DEAF AND DUMB IN LONDON.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12502, 1 April 1909, Page 1

DEAF AND DUMB IN LONDON.

• Attention has been drawn to the marriages of deaf and dumb by the statements made at an inquest recently by the Rev F. W. Gilby, who, as chaplain to the Association of the Deaf and Dumb, has married hun- . dreds of afflicted couples. 1 There are 3000 people in London alone (says the "Express") who can neither hear or speak. These people j meet at the churches for the deaf and j dumb, at the sociaj evenings at St j Saviour's, in Oxford Street, and j though they cannot talk or hear, I many a love romance has blossomed | in the eloquence of their silence. I .There are no mixed marriages for ! them. The deaf ahd dumb are overj whelniingly against marrying anyone j who can hear and speak. These marriages are, as a rule, happy. The ! children are born unafflicted," arid Mr Gilby told an "Express" representative that out of all the families of deaf and dumb in TLondon there are only thirty whose children suffer like their parents. There is pathos in the fact that the first thing a married couple usually acquires is a dog. Thej' need an animal that will- tell them when there is a knock at the door, that will run and tug at the skirts of the wife and so make her understand that she is wanted -„ • ... Many are the devices which the couple, have to use for the most ordinary customs of life. A paper attached to a pendulum swings to and fro when the bell is puiled, and tells their eyes what their ears, cannot hear; a heavy weight also is sometimes connected with the bell pull, and the shock of its fall warns them of a caller. They live in silence. They read or gossip with their hands ; they are fond of the theatre, for they can tell the story from the actions of the actors, but there is little laughter in their lives. When their children grow up they have acquired the language of gesture as naturally as they talk verbally. ' And the parents who have 1 grown old together in silence can do no more than fold their hands across their breasts, which, in the language of gestures, signifies live.