“One of the Dumms”: Lear, Deafness, and the Wound of Sound

Edward Lear’s father, Jeremiah Lear, was a life governor of the Asylum for the Support of the Deaf and Dumb Children of the Poor at Bermondsey in London. The association between Lear’s family and the deaf—which I discovered through searching newspaper archives first digitized in 2011—has not previously been known. It is of particular interest because it implies that the young Lear would have been aware of modern methods for educating those who were born deaf and that he inherited inclusive attitudes that promoted integration of the deaf community in the workplace and in social life more generally. One cannot know precisely how this early knowledge affected him, but it seems likely that it shaped his relationships with deaf friends and may have influenced his exuberantly visual work for children, which also explores the emotional dynamics of noise and silence.

The London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb was founded in 1792 by John C. Townsend, an independent dissenting minister born in Whitechapel. Townsend would go on to found a Congregational School for the children of dissenting ministers and was, with a fellow independent minister, Joseph Brooks-bank, one of the founder members of the London Missionary Society.¹ Jeremiah Lear had a connection lasting over two decades with Brooksbank, who baptized all of the Lear children, so he may well have heard about the asylum through Brooksbank’s energetic sermons. As the Lear grandparents hailed from Whitechapel, where they owned a sugar refinery, it is also possible that Jeremiah had encountered Townsend directly.

Jeremiah Lear’s commitment to the asylum was long term. In April 1807, he was one of the stewards at a dinner for the president, governors, and friends of the asylum at the City of London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street, where some of the deaf children would recite verse.² This fundraiser was an annual event and seems always to have taken place in the same pub. In 1809, the Kentish Chronicle describes three hundred people assembling, including the Lord Mayor, to celebrate the institution. Although the chief purpose of the occasion was to raise money, it was also an opportunity for donors to meet the children who benefited from education in the asylum. “Near seventy” male and female children, the inmates of the asylum, were

conducted round the room, shewing specimens of their progress in writing, arithmetic, and knowledge of language, written and articulate. Some of them stood on the tables, and spoke the following lines in a manner so clear and feeling, that it was evident they understood every word they uttered:

Ill can a tongue, so lately mute,Express the joy we feel;Yet bless’d with utterance, though slow,We can’t our joy conceal!

The Deaf and Dumb, afar and near,Would hail this happy day,If we, to their desponding hearts,The tidings could convey—

that, now, a new asylum’s rais’d,where all may find relief—’Twould stem the stream of many tears,Ease many a parent’s grief!³

Jeremiah would have experienced such recitations at the annual dinner. The lines were written for the occasion, probably by a sponsor rather than one of the students themselves, and one wonders how the deaf children felt about this exhibition of their bodies and the awkward words that were put into their mouths.

However, the list of successful applicants to the charity testifies to the number of low-income and indigent families eager to embrace the provision offered by the asylum; the charity in 1805 could only take in one of every ten applicants: around six a year.⁴ The children studying in 1805 included several from the workhouse. Some students were orphans or had a parent who had deserted the family. In descriptions of those whose parents were in employment, the word “journeyman” recurs. These were the children of carpenters, weavers, tanners, coopers, rope makers, collar makers, jewelers: skilled handworkers who had served an apprenticeship but were subject to the vagaries of low-income wage labor. There were by the early years of the...