf, 1904, 2, 29.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

The Glass Wall – A Century of Progress 1868-1968

LARCHMOOR SCHOOL, Stoke Poges (1966-81)

A residential school for “maladjusted deaf children” in the terms that would have been used at that time. The school was run by the RNID on a country estate purchased near Stoke Poges. The existing house was demolished, and the foundation stone for new school laid in 1964. The first intake of children came in 1966. The school did not survive for very long – it closed at the end of the 1981 summer term due to a “dramatic decline in the number of pupils coming forward” (RNID Annual Report, 1981).

 

 

NB. The RNID Library has a probably complete set of Larchmoor School newsletters from 1976-79, also Larchmoor School annual reports for 1971 and 1972; for other information see RNID annual reports from 1965-81 and the RNID magazine Hearing for those years.

GREEN, P.B. Identifying emotional disturbance in hearing impaired children. Teacher of the Deaf, 1972, 70, 380-388.

School, Stoke Poges. Architect and Building News, 1966, 30 Nov, 951-58.

WILLIAMS, C.E. A school for maladjusted deaf children. Medical and Biological Illustration, 1967, 17, 242-246.

WILLIAMS, C.E. Some psychiatric observations on a group of maladjusted deaf children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1970, 11, 1-18.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=larchmoor%20school&itool=QuerySuggestion

 

 

WILLIAM MORRIS SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF, Walthamstow, London (1900-1969)

The William Morris School was a County Council day school founded 1900.  In 1913 it was known as the William Morris School for the Deaf.  It took boys and girls from age 5 through to doing vocational training, eg. boot making. It had accommodation for 20 pupils, teaching with the oral method, but with finger-spelling for backward pupils.  They also took aphasic scholars. At that time the head was Mr J.J. Smith, but according to All about the Deaf  in 1924 the head was Mrs J.J. Smith. Perhaps a family was involved, for by 1929 the head was a Mrs L. Smith, and the trades taught were listed as carpentry, leatherwork, bootmaking, for the boys of course, and cookery, laundry and basket-making for the girls.  To modern eyes this clear division might seem strange, but at the time, and in the midst of the depression years, it was normal for working class children to have few academic possibilities, even more so for Deaf children. The school is listed in the 1939 version of All about the Deaf  as The William Morris Deaf Centre, at Gainsford Road, Walthamstow, having as the ‘Director of Education’ S.W. Burnell who had been listed previously as ‘Secretary’, and the ‘Teacher-in-charge’ as Miss V.K. Mitchell.

In 1965 the school was situated in Hale End Road, Walthamstow.  It was moved to purpose-built premises in Yardley Lane, Chingford, and re-opened in September 1969 with a new name –  the Hawkeswood School – taking nursery and primary-age pupils.

We have not as yet identified a photograph of the school, but if we do we will add it here.

NID. All about the deaf. 1913, NID (RNID Library location: RNID Collection/Directories)

NCTD.  List of schools, units, etc. for the deaf and for the partially hearing, 1965.  NCTD. 1965. (RNID Library location: B4624)

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42784

Hansard