The business of life

Much of the debates in late nineteenth-century Britain regarding the education of deaf children revolved around communication. For many Victorians, sign language was unacceptable; many proponents of oralism attempted to 'normalise' the hearing impaired by replacing deaf methods of communication with spoken language and lipreading. While debates on language were raging in late nineteenth-century England, another facet of normalisation, that of occupational training, was being developed at St John's Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the only Catholic deaf school in England. This school not only functioned to develop the Catholic faith of the deaf, but also expected to improve the social and economic status of deaf Catholics. Elementary education, and particularly occupational training, was meant to transform the deaf child into a faith-filled, respectable, working-class citizen. This essay aims at moving the normalisation debates away from language skills and towards this alternative mode of integration. The author is also grateful to Iain Hutchison who offered useful criticism at the early stages of this article. This research would be impossible without the cooperation of archivist Sister Joan Conroy and the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Mill Hill who gave permission to access their archives

Deaf education · Institution · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity