Leslie Edwards was born in Wanstead, Essex, on the 27th of December, 1885, fourth of a remarkable thirteen children.  His father, Samuel, from Hackney, was a stock jobber and later a stockbroker’s clerk, while his mother Harriet, was born in Bethnal Green.  Leslie lost his hearing through meningitis when he was seven years old, according to both the 1911 and 1901 censuses, though the Teacher of the Deaf (ToD) says nine.  He was fortunate that his family learnt to finger-spell which helped his education he said (ToD, p.194).  “It was this personal experience which led him throughout his life to advocate the use of finger-spelling, not to supplant oralism, but to provide those accurate patterns of words and sentences so essential to the acquirement of fluency in the use of language” (ibid, p.194-5).  He was educated at the Manchester Institution, according to W.R. Roe in Peeps into the deaf world, and London according to the Teacher of the Deaf obituary (by W.C. Roe I believe).  Perhaps both are true, though London does seem more likely.

In 1900 he went to art school to train as an advertising artist (ToD p.195).  On leaving art school in 1903, he worked as a lithographer, according to the 1911 census, yet another of the large number of Deaf people who learnt that trade.  He became a lay reader at the Royal Association for the Deaf and Dumb mission in West Ham.

In 1912 Edwards became an assistant teacher at the East Anglian School for the Deaf in Gorleston, Suffolk.  While there he met Marion Thorp, a Yorkshire born teacher of the deaf who had previously trained under William Nelson in Stretford, at the Manchester Institution (Deaf School).  Her father Robert was a Church of England clergyman.  They were married in 1916, and had two children, a son and daughter (ToD p.195).

We have a 17 page typescript speech on welfare work that he gave in June 1950 to the Torquay Conference for Teachers of the Deaf, when his obituary says he ‘possessed the art of “putting it across,”‘ in his ‘harsh’ but ‘perfectly intelligible’ speech (ToD p.195).  For those interested in the development of oralism v. manualism it is worth reading at greater length.

The Sign Language is essential.  The word language is not necessarily confined to words, my dictionary gives several definitions one of which is “any manner of expression.”  In so far then as signing conveys ideas, gives information and increases knowledge, it is not incorrect to speak of Sign Language.
No responsible person wants to sign if it can be avoided.
[….]
If signing is to be disregarded and as far as possible suppressed as has been the case for so many years what satisfactory alternative is proposed.  Is it not time to face up to the fact that efforts to suppress this natural instinct have not been successful and are bound to fail. (Edwards 1950, p.5)

He develops this line of thinking, further on saying,

Many of you learnt French at school and I think it is reasonable to suggest you acquired about as much understanding of that foreign language as the born deaf do of their Mother Tongue.  How many of you enjoy sitting down to read a French novel? (Edwards, 1950, p.6)

From 1915 until his death, he was the missioner at Leicester Mission.  Related to that was his work as a founder of the Joint Examination Board for Missioners to the Deaf in 1929, which gave a diploma to missioners and welfare workers.

He was the honorary secretary-treasurer for the British Deaf and Dumb Association from 1935 to his death, and received the O.B.E. for his work with the deaf, in 1949 (ToD p.195).

Academic qualifications, to quote his own words, he had none.  He needed none.  He did possess that indefinable quality which for want of a better word we term genius.  Nature ordained that he should be an artist and in deference to her command he sought, for a time, to utilize the gifts she had bestowed on him.  But in early manhood he found his true vocation and from then throughout his life the over-ruling factor was his unwavering determination to serve his fellow deaf. (McDougal)

He died on the 3rd of October, 1951.

Ayliffe, E., Obituary. Deaf News, 1951, 188, insert.

Census 1891 – Class: RG12; Piece: 1352; Folio: 68; Page: 38; GSU roll: 6096462

Census 1901 – Class: RG13; Piece: 1621; Folio: 90; Page: 13

Census 1911 Edwards – Class: RG14; Piece: 9703; Schedule Number: 69

Census 1911 Thorp – Class: RG14; Piece: 23656; Page: 1

EDWARDS, L, Adult Deaf Welfare Work. 1950, p.2.

McDOUGAL, K.P. Leslie Edwards: an appreciation. Silent World, 1951, 6, 174.

Memorial to the late Leslie Edwards: Loughborough Church for the Deaf beautified. British Deaf News, 1955, 1, 10-12.

Opening programme, 18 July 1961. Leicester and County Mission for the Deaf, 1961. pp. 11-12.

ROE, W,R, Peeps into the deaf world, Bemrose, 1917, p. 388.

SMITH, A. Leslie Edwards, OBE: his early days. Books and Topics, 1951, 17, 6-7.

The late Leslie Edwards, OBE. Teacher of the Deaf, 1951, 49, 194-95.

 

Northumbrian born William Robson Scott (1811-77), was a son of the physician and magistrate, Dr. Walter Scott (see In Memoriam for what follows).  He became a teacher of the deaf, and principal of the West of England Institution in Exeter.  His obituary does not tell us what embarked him on his career as a teacher, but tells us that he was another of those teachers who received early training at the Yorkshire Institution under Charles Baker.  He left there in 1841 to go to Exeter where he stayed until his death, thirty-six years later, though “an attack of paralysis” partially incapacitated him for the last five years of his life.  It seems he must have met his wife, Mary Maundel or Mandell Scott, when he was in Doncaster, where she was from, and they married in London, presumably when he was on his way to Exeter.

Marriages Mar 1841, London

MASON Mary Mandell  – SCOTT William Robson

Mary was the matron at the school.  Indeed, I expect it was the preference of the governing bodies of institutions to appoint a husband and wife team, so perhaps he had to get married, and it may have been a practical marriage rather than a romantic one – we will never know.  They did have several children.

1841 was also the year Mrs Hippisley Tuckfield first became involved with the school.  There is a good chance that Scott was the head when the fictional Arthur in the short story by Mrs Webb was published – in other words, perhaps he and Mr Wheatley were the models for the teachers in her story, Mr Eyre and Mr Johnson.  Her story then may give us a window into the teaching methods in that period.

No less a person than Sir William Wilde, the ENT doctor and father of Oscar, wrote in his book On the Physical, Moral, and Social Condition of the Deaf and Dumb, that “By far the best work that has appeared in this country on the Deaf and Dumb during the present century is by Dr. Scott, the Principal of the West of England Institution at Exeter – a work should be in the hands of every parent or guardian of a mute child.” (Wilde, 1854, p.21).

The school seems to have undergone little external change in its first sixty years – they were publishing this same view in the oldest annual report we have, that for 1884. 

D.B., In Memoriam, William Robson Scott. Magazine intended chiefly for the Deaf and Dumb, 1877, 5, 97-98.

Wilde, William, On the Physical, Moral, and Social Condition of the Deaf and Dumb, 1854

[UPDATED: 13/7/2017 typographical error in his death date corrected]

Ann Denman was the nome de plume of Katie E.M. Croft, a teacher of the deaf at the Royal School for the Deaf, Manchester.  I cannot add any interesting biographical details about her as I have not definitely identified her date or place of birth or death, though it is possible she is Katharine Elizabeth M. Croft, born in Derby in 1895.  Unfortunately we do not have a complete record of the Royal School annual reports, which were very full and included pictures.  Miss Croft appears on the list of staff for Clyne House, the part of the Royal School for the juniors, under nines, from at least 1925 to the war.  She was one of the resident teachers, following on from the first resident teacher at the school, Irene Goldsack, who married Alexander Ewing.

Why are we particularly interested in her rather than Misses Elliott, Baker or Cross, her fellow teachers in 1925?  Well, she wrote a novel, A Silent Handicap, published by Edward Arnold in 1927.  The novel follows the lives of three children who were born deaf, an illegitimate orphaned girl, a boy from a poor background, and a girl with wealthy parents.   Our copy has a promotional leaflet with review excerpts, and Selwyn Oxley’s inimitable black inky scrawl.  He had a brief correspondence with Katie Croft, which is stuck into the front of the book.  First there is a three page letter from the 14th of March, 1928, then a couple of short notes congratulating the Oxley’s on their marriage, and Kate Oxley’s second book being published.  Oxley had sent her a Guild of St. John of Beverley badge.  He seems to have scattered them around, for I have come across other mentions of people receiving one.

A few quotations from the novel will give a flavour of the story.

“She’s deaf and dumb, you know,” said Mr. Searle, feeling sorry for the woman and the child.
“Fiddlesticks!” said the Doctor.  “You can train a puppy, why not a deaf child? […]” (p.8)

School work began with prayers.  Geoff stood sullenly between two children.  A grown-up person had pushed him there and shaken her finger at him, and as he had always associated a sound cuff with the breaking of the law as laid down by finger-waggers, he stood where he had been put and frowned angrily. (p.30)

Chapter 19, A Proposal, describes how Mary and Geoff, the two children in the excerpts above now adults, get engaged: Geoff has given Mary a watch as a present –

Her eyes sparkled.  She looked up at Geoff to thank him.  He did not wait for her thanks, but caught her in his arms, and rubbed his mouth against her neck and cheek.  He had never learnt to kiss.  His lips sought her skin as the horse noses its mate.  Mary bent back her head that their faces might meet.  She rubbed her cheek against his.

It was a strange proposal of marriage. (p.194)

This was the 1920s, and eugenics rears its head –

“You should say until Prince Charming comes,” said her father. […] He’ll be coming along and marrying you.”

“Marry me?  No one will ever marry me, said Sally, shaking her pretty head.  I shall not marry , Daddy.  I shall live for ever and ever with you.”

“I wish I could think so, but I can’t,” said Sir Patrick.

“Yes, I shall,” said Sally.  She had been reading a book on eugenics, and spoke with the finality of youth.  “Deaf people shouldn’t marry.”[…]

“Love and common sense don’t go together, Sally,” he said, but Sally had stooped to get a piece of coal from the box, and had not seen him speak. (p.231)

Katie Croft says in her letter to Oxley,

I wrote a “Silent Handicap” in odd free afternoons.  It is life as I have seen it. Life odd queer, inexplicable – worth living only in the measure of service for others.  I felt that my children would grow up and miss so much.  I was sorry for the poor deaf child unloved except by casual strangers – and sorry for the rich deaf child who seemed to have so much.  It is the things of the spirit that matter in life – and congenital deafness tends to bind one so to mainly physical pleasures.  Education can lift one until all things are possible but it also gives the power to realize ones own isolation.
I wrote, so that if anyone ever found my work worth publishing, those who read might have some knowledge of the lives of deaf children, and of the “Dockerty’s”* scattered up and down the country, who have given such ungrudging service often for so little salary.  Above all I wished to show how economically sound it is to spend money on the education of the Deaf.  Not only does education kindle into life that Divine “light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” but it also makes the Deaf self respecting, self supporting citizens: a help not a drag upon the community.

If you can add any information about Katie Croft, please do in the comments field below.  The novel is probably hard to find – at the time of writing there is one available on Alibris.  We have a loan copy as well as the one with the letters.

For a picture of Clyne House search here https://apps.trafford.gov.uk/TraffordLifetimes.

It seems that the house was a hospital during the Great War.

*Dockerty was a character in the novel

Thanks to Geoff Eagling for the update below.

LLANDAFF SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB (1862-1906) was founded by Alexander Melville (1820-1891), who had begun his teaching career under Charles Baker at Doncaster.  Melville, who was not deaf, was born in Carlisle, and Doreen Woodford says “extensive research has revealed nothing of his early life or family” (p.5).  He was certainly at Doncaster School in 1846, before moving to London in 1849, where we are told, “he was mainly instrumental in originating and organising a Sunday service for the deaf, which he carried on for some time” (BDM, 1897, p.77, Woodford ibid.).   Woodford gives a few details of his time in London where he worked for the ‘Red Lion Square Institution’, forerunner of the R.A.D.D. (now R.A.D.), helping people find work and holding signed services.  Financial problems of the new institution probably forced Melville to return to Doncaster, but his friend Samuel Smith left Doncaster for London in 1854 to work for the revitalised institution, and Melville left and after a hiatus of five years he started working in Swansea School (ibid).   Melville was the headmaster, but he clearly found it difficult to bend to the views of others, so he decided to found his own private school, which opened in 1862 near the cathedral (Woodford, p.6).  After about three years, larger premises were required.  “In passing in and out of Cardiff, Mr. Melville often cast a longing eye on a neglected little public-house on the borders of the Llandaff parish, which had been a flourishing hostelry in the days when telegraphs and railways were unknown” (BDM).  The new premises, in Romilly Crescent, remained the home for the school until it closed.

In 1865 Melville married Hannah Louisa Chappell (died 1885), a Deaf lady he had known for many years, who had attended the Old Kent Road Asylum.  Woodford suggests that her money enabled to move to new premises (p.7).

Pupils were taught with a combined method, and annual reports show that they hammered home the religious education, as can be seen in the Report of the School for the Deaf and Dumb for 1883.  John Clyne of the Bristol School interrogated pupils.

“What happened lately at Sunderland?” “A serious calamity. Nearly 200 children were killed from suffocation, and were crushed to death.” […]
“Where was there war lately?” was asked of H.L. [Harry Lowe] He wrote, “In Zululand and Egypt.” This led to the question, “Was Christ ever in Egypt?” The answer was, “Yes, Joseph and Mary took him there while Herod wanted to kill Him.” “How did Herod know about Christ?” “Wise men told him.” “How did wise men know?” “God told them.” […]
Altogether I was not prepared to find the pupils so well up as I found them. The removal of so many who were superior pupils last year induced the fear that the difference would be more marked than has proved the case. […] the only reason for regret is, that the support of the establishment is still nort on a scale permitting an adequate number of the necessitous Deaf and Dumb of South Wales to enjoy the benefits of the education which would so well meet their need” (p.15 & 18)

When Melville’s wife died he soon remarried, his second wife Elizabeth controlling Melville, then running the school after his death, but it did last for long after her death in 1904.  Agar Russell was a teacher at the school from 1881-6, and he did not take to her, nor was he taken with the educational methods (Woodford p.20).  From Russell we get a different view of her than appears in the article below, though it seems hinted.

LLANDAFF DEAF AND DUMB I SCHOOL. On Friday evening, in consequence of the death of Mrs. Melville, the hon. secretary, superintendent, and treasurer of the Llandaff Deaf and Dumb School, a meeting of the patrons, trustees, and subscribers of the institution was held, under the presidency of the Rector of Canton (the Rev. David Davies), for the purpose of considering the present position of the institution. In the course of a discussion it was stated that hitherto the institution had been entirely controlled and managed by Mrs. Melville and her late husband. It was reported that at present there were fifteen pupils in the school from various parts of the country, and, having regard to the very excellent work carried on in the institution in the past, the meeting felt that some definite scheme of administration and management should be formulated without delay. It was decided to appoint a sub-committee, consisting of the Rector of Canton, Mr. C. E. Dovey, Mr. J. Radley, Dr. Athol S. J. Pearse, Mr. P. J. Harries, and the Rev. A. G Russell, to take the matter in hand pending the summoning of a larger meeting, at which will be more fully gone into. Miss Barton, who had been staying with the late Mrs. Melville for some years, decided, with the assistance of Miss Simmons, to keep up the school until some definite arrangement was come to. At the close of the proceedings the Chairman proposed a resolution of sympathy at the death of Mrs. Melville, whom he described as a remarkable lady, with one of the strongest personalities that ever a lady possessed in Cardiff. The success of the Deaf and Dumb Institution was, undoubtedly, due to her wonderful personality. The proposition, seconded by the Rev. A. G. Russell, was supported by Mr. C. E. Dovey and Mr. J. Radley, and passed in silence. (Evening Express, 17th September, 1904)

Doreen Woodford, whose grandparents were at the school, gives a much fuller picture than I can offer here. Russell’s unpublished memoir is held in the library.

Welsh Newspapers Online

Appreciation.  Deaf and Dumb Times, 1891, 3, 26-27 (illus)

Llandaff School for the Deaf and Dumb.  British Deaf Monthly, 1897, 6, 77-78

Deaf and Dumb Magazine (Glasgow), 1879, 7, 155-56

Obituary.  Quarterly Review of Deaf-Mute Education, 1891, 2, 347-48, 378

School reports, 1867-72, 1883, 1892-4, 1897

WOODFORD, D. A man and his school: the story of the Llandaff School for the Deaf and Dumb. Llandaff Society, 1996

 

 

 

An Illustrated Vocabulary for the use of the Deaf and Dumb (1857), was written by Thomas James Watson, head of the Old Kent Road Asylum (and great nephew of Thomas Braidwood), and produced by the SPCK.  That same year, Richard Elliott, who was later to became the headmaster, started to work as Watson’s assistant in the school.  The engravings were “by Mr J.W. Whymper, from drawings by John and Frederick Gilbert, H. Weir, and others”.  Watson says in his introduction that it was intended to cover words most common in usage, in Natural History, and in ‘Holy Scripture’.  “Words which could not be thus illustrated are left for the teacher to explain by signs – the pantomimic language which must be adopted in the earlier stages of mute instruction.” (p.iii) He continues,

To those who are unacquainted with the peculiarity of the uneducated Deaf and Dumb, it may be right to state, that the Deaf can acquire a knowledge of language through the combined faculties of hearing and sight. This is a much slower process than learning a language through the combined faculties of hearing and sight. It should be borne in mind, that the Deaf can have no conception of the nature or use of words; whereas persons who hear commence to perceive the application of words long before they can use them or know their meaning. The Deaf must have the meaning of the word given to them at the time they learn it, or they will not be able to apply it: so that, in fact, they learn what they acquire of a language more completely than ordinary children. But, in consequence of their natural defect, the process of their education is naturally tedious, and a much longer time is required to enable them to use words as the expressions of their thoughts, and as the means of communication with their fellow-beings. (ibid, p. iii-iv)

The end of the book has a section devoted to trades, many now rare or dead, like a needlemaker, a gun manufacturer, and a coach-body maker.  These were trades a boywho was deaf might hope to get an apprenticeship in.  If not they might end up in the ‘p’s on page 219 – as a pauper.

Interestingly, while we have three copies, none of them look to have been well-thumbed.  I wonder if, when Watson retired, the book quickly dropped out of use.

I love the Quagga here – Equus quagga quagga – now known to be a subspecies of the plains zebra, which was extinct within a generation. 

Charles Baker,  (1803-74) was a teacher of the deaf, headmaster of the Yorkshire Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in Doncaster.  The biographical sketch in A Magazine intended chiefly for the Deaf and Dumb, ran into three sections, which shows how highly he was regarded at the time (pp.8-11, 24-8, 38-9).  The article tells us that Charles, born in Birmingham on the 31st of July, 1803, was the second of thirteen children.

He was but a youth when his attention was first attracted to the deaf and dumb. His father, while walking with him one day, directed his attention to a gentleman, and informed him that he had just come to Birmingham to establish a school for the deaf and dumb. This excited his curiosity, and his father promised to take him to an examination of the deaf and dumb children. He went to the examination, and was much pleased with the intelligence and acquirement’s of the children. They were under the care of Mr. Braidwood, a grandson of the Braidwood who was the first teacher of that name in Great Britain. (ibid, p.8)

He taught at the Deritend and Bordesley (now suburbs of Birmingham) Sunday School when only fourteen.   In this way he became known to “most of the leading men of the neighbourhood” (p.8).  In 1818 he took charge of the School when Braidwood had to go away, but Baker said,

not a book used in their instruction was to be found.  All had been carefully locked up, as though the craft would have been in danger if a boy of fifteen had been allowed to penetrate into its mysteries.  However, there were copy-books, drawing-books, pictures, and writing and drawing materials.  Some hours were spent each day in improving work, and the rest in play, and long walks about the beautiful neighbourhood.

Some of the “gentlemen connected with the Institution  wished to engage him permanently as an assistant, but Mr. Braidwood’s consent could not be obtained” (ibid).  Aged seventeen Baker went to teach at Wednesbury, in the school established by the Quaker businessman Mr. Samuel Lloyd (of the banking family) remaining there for two years (ibid p.9).  At that time he made the acquaintance of the Rev. William Jackson who had married the widow of a Captain White Benson of York.  It was there that he met Edward White Beson, who became Charles’s friend and married his sister, Harriet Baker.  Their son Edward became Archbishop of Canterbury.  When Charles was twenty, he moved to Wales, running a school at the Vartag Iron Company’s Works in Pontypool, stay there until 1826 (ibid p.9).

Back in Birmingham he was asked back to the Birmingham School.  After Braidwood died, Louis du Puget, a pupil of the Italian teacher Pestalozzi became the headmaster.  Unfortunately he struggled to control the pupils.

Mr. Du Puget was an intelligent man and a good teacher, but not specially qualified for the teaching of the deaf and dumb.  I was called upon, and most urgently requested by Dr. De Leys and Dr. Alexander Blair, to go again and assist in the management of the institution; they represented the place as being in a state of utter disorganization and confusion, the lads running away at the rate of three or four a day, and the girls in rebellion, the matron disaffected like the children towards the master, and the assistant master, who had resided there for several years, had gone away.  At first I positively and firmly declined any such engagement, but the picture they drew of the position of affairs, threatening the very existence of the institution, induced me at last to promise to pay a visit to the institution the next day.

In the course of the first day I was among them, the children all became calm.  They had literally been prisoners for weeks. I obtained their confidence at once and without any imputation on the master.  […]  I saw I was weaving a net round myself, for I was necessary to the continued harmony of the place.  The solicitations of the committee and the children and others at length prevailed so far that I became permanently attached to that institution, and to the deaf and dumb for life.

While with Mr. Du Puget I became well acquainted with Pestalozzi’s views, which were undoubtedly applicable to a great extent to the work in hand.  Here, however, we had a field equally new to both of us.  There were no printed books to guide us.  We read the theories of some of our predecessors of ancient days and foreign countries, but not a scrap of practical information as to modes of procedure had been left behind by those who had previously occupied our position.  Night after night we worked almost in the dark at courses of instruction in language, and day after day we taught during school-hours and discussed at other times different modes of conveying the knowledge of the English language to our pupils.  I had now made up my mind that it was no ignoble office to walk in the steps of Dalgarno, Wallis, Braidwood, De l’Epee, Sicard, and others who had devoted their thoughts and their lives to raising the condition of those who, deprived of hearing, have never attained, or if once attained have lost, the power of speech. (ibid, p.9-10)

Our copy of the book he co-wrote with Duncan Anderson of the Glasgow Institution, published in 1841, was acquired by Charles Rhind in 1842, when he was teaching in Belfast.  Rhind seems then to have made a practice of obtaining books on various educational methods.  Above in the introduction we see that this book came with the offer of notes for teachers.  The examples of sentences in the following picture are intriguing.  Click the images for a larger size.

• “Ann will not be bled tomorrow.”
• “The pony was buried by the gardener.”
• “A tiger wounded Mr. Carter.”
• “A woman’s head was crushed last week.”

Baker resigned from his Birmingham post in 1829, moving to Doncaster to open the new school there.  When the school was established, he turned his mind to producing educational material, and in 1831 published his first educational book, with many more to follow.  He was a pioneer in producing this type.  A list of his works can be seen here.

The private library of Charles Baker, is now in the archives of the Edward Miner Gallaudet Memorial Library, Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C.

Baker, Charles and Anderson, Duncan, A series of graduated lessons in language and grammar, for the instruction of the deaf and dumb. Doncaster, 1841.

Biography. Magazine intended chiefly for the Deaf and Dumb, 1876, 4, 8-11, 24-28, 38-39.

BOYCE, A.J. The Baker Collection. Deaf History Journal, 2000, 4 (2), 22-34.

Picture lessons for boys and girls translated from the French of Valade-Gabel by Charles Baker. No date. Historical Collection.

C. W. Sutton, ‘Baker, Charles (1803–1874)’, rev. M. C. Curthoys, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1109, accessed 22 Jan 2016]

We have more of Baker’s books.

Charles Rhind is a name that may be familiar to regular readers of these pages.  He was a teacher of the Deaf who became a deacon and then vicar at St. Saviour’s church for the Deaf  in Oxford Street.  You can read the previous entry on Rhind here.  Rhind moved about quite a lot and as usual the census returns can help us flesh out informaion from obituaries and brief biographical mentions.  In the 1861 census, Rhind was living in 23 Windsor Road, Islington, which is just off Holloway Road.  With him was his wife Sophia, his daughter Sophia (born in Belfast ca. 1844), and his sons William (born in London ca. 1848), Charles (born in Wales ca. 1850), then Henry, Edward and Frederick all born in Scotland from ca. 1855 to 1859.  He moved back to London in 1860.  By the time of the 1871 census he was living in Brixton,

We have two books by Charles Rhind, and one at least owned by him and possibly written by him.  His Vocabulary of Verbs with their Meanings and a List of Irregular Verbs, was published in Edinburgh in 1854.  Our copy was owned by Alexander Pender.  A second book that may be by Rhind is rather peculiar.  It is bound with card covered in blue textured cloth, with no publisher or title page, except having “Lessons for the Deaf and Dumb” inscribed on the outer & inner covers.  Indeed the pages in both copies we have are empty of print up until page 25, which is a part of Section 15.  It has sentences with blank spaces as exercises, e.g.

• “John is …… passionate …… sullen” (p.107)
• “The man …… God struck dead for telling a lie was ……” (p.47)
• “Some men drink so much beer that …… …… ……” (p.62)

Pages 1 to 14 of one copy, owned by Charles Rhind himself when he lived in Brixton, are ciovered in beautifully hand written writing with exercises for sections 1 to 12.  It could be written by Rhind himself, or perhaps his daughter Sophia.  To show how sophisticated the pupils were supposed to be in learning vocabulary compared with modern pupils, we note that in section 6, the aresentences that are supposed to be filled in with “Quadruped, Biped, Domestic, Wild” –

• “The cow is ……”
• “The hen is a ……”
• “The fox is not …… ……”
• “Man is a ……” etc.

On page 113, “Of Future Time”, there is a sentence “1860 will be ……” which suggests that it must have been published in the late 1850s.

The third book is exceedingly rare, possibly unique.  It is Illustrated Lessons for the Deaf and Dumb.  The book is full of small charming pictures.  It must date from shortly after 1852 as it shows the launch of HMS Wellington, a new screw-propelled battleship that served in the Crimean War.  Click onto the image to the left.

There are so many great pictures in this book that it is hard to know what to include.  Note the man who is ‘wondering’, ‘shooting a frog’, the ‘maimed veterans’, the ‘oyster-woman’, ‘oppressed by the heat of the sun’, and the ‘Book read by a Dog’!

Census 1861 Class: RG 9; Piece: 151; Folio: 77; Page: 36; GSU roll: 542582h

Census 1871 Class: RG10; Piece: 687; Folio: 45; Page: 12; GSU roll: 823334

Census 1881 Class: RG11; Piece: 617; Folio: 109; Page: 15; GSU roll: 1341142

Susannah Elizabeth Hull, (1843-1922) was born with her twin Agnes in Camberwell, daughter to George Hull a Scottish Doctor and his wife Susanna.  He was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, and the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh.  In 1851 the family were living in Tonbridge, Kent, but her father clearly prospered in his medical practice as by 1861 they were living in Kensington.  Susannah is hardly remembered today, but she was one of the British representatives at the Milan Conference, and knew Alexander Graham Bell well.  She was first attracted to work with deaf children on reading about Laura Bridgeman, the American deaf-blind lady according to British Deaf Monthly, and was told by her father of the case of two deaf children.  She wrote to the British Deaf Monthly to correct several inaccuracies in their story (Hodgson 1953, p.207-8, BDM vol 9 p.103).  In 1862-3 she became interested in a small girl who was left deaf, blind, and paralysed by scarlet fever.  She was, we are told, encouraged by Dickens’s account of the deaf-blind lady, Laura Bridgman, which he wrote in American Notes.  Accordingly she opened a small home school in 1862, in her father’s house at 1, St. Mary Abbott’s Terrace, Kensington, moving to Warwick Gardens with her family after six years, the better to accommodate her expanding school.

The BDM says she taught at first with the manual alphabet and writing.  In his biography of Alexander Graham Bell, Bruce says

Since 1864 the idea of teaching speech to deaf-mutes had grown in Melville Bell’s mind from an incidental possibility to “one of the prominent utilities of the system,” as he put it.  This claim caught the eye of Bell’s former pupil Susanna E. Hull, who now ran a private school for deaf children at South Kensington.  In the spring of 1868 Miss Hull asked Melville Bell for help following up on the idea.  Thus, on May 21, 1868, Alexander Graham Bell first tried his skill at teaching the deaf, his pupils being two “remarkably intelligent happy-looking little girls” named Lotty and Minna.  (Bruce, p.56)

The BDM article differs slightly – it says

on hearing of Prof. Bell’s “Visible Speech,” by which the deaf could be taught to speak, she went over to America, in one of her vacations, and studied this method, and for some years taught her children to speak in this way.  When however, the late Mr. Arthur Kinsey was appointed Principal of the Ealing College, Miss Hull went to him, and studied the Oral system, and from that time – 1878, has been a strong advocate of the Pure Oral method; not only teaching her own pupils to speak but leacturing on behalf of the children of the poor all over the country, and always pleading for speech for the deaf. (ibid.)

Bruce says that she went to the U.S.A. and spent a month with Alexander Bell in Boston – this would have been in 1872 (Bruce, p.90). “During the school year a dozen or so pupils came to him, among them Theresa Dudley for two or three months, Susanna Hull from London for a month (somewhat to Bell’s regret, since she had “very little ear” for speech) […]” (ibid).  Farrar says, “Another pioneer of the oral teaching in this country is Miss Susanna E. Hull, who had begun the private education of the deaf in 1862, but her method was more a combined than oral one, in which lip-reading was hardly recognised, and it was not until 1873 that she adopted the oral system in its entirety.” (Farrar, 1923, p.75)

Susannah Hull attended the Milan Conference, and in the address or paper which she read there, she said that when she began her work in 1863,

I was ignorant that so vast a number of our fellow beings were deprived of the sense of hearing, and I had no idea that so many institutions existed for the amelioration of their condition. All I then knew had been gathered from a short account of Laura Bridgman and James Mitchell, in Chambers’ Magazine.  […] Then I heard through my father, a London Physician, of the miserable condition of a young lady, who by a succession of fevers had been left lame, maimed, deaf, and almost blind.  No one could be found to educate this unhappy child, and my father was appealed to for advice and assistance.  The slumbering desire of my heart awoke, and I gained permission to attempt the task. (p.69-70)

Told that she could “do nothing for those born deaf without signs”, and that she would have to enter an institution to gain that knowledge, she continued, “Nothing then remained but to teach without signs, or form them for myself.”  She continues,

I enter thus minutely into my first steps to show how utterly unprejudiced I was to any system, how ready to adopt anything that could be to the advantage of my pupils.

With regard to signs, I must add, that, on looking back, I date a decline in my success in teaching language, from the time of the introduction of those signs. (p.71)

She explains more of the history of her methods, complains the the “Combined” system “injures the tone of voice”, and that “as the deaf are only to ready to think themselves the objects of detractive remarks, persons so taught will soon find out that their speech is peculiar, and be driven to use their voices less, to depend on silent methods more, and to prefer the society of the deaf.” (p.76)

Hull was a member of the Ealing Society for Training Teachers of the Deaf, and taught at the college’s school in order to gain an insight into Mr Kinsey’s use of the German Method of oralism, and to that end visited German Deaf Schools in 1883 with miss Yale of Northampton, Massachusetts (BDM p.103).   She was one of the many who gave evidence to the Royal Commission on the blind, the deaf and dumb, &c., of the United Kingdom in 1886.  In her testimony, on pages 255-9,  she says (§ 7815) that she visited American Institutions in 1872 and 1873, and many German Institutions in 1883.  Among other interesting things, she also says (§ 7884-5) that they had trouble at the college in recruiting men.

Susannah Hull wrote several pamphlets, some are listed below.  She died on November the 24th in Sidcup, Kent, well regarded by her teaching friends, if the obituary in Teacher of the Deaf (thin as it is on biographical detail) is to be believed, but no doubt she was a disappointment to those who favoured manual education.

Clearly there are interesting avenues for research here, such as the teaching methods of early oralists as opposed to manualists (the Royal Commission report is useful here), a better understanding of the chronology of oralism and manualism, and following up on individuals from oralist and manualist backgrounds to examine as far as possible their stories after leaving education.

[Note: I originally wrote that there should be no ‘h’ Susanna, but she did sign her letter to the BDM with the ‘h’ so I have made a few corrections & added a little more information 7/2/2020]

Bruce, Robert V. Bell : Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude., 1973

Farrar, A., Arnold on the Education of the Deaf. 2nd edition, 1923.

Hodgson, K. The deaf and their problems. 1953

McLoughlin, M.G., A History of the Education of the Deaf in England,

Miss Hull’s Life Work, British Deaf Monthly, 1899, Vol.8, no.90, p.113

New Institute for the Deaf at Rochdale, opened by Miss Hull, Oldham Deaf-Mute Gazette, November 1907, p.45-53

Obituary. Teacher of the Deaf, 1922, 20, 161-64.

Our teachers: Miss Susannah E. Hull. British Deaf Monthly, 1900, 9, 84, 103, 121. (photo)

Susannah E Hull, works in the Historical Collection:
Lessons in intuitive language, from the pictures published by the Educational Supply Association…No.1, Industrious children moral series. London, Educational Supply Association, 18–?

My experience of various methods of educating the deaf-born: a paper written for the International Congress at Milan, September, 1880, p.69-84.

Teaching the dumb to speak: a health question for the working classes, a question for the rich. London, Witherby, 1884.

Letter to Miss Rogers on the International Congress held at Milan, Italy, September 6-11, 1880. Dated November 10, 1880 [Northampton, Mass: Clarke Institution, 1880]. Published as pp. 35-43 of the Appendix to the 13th Annual Report of the Clarke Institution.

A few words on the extension of our work. 18–?

I thought it might be of interest to add a list of her pupils from the 1881 census, the only one where she is listed with her students.  I was unable to track her in the 1871 census and I suspect that she was travelling, though a careful search with variants of her name might find her, as transcribers often make errors.  Most of these pupils will have been in the school when Hull attended the Milan Congress in September 1880.

Address		Surname	Relationship to Head	Age	Estimated birth year	Gender	Occupation	Place of birth		Country of birth
Holland Rd 89	Susanna	Hull	Head	38	1843	Female	Instructor Of The Deaf By Vocal Speech	Peckham	Surrey	England
Holland Rd 89	Clementina M.	Hull	Sister	37	1844	Female	Artist Oil Watercolor	Peckham	Surrey	England
Holland Rd 89	Jessie M.	Warden	Pupil	11	1870	Female	Scholar	(Brit Sub)		India
Holland Rd 89	Phoebe G.	Sandbach	Pupil	9	1872	Female	Scholar	Manchester
Holland Rd 89	Laura E.J.	Gofton	Pupil	8	1873	Female	Scholar		Yorkshire	England
Holland Rd 89	Beatrice M.	Isleton	Pupil	9	1872	Female	Scholar	Camberwell
Holland Rd 89	Lilian M.	Isleton	Pupil	7	1874	Female	Scholar	Caterham	Surrey	England
Holland Rd 89	Margaret O.	Allan	Pupil	8	1873	Female	Scholar	(Brit Sub)		India
Holland Rd 89	Chas.F.	Coyney	Pupil	9	1872	Male	Scholar		Derbyshire	England
Holland Rd 89	Cecil H.R.	Jones	Pupil	7	1874	Male	Scholar	(Brit Sub)		Venezuela
Holland Rd 89	Philip H.	Francis	Pupil	8	1873	Male	Scholar	Addlestone	Surrey	England
Holland Rd 89	Henry	Francis	Pupil	6	1875	Male	Scholar	Addlestone	Surrey	England
Holland Rd 89	Harry	Hedgland	Pupil	8	1873	Male	Scholar
Holland Rd 89	Mary	Van		42	1839	Female	Governess Assistant (S M)	London, London	Middlesex	England
Holland Rd 89	Lititia	Amies	Servant	54	1827	Female	Hsekeeper Domestic	Norwich	Norfolk	England

CENSUS

1911 Class: RG14; Piece: 3721; Schedule Number: 15

1881 Class: RG11; Piece: 28; Folio: 15; Page: 15; GSU roll: 1341006

1851 Class: HO107; Piece: 1614; Folio: 142; Page: 20; GSU roll: 193515

This article was written by our colleague Debora Marletta, with some additions.

Born in Genoa on the 22nd of June 1800, Tommaso Pendola (1800-83) joined the order of the ‘Scolopi’, the Piarists (Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools) at the age of 16.  In 1821 he began to teach at the Collegio Tolomei in Sienna. The following quotation is phrased in a way that will sound familiar to regular readers –

Having found several deaf-mutes in Sienna, his city of adoption, he was so moved by these unhappy souls, shut out from the consolation of speech, and so desirous of relieving them from their melancholy condition, that, in 1825, he went to Genoa and placed himself, for nearly a year, as a youthful scholar under Padre Ottavio Assarotti, of the Scolopian Order, who, like De l’Epée in France, was another father to the deaf in Italy. Having learned the method well, Padre Pendola spent all his means in providing a refuge for these unfortunate ones and instructing them. (Matson, p.214-5)

L’Abate Ottavio Giovan Battista Assarotti (1753-1859) had founded the first deaf school in Italy, at Genoa, in 1801.

In 1831, under the auspices of the Grand Duke Leopoldo, Pendola founded and directed in Sienna an institute dedicated to the education of poor deaf people, later known as the Istituto Tommaso Pendola and now part of Asp (Azienda Pubblica dei Servizi alla Persona) ‘Città di Siena’.  In 1844 it was united with the school at Pisa.

Exulting in his heart, happy in relieving misery, he was the first among us to give a gentle and pious mother to these afflicted ones, calling to his Institution “The Daughters of Charity,” and when, in 1848, the members of this order were driven from Sienna as by a whirlwind, those of them that were with him remained peacefully under the protection of his uncontested authority. (Matson, p.215)

As Director at the Istituto, Pendola wrote a number of treatises on deafness and founded, in 1872, the quarterly journal titled L’Educazione dei Sordomuti (now L’educazione dei Sordi [The Education of the Deaf]).  Pendola had been a manual teacher, using sign language, influenced by Sicard, but he modified this teaching method under the influence of his friend Assarotti.

The aim of his new journal was pedagogical, its content directed primarily at teachers of the deaf:

‘The publication was aimed at the analysis of the didactical and pedagogical methods recommended to the teachers of the deaf’ [Esame critico dei mezzi pedagogici e didattici che vengono eventualmente raccomandati o proposti alla scuola dei sordomuti’] (L’Educazione dei Sordomuti, Anno I Serie III, vol. 26, 1903, p. 3).  The journal was also aimed at the promotion of the ‘metodo orale’ [‘the oral method’] or oralism, which had been popular in the United States since the 1860s, and had become known to Pendola via the priest Serafino Balestra, who had introduced into Italy the method known as ‘lip reading’.

Oralism – which opposed the use of sign language whilst advocating the use of speech and lip reading in the teaching of the deaf – was now deemed to be the most natural, appropriate and apt method for the social regeneration of the deaf: ‘il metodo orale è, senza contrasto, il più naturale, il più conveniente e il più opportuno per la rigenerazione sociale dei sordomuti’ (Ibid. p.2).

In 1873, a year after the journal was founded, Pendola organised the Congresso internazionale sull’educazione dei sordomuti di Siena [The International Conference for the Education of the Deaf Mutes of Siena].  As with the journal, the conference provided a platform to discuss the advantages of oralism vs manualism, also setting the theoretical basis for the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf, held in Milan in 1880.  The ‘Milan Conference’, as it became known, formally established that oral education was superior to manual education, passing a resolution that banned the use of sign language in schools.  As readers of this website and those familiar with sign language will know, it caused much dissent, and is now seen by many as very harmful to the deaf community.  Pendola himself was not present, being old and frail, but was proclaimed honorary president (Matson, p.215).  Enthused by Oralism in the 1870s, Pendola was was appointed by the government as president of a commission to draw up plans for compulsory education of deaf children (ibid, p.216).

Volume 26 of L’Educazione dei Sordomuti, offers a large number of contributions for those interested in the history of the education of the deaf, including that of a teacher, who, in his article entitled ‘Il vocabolario dei nostri allievi’ [‘the Vocabulary of Our Students’] writes that repetition is fundamental in the teaching of a language, even in the case of deaf people. It also includes a review to Dr. Bezold’s book, published in 1902, on the aetiology of deaf-muteness, and a bibliography of studies on deafness within the context of education.

Pendola would seem to have been highly thought of by those who knew him.  He was a professor at the Uninersity of Sienna for thirty years, where, we are told, he fought against the influence of the “popular sensualist school of French materialism” (Matson, p.214).  His funeral on the 14th of February, 1883, seemingly held with greater pomp than he might have wished, was attended by much of the populace, and as he had wished, he was buried ‘with the poor, and in the midst of the deaf and dumb, my pupils’ (ibid p.217-8).

This is one of our copies of Pendola’s book, L’Educazione dei Sordo-muti in Italia, 1855.  It appears to be an inscription by the author.  His journal, L’Educazione dei Sordi, now available online, continues its publication of research articles, bibliographies and individual experiences in keeping with its pedagogical and didactical purposes.

We have a long run in the library from the third series, from 1903 to 1925, then picking up again in 1948.

Portrait of Tommaso.

Matson, Mrs. Kate L., Padre Tommaso Pendola, American Annals of the Deaf, 1883, Vol.28 p.213-9 (Matson’s article is mainly the words of Pendola’s friend, Padre Alessandro Toti.

Simeon Kutner,  (1861-1916) was an oralist teacher of the deaf, who became Head Master of the Jews’ Deaf and Dumb Home, Wandsworth.  In 1894 he took over at the school from Mr. Simon Schöntheil of the Vienna Deaf School.  Schöntheil had replaced van Praagh in 1872.  There is a close link therefore between this school and the origins of the oral system in Germany.

Kutner was born in Poland, or rather Polish Russia.  When he was approximately six years old the family emigrated to Great Britain, settling in London, in Southwark (see census 1871).  His father was a hair dresser.  From 1867 to 1874 he was a pupil at Borough Jewish School in south-east London (BDM 1897).  He attended the Jews’ College, Finsbury Square intending to study theology, but after two years became instead a teacher of the deaf under Schöntheil.  He remained there until 1882, having quite a wide number of duties in addition to teaching.  He also studied drawing at Birkbeck, we are told by the BDM article (p.252).

The school was visited in June 1877 by a delegation from the first Conference of Headmasters (see extract in last blog), which included Andrew and Colville Patterson, Dr. Buxton, and the Rev. Stainer.  The visit convinced Andrew Patterson to try oralism at the Old Trafford Institute.  It seems that this was a way into Manchester for Kutner, as he was appointed to teach there with the oral method in 1882.  He remained at the school there until July 1894, taking on additional teaching duties and becoming head master of the Evening Continuation Schools for the Deaf and Dumb in 1891.  That same year he married Blema Wood and had four children (ibid).

He went on several holidays with his good friend Fred Gilby.

I had, however, one very understanding, close friend among the oralists in Simeon Kutner, the Principal of the Jews School for the deaf.  Even from his Notting Hill days he had been a dear friend of mine, and we often took sweet counsel together.  He attended more than one service or function at St. Saviour’s to see what we did – and approved.  We once spent a fortnight together, cycling from Hammersmith to Camberley, going by train that evening to Southampton, crossing to Havre and bicycling onwards together through Normandy, sleeping at such places as Caudebec, Lisieux, Avreux, St. Lo, Coutances, Granville, and Jersey.  At the last place he was with us at a little gathering of deaf people where I had been asked to preach.  The pathos of the little scene overcame him, and he wept. For this I loved him all the more.  His companionship was a privilege. Uplifting – educated – yes,it was even religious; he was full of sweet charity, good humour and refinement.  We were able to kneel down at the same time at night and we both used the Lord’s Prayer with some depth of sympathy, yet he was a Jew.  There are many Christians I know with whom I have not been able to converse as well as I could with him on matters spiritual. (Gilby Memoirs, p.148-9)

Kutner was also on the Executive of the College for Teachers of the Deaf and Dumb, Paddington Green.

He had at least one serious breakdown in health, and recovered, but died in 1916 having undergone an operation.
The Jews’ Deaf and Dumb Home and its Head Master. British Deaf Monthly, 1897, 6, 252-54. (photo)

Death of Mr. Kutner, Ephphatha 1916 no.31 p.445

Gilby’s unpublished Memoirs

1871 Census: Class: RG10; Piece: 595; Folio: 92; Page: 15; GSU roll: 818904