1880 and my deaf ancestors

1880 was the birth year for two of my deaf ancestors - Harriet Martha Iliffe and her husband Thomas.

1880 was the year the Milan Congress officially discouraged the educational use of sign language.

And now, 1880 is the theme of a stunning new art exhibition by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader.

‘Milan was a power grab’

I'm holding a limited edition artwork by Christine and Thomas. It's one of 164 fired-clay red bricks, each stamped with 1880.

Why 164 bricks? Because there were 164 delegates at the Milan International Congress on the Education of the Deaf. 163 were hearing people, just one was deaf. And by a majority they voted to ban sign language from the classrooms.

Milan was a power grab. Hearing educators with sharp elbows. 'Fund us' was the message to governments and policy makers. 'Don't fund them' (deaf people and their allies).

Everything about us, without us.

The poisonous impact of Milan travelled across the globe, and all the way to my home city of Leicester.

A few years later, my Dad's great aunt Harriet Martha Iliffe (1880-1957) attended Leicester's first-ever publicly-funded class for deaf children in Milton Street.

In Milan's wake, Martha would have endured years of tortuous speech-reading classes with zero encouragement to use her hands to communicate.

And, in the 145 years since Milan, Leicester has never - to my knowledge - had a school or unit that included sign language. Not once. The impact on Leicester's deaf community was devastating, generations of language and communication deprivation.

In 1907, Harriet married a local deaf man Thomas Storer Adcock (1880-1953) - photo below. In his case, in 1889 the Leicester Board of Education paid 20 pounds to send Thomas 40 miles away to board at the Royal School for the Deaf in Derby.

Thanks to its first headteacher Dr W.R. Roe, the Derby school initially resisted the Milan declaration and used the 'combination method' of speech augmented with fingerspelling and basic signs.

Given this, it seems likely that Martha and Thomas later communicated by a mix of fingerspelling, sign language and home signs.

Both joined the lower rungs of Leicester's industrial working class - Martha as a cardboard box factory worker, and Thomas as a 'boot clicker' (shoemaker).

In terms of documents and photos, very little survives of Leicester's pre-war Deaf community. Their stories go unheard. You only hear the voices of their benefactors, missionaries and teachers.

So, I'm deeply grateful to this 1880 brick for giving substance, dignity and strength to our invisible deaf histories.

1880 THAT by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, at the Wellcome Collection, Euston Road, London EC1A. Until 24 November. Tuesdays to Saturdays 10 to 5pm. Entrance is free, no tickets required.