Deafness and Great War Veterans
Deafness and Great War Veterans
In this blog post, MMU PhD student Jemma Lakmaker shares some of her research on the experiences of veterans who experienced hearing loss or deafness after serving in the Great War.
After the armistice of the First World War in 1918, 1.6 million soldiers returned to Britain, wounded and with life-changing disabilities. 2.4% of the British army returned with hearing loss or deafness. Soldiers who experienced deafness or hearing loss had a unique experience after the war compared to soldiers with other war-caused disabilities. One of the main differences in experience was due to the invisible nature of deafness. The deafened soldier did not receive the immediate sympathy or compassion that was evoked by the severe visceral injuries that civilians saw every day, bringing shock and acting as a visual reminder of the harsh realities of what these men had sacrificed for their country.
A large number of deaf ex-servicemen did not receive pensions as medical professionals reported that their deafness was not caused or aggravated by the war. [3] After medical examinations, medical professionals gave their medical opinion about if the disability was caused or worsened by the war. There was no uniform method of testing hearing loss during the early twentieth century, therefore to successfully receive a pension, the ex-serviceman relied on the medical professional believing that his deafness was not a pre-existing medical condition. For many deafened soldiers, this resulted in them being rejected for a disability pension. For example, one ex-serviceman was not given a pension as the doctor stated his deafness was a pre-existing condition, despite the man’s pre-war doctor confirming that he had never before experienced hearing loss.[4] This oversight by medical professionals resulted in many deaf ex-servicemen not receiving the financial support that would have significantly benefited them.
The deafened soldier had different experiences after the war compared to those with more visible disability such as limb loss or facial disfigurements. The deafened soldier was not given as much support from the government and medical professionals who were responsible for their care upon their return from war. Finding employment was extremely difficult due to the negative perceptions of deafness, and as a result, the deafened soldier was viewed as idle and lazy. With many deaf veterans struggling to find employment or receive a government pension, and receiving less public sympathy than their visibly disabled comrades, the deafened soldier was at a clear disadvantage navigating the post-war experience.
References
[1] Douglas McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, (The Macmillan Company, 1919), p.134.
[2] Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939, (University of California Press, 2001), p.15.
[3] PIN 26/205; MH 106/2082/328; MH 106/2093/334.
[4] Ministry of Pensions, War pensions records: Frank Ernest Adams, 1915-1919 (PIN 26/247), The National Archives, London.
[5] Coreen McGuire, (2016) The ‘Deaf Subscriber’ and the Shaping of the British Post Office’s Amplified Telephones 1911-1939, Ph.D. The University of Leeds, [Online] [accessed 24/01/2024].
[6] McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, p.34.
[7] Ministry of Labour, ‘Correspondence concerning demobilisation and the position of the disabled soldier in industry’, (LAB 2/272/DR177/3/1918), TNA, London.
[8]Image from US National Library of Medicine, via https://archive.org/details/101560506.nlm.nih.gov/mode/2up.
[9]Imperial War Museum, IWM PST13211.
Jemma Lakmaker is a second-year PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research examines the experiences of soldiers returning from the First World War (FWW) with hearing loss or deafness.
History of Modern BSL
History of Modern BSL
Peter R. Brown explains the history of modern British Sign Language (BSL)
14 November 1792 is an important date for the British deaf community, in which to remember with pride, when the first cohort of 6 deaf newcomers and Joseph Watson came together. Joseph, their hearing master who knew so much about the deaf, played a key role during a crucial turning point in Deaf history – a ‘Big Bang’ moment. This subsequently resulted in the creation of the new and successful working-class community where deaf and hearing people would gather, share news and gossip using the same language – the modern British Sign Language (BSL).
The new Asylum, Britain’s first free school for the deaf, was named the “Asylum for the Support and Education of the Deaf and Dumb of the Poor”, situated in the Fort Place buildings, Grange Road, Bermondsey, south London. This first cohort would be the first occurrence of mass eduction of the deaf and poor. Scholars were educated for 5 years here, before moving onto various areas of the country (mainly in Lancashire and Yorkshire) where they would continue to flourish whilst passing on their education and language.
The school was founded by the brainchild, Rev. John Townsend, a Calvinist Methodist minister. The aim, to render “them, according to their various capacities, conversable and intelligents, able to receive and express ideas; to furnish them with moral and religious information” and plant them in “the germ of the present Society”.
By 1835 approximately 12,000 deaf people were living in Britain, and roughly one-sixth of them utilised BSL with some variant signs, perhaps similarly to what we see today. However by 1920, there were 12 different school sign languages – these included Manchester and Birmingham signs, along with the ‘dominant’ old London Asylum sign, the standard BSL. Roughly half of some 35,000 deaf people utilised the latter at missions where they had joined, obviously due to the infamous Milan conference 40 years prior, responsible for disrupting standard BSL. In 1889, Douglas Tilden, a renowned deaf American sculptor, visited Britain and spoke about the “disparity” of this language.
The missioners utilised the standard BSL through the nature of mobility around missions across Britain, and fought hard in an attempt to preserve it by publishing a small series of the “most popular signs” dictionaries in popular magazine, The British Deaf Times and other deaf publications. An example being The British Deaf Times with the “Family Circle Signs” page featuring Maxwell Stewart Fry demonstrating each sign, printed in 1912 and then reprinted again just before WW2. In around 1902, Fry met with former London Asylum scholar (1841-1846) and missioner, John Pugh Gloyn. Fry happily utilised this “grateful exponent of the old school sign language” – the standard BSL when communicating with him, at that time, Fry was aware of “the different system of signs that prevail”.
The first usage of the term British Sign Language (BSL) in an academc publication was likely to have been by Califorian sociolinguist, Aaron V. Cicourel in 1974.
There is a gem of a passage in Watson’s Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, published in 1809. Watson states that deaf newcomers from hearing families are fortunate enough to “meet with an attentive companion, or two, especially where two or more deaf persons happen to be brought up together, it is astonishing what approaches they will make towards the construction of an artificial language” of signs. The 5 deaf newcomers from the hearing families were fortunate to learn from their master, Watson, but also their schoolmate, Sarah Pounceby. Pounceby had deaf siblings who unknowlingly, through shared signs and time spent growing up together, contributed to modern BSL, assisted in it’s formation and saw it flourish. Huge thanks go to Watson who arranged and brought Pounceby and the 5 other deaf newcomers together. Having spent the first few days simply learning from them, he then began to mould their signs, before introducing them to other “arbitrary signs” (old BSL) from Braidwood’s deaf private Academy in Hackney. Watson had worked there in 1784 for some 7 years.
In Watson’s 1809 passage, he states that he bowed to John Wallis’ early 17th century deaf education philosphy which insisted that we “must endeavour to learn” deaf newcomers’ sign language in order to teach them English with convenience. However, Watson didn’t see this “rude and imperfect language” as a language equivalent to the English language, he believed it to be an essential part of teaching English. He opposed Signed English and stated it was “more fanciful” and “useless”.
Awareness of the Asylum’s first cohort, really began for me around 1993, after reading Patrick Beaver’s 1992 book A Tower of Strength. It was this book that intrigued me. This fascinating book covers 200 years worth of history on Asylum in London and Margate. The latter, where I myself was a pupil from 1967. It was not until 2019 at a reclamation yard near Oxford, that I would rescue three tons of 1810 cast iron railings that was the perimeter of the second Asylum (1809) in Kent Road, Southwark. Here modern BSL was a mere 18 years old and it’s at this point where my interest piqued again, spurring me on and subsequently brought me spiritually closer to the first cohort. I decided to do some more investigating and with the 2020 lockdown providing me with more free time, I was able to research the history of BSL. I’m interested in how the research can help us better understand and in turn, make the world a better place for both deaf and hearing people.
Peter R. Brown is a BSL Teacher Co-ordinator with CityLit.
What Is Sign Language Poetry ?
Dr Kyra Politt, translator and interpreter, explores the different forms of Sign Language Poetry.
Dr Kyra Politt
What is sign language poetry? That’s a hotly debated question. As things stand, you’ll find ‘signed poetry’, ‘sign poetry’, ‘sign language poetry’, ‘BSL poetry’, or ‘Signart’ scattered all along the path between English and British Sign Language (BSL).
In fact, there is very little that connects these two languages, except for this path, well-trodden by generations of deaf people whose experiences of encountering English range from brutally oppressive colonialism to empowering functionality.
Just a generation or two ago, when the use of BSL was punished in many of the UK’s schools for deaf children, survivors encoded their stories, their identities, and their culture in finely wrought poetry that showcased the beauty of the language they fought to preserve. Any event that brought the community together would be marked by some impromptu display of poetic mastery. But, like all natural sign languages hitherto researched across the globe, British Sign Language has no written form. And without video recorders, these old performances were lost to time.
Now, everything has changed, and the flux is tangible.
Technology has provided easy access to digital recording and sharing, but it has also given rise to deaf infants receiving operations to implant electronic cochlear devices alongside ‘advice’ to avoid signing in favour of speech.
So, whilst native BSL poets explore, record, share, and even perform each other’s work, new young poets are emerging amongst those who come to sign language later in life, confused about their identity and the complexity of their relationships to both languages.
BSL Poet Laureate 2024, Kabil Kapoor.
So, expect to encounter a great deal of politics and many poetic forms, some that lean towards English and mimic its poetic traditions, others that explore the rich potential of language in a visual, gestural, and spatial realm. Expect poetry that begins its life in written English, and poetry that refuses any form of translation.
Welcome to a new world.
Kyra Pollitt has done a great interview with BSL Poet Laureate Kabir Kapoor on this topic for Poetry Review. You can read it here or watch it in BSL with English subtitles here
You can find out more about BSL poetry and heritage at the event sponsored by the British Academy and BSL Fest, BSL Cultural Heritage This is in collaboration with Manchester Poetry Library.
These workshops are being funded by;
What is Visual Vernacular? And what does it have to with Poetry?
Visual vernacular (or VV) is a physical form of performance that draws on sign language, mime, and techniques from the theatre.
It has its roots in Deaf culture and is particularly popular in America, but is growing in popularity in the UK. Deaf artists have used VV in lots of different ways, including storytelling, theatre and poetry.
VV was developed by the America, Bernard Bragg (1928-2018)
A child of deaf parents who were involved in the theatre. Bernard studied with the mime artist Marcel Marceau in France and was inspired to combine mine and sign language in theatre performances. VV is a sensory spectacle that everyone can enjoy, whether they know sign language or not.
As part of the BSL Cultural Heritage Event, we are joined at Manchester Poetry Library by VV artist Ishtiaq Hussain. He uses his entire body, iconic gestures and facial expressions to capture different ideas and themes. You can see his work here, with VV films about ‘Sport’ and the ‘Queen’ created for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, 2022.
Visual Vernacular is different to BSL (British Sign Language) poetry, which has always been an important part of Deaf culture in the UK.
For a good description of what VV is, why not watch this short video. (with sign language and captions) by Ace Mahbz, actor, performer and writer.
If you want to learn more about the difference between BSL Poetry and Visual Vernacular, come to the event ‘BSL Cultural Heritage’ at Manchester Poetry Library on April 24th as part of Manchester BSL Fest. Book HERE. We are lucky enough to have Kabir Kapoor, the BSL Poet Laureate, performing alongside Ishtiaq Hussain.
These workshops are being funded by;
Touching Art: Multi-sensory Museums
Margaret Bell, Assistant Curator at the Norton Simon Museum, California explores how the experiences of disabled people offers a new perspective to art in a recent exhibition, The Expressive Body: Memory, Devotion, Desire (1450 -1750).
My early art-historical training was grounded in “close looking,” or using one’s eyes to carefully observe composition, form, colour, and line. However, developing the exhibition The Expressive Body: Memory, Devotion, Desire 1400-1750 at made me question the traditional primacy of vision in understanding art.
sighted people have much to learn about art from blind museumgoers and scholars
sighted people have much to learn about art from blind museumgoers and scholars
In early-modern Europe and the Americas, artwork wasn’t produced for museum spaces as we know them now, where multisensory engagement is largely forbidden. On the contrary, touch was integral to understanding these objects. Collectors used their hands to appreciate the texture, contours, and weight of sculptures, and devotees caressed and even kissed representations of holy figures, such as this New Mexican painted wood crucifix from the 18-19th century.
One of my favorite paintings from the Expressive Body exhibition is The Sense of Touch by Jusepe de Ribera (c. 1615-16), which was part of his series depicting the five senses. In the period, touch was considered the “lowest” sense, in contrast to the “rational” sense of sight. Here, however, Ribera depicts touch as an intellectual enterprise. A blind man observes a carved head, running his fingers over smooth marble profile. While it may seem that he’s missing out on the painting laying on the table, his tactile understanding of the sculpture is equally beyond the viewer’s grasp.
Far from being a relic of the past, for many touch remains essential to understanding art. I was privileged to interview Georgina Kleege, Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written brilliantly about visiting museums as a blind person. Her recent essay, “The Art of Touch: lending a hand to the sighted majority”(Journal of Visual Culture, 2021), proposes a toolkit of strategies for touching art, observing the lack of such training in the traditional art history. Kleege offers a refined vocabulary of touch, arguing that sighted people have much to learn about art from blind museumgoers and scholars.
Professor Kleege’s writing, alongside conversations about disability and accessibility in museums, which since 2020 have become more mainstream, led me to rethink the public presentation of Expressive Body. For the first time, we produced an audiovisual online component, which offered recorded meditations based on works in the exhibition. Regrettably, we were unable to offer in-gallery tactile tours due to Covid concerns, though we suggested household objects that listeners could use to imaginatively access depicted materials like fabric and stone. This was a good step that set a precedent for such programming at our museum, but it is only the beginning.
even in the 19th century, there was this idea of allowing blind people to touch art
even in the 19th century, there was this idea of allowing blind people to touch art
Georgina Kleege, University of California
I was pleased that for some visitors, Expressive Body offered a new framework for thinking about art through the body, which is by no means a novel consideration. It is my hope that continued exploration of the diverse modes of art engagement, historically and in the present, will push institutions towards sustained inclusivity in scholarship, programming, and infrastructure.
All images are reproduced with the kind permission of Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California, USA. You can read more about the exhibition The Expressive Body here.
Perceptions of Madness
For many people with schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders, the people who initially identify something wrong are not medics but family members.[1] A quick internet search reveals numerous websites and fact sheets providing information and advice for family and friends concerned that a loved one has developed a serious mental illness.[2] We can trace the idea that human beings instinctively recognise the mental disorder in others back to the early modern period. In the seventeenth century, the perceptions of friends and family were as important in identifying mental illness as they are today. An excellent example of this can be found in the autobiographical writings of Oxfordshire gentlewoman Dionys Fitzherbert (c.1580 – c.1641)
Between 1608 and 1610, Dionys described an extended period of significant emotional and psychic distress. She writes of an hallucination, imagining that ‘Charterhouse Yard … should flow with the matter that came out of my mouth, and did assuredly think all the bed and clothes were as wet with it as might be’.[4] She suffered delusions in which she believed that she was not her parents’ child, but was the long dead-sister of a friend.[5] She encountered suicidal thoughts and at the same time she feared that her family would have her put to death.[6]
Her thoughts were confused and fractured. Just like many people who suffer from severe mental illness today, Fitzherbert did not recognise that she was unwell. In fact, she believed that she was suffering from a spiritual affliction.[7] Her family and friends, however, were frightened by her behaviour, and believing her to be mentally ill placed her in the care of doctors.
But how did Fitzherbert’s family know she was mentally ill? After all, as Kate Hodgkin tells us, the seventeenth century was a time during which there was only a fine line between madness and religious despair.
human beings instinctively recognise mental disorder in others
It was the family’s perception of Fitzherbert’s behaviour that was key. Knowing her as well as they did, Fitzherbert’s relatives were able to identify her mental illness because they identified Dionys’s thoughts and behaviours as ‘bizarre’. In 1958 psychiatrist H. C. Rumke coined the phrase the ‘praecox feeling’, or the ‘praecox experience’, which referred to ‘a characteristic feeling of bizarreness experienced by a psychiatrist while encountering a person with schizophrenia’. [9] Although never formally made part of diagnosis, Rumke argued that the ‘praecox feeling’ was a central part of the diagnostic experience and this notion was echoed by psychiatrists throughout Europe during the twentieth century.[10] This feeling of bizarreness was also experienced by the non-medically trained. In the 1960’s psychiatrist Wilhelm Mayer-Gross said that the words ‘bizarre’, ‘queer’ and ‘absurd’ were often used to convey ‘the reaction of the non-schizophrenic towards the patient’.[11] Although use of the ‘praecox feeling’, has declined as a diagnostic element, it is still referred to by psychiatrists today, some of whom believe it to be ‘a real determinant of medical decision making in schizophrenia’.[12]
Is this the feeling that Dionys Fitzherbert’s relatives experienced? If so the idea that human beings instinctively know when a person is suffering severe psychic distress, and the way that it seemingly transcends space and time provides us with a clear link between perceptions of madness in the past and modern experiences of mental illness.
This research is part of a PhD funded by the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership (NWCDTP)
[1] Kim Runkle, ‘Psychosis: Responding To A Loved One In The Face Of Uncertainty’, Nami.Org, 2019 <https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/June-2019/Psychosis-Responding-to-a-Loved-One-in-the-Face-of-Uncertainty> [Accessed 12 October 2021].
[2] ‘Are You Worried About Someone’s Mental Health? Fact Sheet’, Mindcharity.Co.Uk, 2011 <https://www.mindcharity.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/451/2015/10/are_you_worried_about_someones_mental_health_factsheet.pdf> [Accessed 12 October 2021], ‘Living With – Schizophrenia’, Nhs.Uk, 2021 <https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/schizophrenia/living-with/> [Accessed 12 October 2021], ‘Mental Illness – Family And Friends – Better Health Channel, Betterhealth.Vic.Gov.Au, 2019 <https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/mental-illness-family-and-friends> [Accessed 14 October 2021].
[3] Unknown author Le médecin guarissant Phantasie [digital image] <https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/298391> [Accessed 12 October 2021].
[4] David Booy, Personal Disclosures: An Anthology Of Self-Writings From The Seventeenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p. 309.
[5] Booy, Personal Disclosures, p. 310.
[6] Booy, Personal Disclosures, pp. 311-312.
[7] Kate Hodgkin, ‘Fitzherbert, Dionys (C.1580-C.1641)’, ODNB, 2019 <https://doi-org.mmu.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.112759> [Accessed 15 June 2021].
[8] Katharine Hodgkin, Women, Madness And Sin In Early Modern England: The Autobiographical Writings Of Dionys Fitzherbert (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 58.
[9] Tudi Gozé and others, ‘Reassessing ‘Praecox Feeling’ In Diagnostic Decision Making In Schizophrenia: A Critical Review’, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 45.5 (2018), p. 966.
[10] J. Parnas, ‘A Disappearing Heritage: The Clinical Core Of Schizophrenia’, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 37.6 (2011), p. 1125.
[11] Wilhelm Mayer-Gross, Martin Roth and Eliot Slater, Clinical Psychiatry, 3rd edn (London: Baillière, Tindall & Cassell, 1969), p. 276.
[12] Gozé et al, ‘Reassessing’, p. 966.