Sign language histories in UCL’s Special Collections
By Kaja Marczewska, on 9 May 2025
Please note that this blog post contains some historic uses of language, which are outdated, offensive, and discriminatory. The language is retained in its original context and does not represent views of UCL Special Collections. We are committed to contextualising and addressing dated and harmful languages in our collecting practice, collection documentation, teaching, and engagement activities. You can read about some of our work in this area as part of UCL’s Liberating the Collections programme here.
To mark this year’s Deaf Awareness Week, we explore the complex histories of sign languages and changing attitudes to their usage, through UCL’s rich collections documenting histories of d/Deaf communities and associated institutions. This blog showcases a few items.
There are over 150,000 users of British Sign Language (BSL), approximately half a million of ASL – the American Sign Language. Yet widespread, and unsanctioned use of sign languages is a relatively new phenomenon. Although awareness of sign languages and their uses among d/Deaf communities has a long and established history, little to no record of their languages exists before the 16th century. There is evidence of manual signs as communication systems among European monastic communities who practiced vows of silence, but these are not linked, of course, to histories of deafness. It was, however, a Spanish Benedictine monk, Pedro Ponce de Leon who was the first to educate d/Deaf children through early forms of sign language.
Gerald Shea notes that those early attempts to teach d/Deaf to speak were economically motivated. “A central problem for aristocratic families in Europe, as in Byzantium,” Shea writes, “was that Deaf offspring had to be able to speak in order to inherit. These […] considerations led to the growth and influence of teachers of speech and lipreading” who first appeared in Spain, at the height of its global power, followed by similar practices in England and Holland in the 17th c., and emerging in France and Germany in the 18th c., favoring the so-called oralism and attempts to ‘cure’ deafness over manual communication systems.[1]
The first known work on teaching the d/Deaf, published in 1620 by Juan Pablo Bonet, described the d/Deaf as “inferior […] monsters of nature and human only in form.” Although a proponent of oralism, Bonet did concede the need to teach a manual alphabet in order to assist with spelling and pronunciation. His book offers one of the early printed records of sign language.

Title page of Juan Pablo Bonet’s
Reduction de las letras, y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos, published in Madrid in 1620. UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC SPA BON / 1.

A page from Bonet’s Reduction de las letras, y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos, showing one of the earliest recorded depictions of sign language.
Armstrong observed that the mid-17th century saw the rise of sign-language education for the d/Deaf, which coincided with the emergence of modern science and Enlightenment’s education philosophies. Sign language was, in fact, seen by the French Enlightenment philosophers as ‘natural’, more ‘natural’ than spoken language, and uncorrupted by language’s uses for political oppression.[2] The period saw a proliferation of new theories and language systems, based on signs and gestures. George Delgano’s Didascalocophus or the Deaf and Dumb man’s tutor (1680), which proposed a totally new linguistic system for the d/Deaf, was one prominent example.

Didascolocophus or The deaf and dumb mans tutor, : to which is added A discourse of the nature and number of double consonants. Both which tracts being the first (for what the author knows) that have been published upon either of the subjects. By Geo. Dalgarno (Oxford, 1680). UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN A 822.
An English doctor and philosopher, John Bulwer (1606 – 1656) saw gesture as the only form of speech inherently natural to mankind. In his Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of the Hand alongside a companion text, Chironomia, or the Art of Manual Rhetoric, he attempted to record hand gestures intended for an orator to memorise and perform while speaking. And although Chirologia and Chiromania did not focus on gestures as a form of d/Deaf communication – Chirologia makes only a brief mention of deafness – Bulwer’s work became an important foundation of his long-standing commitment to and advocacy for d/Deaf education. He became known as one of the first people in England to propose education for the d/Deaf.

John Bulwer’s Chirologia: or The natvrall langvage of the hand (1644). UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN A 534.

Frontispiece detail from Bulwer’s Chirologia.

“An index to the following Alphabet of naturall Gestures of the Hand” from Bulwer’s Chirologia.
And what is known as the modern tradition of d/Deaf education and its uses of sign language originated with the foundation of the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, the National School for the Deaf, set up in the mid-18th c. by a French priest, Abbe Charles-Michel de l’Épée. He is also credited with initiating a movement that led to the spread of sign language learning in dedicated schools in Europe and North America.

Institution des sourds et muets, par la voie méthodiques : ouvrage qui contient le projet d’une langue universelle, par l’extremise des signes naturels assujettis à une méthode / [By C.M. de l’Épée.], first published in Paris in 1776. UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN 109.

A page from The invited alphabet; or address of A to B : containing his friendly proposal for the amusement and instruction of good children / by R. R., published in London in 1809, one of many resources offering guidance on uses of sign language to children published in the 19th c. UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC ENG RR.
Residential schools for the d/Deaf which followed the l’Épée model were popular in Europe and North American in the 19th c., fostering rich signing communities which developed around them. But following the controversial International Congress of the Education of the Deaf held in Milan in 1880, sign language education was internationally suppressed, often actively banned, in favour of oralism, i.e. speechreading and vocal training as the preferred education method. This dramatic shift in attitudes inevitably led to fragmentation of communities and subsequent development of small, highly localised dialects. It wasn’t until the mid-20th c. that significant moves towards greater visibility and acceptance of sign languages took place. BSL was only formally recognised as a language in 2003! And it wasn’t until 2010 the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf, held in Vancouver, Canada that the motion declaring sign languages inferior to oralism, passed in Milan in 1880 was finally rejected.

Première contribution pour le dictionnarie international du langage des signes : terminologie de conference = First contribution to the international dictionary of the language of signs / C. Magarotto, D. Vukotic. (Rome, 1959). UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC FRE MAG / 5.

Sample pages from First contribution to the international dictionary of the language of signs, showing their past use!

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A poster produced as an educational resource, Gallaudet pre-school signed English project. Held by RNID archival collections at UCL Special Collections.
Many items highlighted in this post are part of our RNID Rare Printed Collection and RNID archives, transferred to UCL Special Collections in 2020 from the UCL Ear Institute Library. To learn more about the collection and access to it, see our brief guide.
[1] Gerald Shea, The language of light: a history of silent voices (Yale University Press, 2017), 12.
[2] David F. Armstrong, Show of Hands: a natural history of sign language (Gallaudet University Press, 2011), 33.