708 



DEAF AND DUMB 



subject, which was the first step towards making 

 the education of the deaf and dumb permanent, 

 by recording the experience of one teacher for 

 the instruction of others. This book, published 

 in 1620, was of service to De 1'Epee a hundred 

 and forty years later ; and it contains, besides 

 much valuable information, a manual alphabet 

 identical in the main with that one-handed alpha- 

 bet which is now in common use in the schools 

 where the alphabet is used, on the Continent and 

 in America. His own system of teaching, how- 

 ever, like that of every teacher in every country 

 before De 1'Epee, was in the main oral. The prac- 

 ticability and adaptability of signs, for conversa- 

 tion rather than teaching, had occurred to several 

 of the earlier teachers, but De 1'Epee was the first 

 to adopt them as a distinct medium, and the chief 

 medium, of teaching ; and so to establish them as 

 a language. Bonet himself says of the manual and 

 written alphabets that they ' should be associated 

 with speech, by pointing to the letter as written 

 with the finger corresponding with the same letter 

 in the manual alphabet and the articulated sound.' 

 He also describes the positions and movements of 

 the vocal organs necessary in pronunciation, as he 

 himself used them, and as, with little variation, 

 Wallis and Amman used them also in later times, 

 believing themselves to have been the original in- 

 ventors of the methods they employed. From the 

 time of Bonet there was a general awakening of 

 the attention of intellectual men, not only to the 

 importance of the subject, but to the practicability 

 of instructing the deaf-mute. One of Bonet's pupils 

 was seen by Charles I. , when Prince of Wales ; 

 and the case is described by Sir Kenelm Digby, 

 who met the prince in Madrid, during his memor- 

 able matrimonial journey to Spain ( 1623). Of this 

 pupil, a younger brother of the Constable of Castile, 

 Sir Kenelm gives an interesting account in his 

 Treatise of Bodies, how he ' would repeat after 

 anybody any hard word whatever' not Spanish 

 merely, but English, and even Welsh. 



When the art died away in Spain, it was taken 

 up by Englishmen, and began forthwith to assume 

 an entirely new aspect. Dr John Bulwer published, 

 in 1648, his Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe 

 Man's Friend, in which he speaks of a ' lip-grammar, 

 which may enable you to hear with your eye, and 

 thence learn to speak with your tongue.' Bonet 

 also found in the course of his experience that lip- 

 reading reached a much greater utility than he had, 

 at the outset, thought it capable of. It has been 

 described as the backbone of the oral system. It 

 is the conviction arising from experience, which 

 has in our own days, and in nearly every country, 

 in Italy and France especially, made some of the 

 most eminent sign-teachers the chief advocates of 

 the oral system. Dr William Holder published his 

 Elements of Speech, with an Appendix concerning 

 Persons Deaf and Dumb, in 1669 ; and Dr John 

 Wallis, Savilian Professor of Mathematics in the 

 university of Oxford, both taught the deaf and 

 dumb with great success, and wrote copiously upon 

 the subject. In 1662 one of the most proficient of 

 his pupils was exhibited before the Royal Society, 

 and in the presence of the king. The Philosophical 

 Transactions of 1670 contain a description of his 

 mode of instruction, which -was destined to bear 

 ample fruits long after his death. 



Before the close of the 17th century many works 

 of considerable merit appeared, the chief of which 

 are the Surdus Loquens (1692) of John Conrad 

 Amman, a physician of Haarlem ; and the Didas- 

 calocophus, or Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor, of 

 George Dalgamo (q.v.). This treatise, published 

 in 1680, and reprinted in 1834 by the Iriaitland 

 Club, is eminently sound and practical, which 

 is the more remarkable, as the author speaks 



of it as being, for aught he knows, the first that 

 had been written on the subject. He is the first 

 English writer who gives a manual alphabet. The 

 one described by him, and of which he was the 

 inventor, is, most probably, the one from which the 

 present two-handed alphabet is derived. Henry 

 Baker (q.v.) about 1720 introduced an improved 

 system of his own ; in 1765 the Abbe de 1'Epee 

 established his little school in Paris ; and five years 

 previously, the first school in the British dominions 

 had been started in Edinburgh by Thomas Braid wood 

 (q.v.). He commenced with one pupil, the son of a 

 merchant in Leith, who had strongly urged him to 

 carry into effect the plan of instruction followed by 

 Dr Wallis, and described in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions ninety years before. His school, the parent 

 and model 01 the earlier British institutions, was 

 visited and spoken of by many of the influential men 

 of that day, and its history and associations are 

 imperishable. Its local name of 'Dumbiedykes' sug- 

 gested to Sir Walter Scott a designation for one of 

 his most popular characters in the Heart of Mid- 

 lothian. A visit paid to it in 1773, by Dr Johnson, 

 and his biographer Boswell, supplies one of the most 

 suggestive and characteristic passages in the Journey 

 to the Western Islands, in which he speaks of Henry 

 Baker and his unpublished work. In 1783 Braid- 

 wood removed to Hackney, near London, and 

 the presence of his establishment so near to the 

 metropolis undoubtedly led to the foundation of 

 the London Asylum in 1792. Dr Watson, its first 

 principal, was a nephew, and had been an assistant, 

 of Braidwood ; and he states that, some ten or 

 fifteen years previously, the necessity for the estab- 

 lishment of a public institution had been plainly 

 seen, and some few but insufficient steps taken 

 towards the accomplishment of such a design. 

 From its foundation in 1792 until 1829, it was 

 directed with great ability by Dr Joseph W T atson, 

 author of Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. 



The numbers of deaf and dumb children at school 

 in the United Kingdom at the dates given, were 

 as follows : 



1851 1861. J871. 1881. 1886. 



England and Wales.. 816 iOOl 1200 17s2 1991 



Scolisnd 250 240 301 386 412 



Ireland 234 399 478 645 655 



Total 1300 1640 1979 2713 2958 



In 1895 the schools for the deaf and dumb 

 certified under the Elementary Education (Blind 

 and Deaf Children) Actof 1893 provided accommoda- 

 tion for 2755 deaf children (1155 day-scholars and 

 1600 boarders) in England and Wales, and in 

 Scotland for 525 children. In Ireland the number 

 of deaf and dumb children receiving education is 

 somewhat larger than in Scotland. 



In England and Wales there are some 25 public 

 institutions for deaf and dumb, and several private 

 ones. The oldest is that of Old Kent Road, London, 

 founded in 1792, and now at Margate ; the next, 

 that at Edgbaston, Birmingham, in 1812. In 

 Scotland there are 8, that in Edinburgh dating 

 from 1810; in Ireland 4, one in Dublin founded 

 in 1816. In the United Kingdom there are about 

 50 schools and classes, with 250 teachers and 

 3800 pupils. In the United States there are over 

 60 schools, with 7500 pupils and 600 teachers ; 

 in Germany, 96 schools, with 5892 pupils under 

 595 teachers ; in France, 70 schools, 3655 scholars, 

 and 364 teachers; in Italy, 35 schools, 1500 pupils, 

 and 238 teachers. If to these we add the schools in 

 Austria, 18; Switzerland, 15 ; Sweden, 17 ; Norway, 

 8; Russia, 11; Belgium, 11; Spain, 7; Holland, 

 3 ; Canada, 7 ; Australia, 3 ; with others in New 

 Zealand and Cape Colony, and one at Bombay 

 (the only one in Asia), it will be evident that the 

 schools throughout the world must be about 500 in 

 number. 



