By 1859, the AADD’s annual report described additional meetings in ‘St George’s school room, Southwark’. The schoolroom was attached to the church of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, whose rector was the Rev. William Cadman.

This is the church in about 1840

I can’t find any reference to a school room. Interior photos suggest that the lower windows weren’t for a downstairs, but were underneath the interior balcony, and as in most Anglican churches, what was under the sanctuary was the crypt.

It is possible, however, that the school room was connected to the nearby workhouse. The area was extremely poor. In fact, it was the site of the Marchsea debtors prison where Charles Dickens’ father was imprisoned. The prison shared a wall with the churchyard. Dickens lived nearby for a time, and knew the church well. He used the church as part of the landscape for Little Dorrit, where some scenesare set within the church itself.

Yesterday, I shared information from the 1859 Annual Report of the AADD about help given to ‘H.L’ who was found work in Hart’s Gas fitting works.

The following year, 1860, also provides more information about H.L. It appears that the position at Hart’s didn’t work out, and so we find him being relocated at Heal and Son’s.Heal and Son’s was (still is!) a furniture manufacturers, and it is likely that this provided H.L. with a wider range of jobs to do. Many of the workshop-type skills taught to young deaf people in schools in France and the US were furniture-based, and blindness wasn’t a great obstacle; cushion stuffing and chair-seat weaving were often touted as blind-specific jobs.

It’s revealing that it’s hard to get any information about Heal’s employment of Deaf people on the Internet. Any search immediately links ‘heal’ with ‘deaf’ and brings up religious healing ministries. Of course that, in itself, speaks volumes about the legacy of religious/deaf connections…

To get more specific information on whether Heal was a particularly welcoming employer to disabled people, we might actually have to go to Heal’s archive at the Victoria and Albert museum in London.

After the Association was reconfigured in 1854, each year’s Annual Reports give details of “Pecuniary cases”; in other words, those deaf people to whom the Association had given either financial or other employment or material support.

Here’s one from 1859

The image reads

“H.L. Besides being deaf and dumb is nearly blind, and has a wooden leg: was a great burden to his mother. Now earns his own livelihood in Mr. Hart’s factory”.

Without going into the committee minutes, it’s hard to get any more details. And there’s an ethical question about whether we should. Certainly, it might be possible to identify H.L. but since the name is not public, it’s perhaps better to leave the identity of this particular person secret.

Similarly, we don’t know whether this is a C19th case of Ushers, or whether his blindness came about at the same time as the loss of his leg, perhaps in an accident. London was certainly a dangerous place to live, and traffic and other kinds of accidents were very frequent.

This candidate, however, was one of those lucky ones to find a job in Mr Hart’s gas-fitting works. Hart is recorded as providing employment to a number of Deaf people in the 1859 Annual Report.

If St Saviour’s was the first church built specifically for the Deaf community in London, then St Barnabas on Evelyn Street in Deptford was the second. The foundation stone was laid in 1882, and the church was opened in 1883. It remained open until 1953.

Although we don’t have a great deal of information on it (and our focus is St Saviour’s), we can show you where it was.

This is a map of the bottom of Evelyn Street, and its junction with New King Street in the 1870s.

A close up gives you the the smithy on the north side of Evelyn Street, the drinking fountain on the junction of the roads and another fountain on the north side of the Evelyn street, behind a wall, in what must have been a nice little garden.

And here, the same close up for the 1890 map

The church was long and narrow, and although it says ‘seats for 150 here’ they could squeeze in about 200.

Not much then changes to 1950. The smithy has gone, and a pub has opened on Evelyn street.

And then… in the 1960s, they did this:

And that’s pretty much what it looks like today.

BBC London recently covered the closure of the Acton church. Since they didn’t provide subtitles or a transcription for the film, I’ve typed one up.

I’m not sure how to embed the video from the BBC site, so you’ll have to visit and watch it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-28042787

The transcription runs:

0 secs

Familiar surroundings for many church-goers, but the type of service not so conventional. They’re signing hymns.It’s a service specifically for Deaf people conducted only in sign language. Vera is a retired chaplain. She’s been coming to the church for the last 30 years. But today could be one of her last visits.

22 secs

“I’ve seen so many services here: baptisms… so many. I’ve got good memories, and they’re very precious to me.”

35 secs

St Saviour’s was built by a Deaf charity almost 90 years ago. It’ll now be sold on after proving too expensive to maintain. It first moved to Acton after it was relocated from Oxford Circus almost 90 years ago. The new building’s design was carefully thought out.

52 secs

The church was built specifically for the Deaf community. There are chairs instead of pews to avoid restricted movement while signing. There are lecturns either side of the altar, one for a speaker and one for a signer. And the floor slopes up towards the back to allow everyone to see.

1 min, 8 secs

“One day I met a friend of mine who brought me here to the Deaf club. And I’ve been here ever since. Since I was about 15 and a half.”

“I feel very sad that it’s not going to be here. What will we do?”

The church is still looking for a new home. Many memories will be left here.

1 min, 30 secs

“They filmed my first reunion service here”.
“How many years ago?”
“20 years ago”
“And now we’re filming you now at one of the last?”
*nods*
“How does that feel?”
“Still sad, still sad… very”.

…

This is somewhat off the track of St Saviour’s, but the language so struck me that I thought it was worth sharing.

Below is an excerpt from a pamphlet printed by the New-York Protestant Episcopal Tract Society entitled “The Recognition, or, The deaf and dumb girl : a true narrative” (183- ?)

The quotation is from pp 12-13, and is the best example I’ve seen so far of someone explaining how deaf people will become hearing after death.

As someone used to more explicitly Oral histories, what struck me was that there is no reference to ‘loss’. In fact, the ability to speak is described as a ‘newly acquired faculty’. That’s interesting, in that it seems to suggest that those ‘deaf and mute’ have not lost their hearing or speech, but never had it in the first place.

What also struck me (somewhat irreverently) was that, in addition to gaining hearing, the girl (Ellen) is also immediately equipped to understand and produce some very niche religious language – which is important, because–note–Jesus speaks, and either invites people into heaven, or sends them to hell by verbal command.

Anyway, see what you think:

I reflected that the first thrilling sound that will strike upon Ellen’s astonished ear will be the awakening note of the arch angel’s trumpet, summoning the quick and dead to judgement !

O, solemn thought! the first sentence she will ever hear pronounced, will be the eternal benediction of those on the right hand of their Saviour and Judge, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;’ and the immutable malediction denounced against those on the left, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.’

I hope she will be enabled to continue faithful until death, and then, when mortality is swallowed up of life, and she shall be invested with a glorified body, ‘will the tongue of the dumb be loosed,’ and the first use she will make of her newly acquired faculty, will be in an ascription of praise to the’ holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God,’ who made, redeemed, and sanctified her.

The first song she will ever sing, will be the song of the redeemed, ‘Alleluiah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!’

The first concord of sweet sounds that will ever strike upon her enraptured sense, will be the celestial harmony of the angelic choir, of ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, who surround the throne, saying, with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing !’

With engagement activities in Bristol, preparations for a workshop, archive visits, bank holidays and some leave time, May has been extremely busy.

But, back from the archive, and with well over 10,000 photos of data now, we’re in a position to take stock and start to share some of what we’ve found.

A lot of what we’ve got is text, and we’ll have to extract information from there as it’s useful. But some things we can bring you straight from the archive. Like this, from the 1873 edition of the ‘Magazine intended chiefly for the Deaf and Dumb’, a poem entitled “To a beautiful and interesting Girl, Deaf and Dumb”.

The poem reads:

To a beautiful and interesting girl, Deaf and Dumb

Thou dwellest in a happier land,
A better land than ours.
Fair mute, as thou doest radiant stand
Amid the silent hours.

Their downy pinions fall between
The world’s loud strife and thee:
O, sheltered by that halcyon screen,
What peace like thine can be.

Diviner than the calm we find,
Where woodland shadows glide,
Seems the soft rapture of thy mind,
While wandering by our side.

While steals to us sweet song of bird,
Or the far city’s hum,
Fair mute, to thee, by us unheard,
Do angels whispering come?
(Jan 1873, p.15.)

We don’t know who wrote the poem, but they were clearly hearing… and (for me at least) there’s some suggestion that they were rather taken with the girl in question.

What really strikes me, though, about this poem is the way that the ‘nature’ of the girl is imagined. Her reality is ‘happier’, ‘better’, ‘radiant’, ‘sheltered’, ‘Divine’ even… separated from the hearing world by a ‘halcyon screen’ of silence that may be so blessed that it even allows her to hear angels.

‘Hear’ angels? Who can presumably whisper past the limits of language, or perception, directly into her mind.

Perhaps this is an accurate reflection of what the author understood Deaf people’s reality to be in 1873. Perhaps it is actually a way of rendering Deaf realities somewhat ‘other worldly’, or exotic and so making them an object of difference. Perhaps it’s simply a whimsical expression of affection.

But it’s certainly quite different from the language of ‘affliction’ that often appears in descriptions of Deaf people from the same period.