4 10 61 https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/a9178b0976e7e9469414bbe1402bd9a9.jpg e9d8b4c3033e1e55d20ab05da377d182 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 511 Height 800 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String byline_title:Rights and Images Department byline:National Portrait Gallery London headline:NPG 2193; Charlotte Mary Yonge by George Richmond source:National Portrait Gallery London caption_writer:National Portrait Gallery London - www.npg.org.uk credit:National Portrait Gallery London caption:by George Richmond, watercolour and chalk, 1844 date_created:02.05.2012 copyright_notice:© National Portrait Gallery, London object_name:NPG 2193; Charlotte Mary Yonge special_instructions:Unauthorised reproduction prohibited. For authorisation contact rightsandimages@npg.org.uk www.npg.org.uk city:London, St Martin's Place, WC2 0HE country:United Kingdom IPTC Array a:13:{s:12:"byline_title";s:28:"Rights and Images Department";s:6:"byline";s:32:"National Portrait Gallery London";s:8:"headline";s:49:"NPG 2193; Charlotte Mary Yonge by George Richmond";s:6:"source";s:32:"National Portrait Gallery London";s:14:"caption_writer";s:49:"National Portrait Gallery London - www.npg.org.uk";s:6:"credit";s:32:"National Portrait Gallery London";s:7:"caption";s:47:"by George Richmond, watercolour and chalk, 1844";s:12:"date_created";s:10:"02.05.2012";s:16:"copyright_notice";s:36:"© National Portrait Gallery, London";s:11:"object_name";s:30:"NPG 2193; Charlotte Mary Yonge";s:20:"special_instructions";s:105:"Unauthorised reproduction prohibited. For authorisation contact rightsandimages@npg.org.uk www.npg.org.uk";s:4:"city";s:34:"London, St Martin's Place, WC2 0HE";s:7:"country";s:14:"United Kingdom";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource This watercolour and chalk portrait shows a young, ringletted romantic version of Charlotte Yonge.  Portrait by George Richmond (1844). Courtesy <a title="National Portrait Gallery" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/" target="_blank">National Portrait Gallery</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Portrait of Yonge" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw06981/Charlotte-Mary-Yonge?" target="_blank">NPG 2193</a>). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. The Doctors were right, and the Consecration morning was the last of full consciousness. From the hour when she had heard the sound of Alan’s bells,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> her ears were closed to earthly sounds. There was very little power of intercourse with her, as she lingered on the borders of the land very far away, where skill and tenderness could not reach either body or spirit. Often the watchers could not tell whether she was conscious, or only incapacitated from expression, by the fearful weight on her breath which caused a restlessness most pitiable in the exhausted helpless frame, wasted till the softest touch was anguish. Now and then came precious gleams when a familiar voice or some momentary alleviation would gain a smile, or thanks, and they thought her less restless when Richard read prayers beside her, but words were very rare, only now and then a name, and when in most distress, ‘it will soon be over,’ ‘it will soon be over,’ occurred so often, that they began to think it once her solace, and now repeated habitually without meaning. They could not follow her into the valley of the shadow of death, but could only watch the frail earthly prison house being broken down, as if the doom of sin must be borne, though faith could trust that it was but her full share of the Cross. [...] It was midnight, on the longest night of the year; Ethel was lying on her bed and had fallen into a brief slumber, when her father’s low, clear voice summoned her: ‘Ethel, she is going!’ There was a change on the face, and the breath came in labouring gasps. Richard lifted her head, and her eyes once more opened; she smiled once more. ‘Papa!’ she said, ‘dear papa!’ He threw himself on his knees beside her, but she looked beyond him, ‘Mamma! Alan! oh! there they are! More! more!’ and, as though the unspeakable dawned on her, she gasped for utterance, then looked, with a consoling smile, on her father. ‘Over now!’ she said – and the last struggle was ended. That which Richard laid down was no longer Margaret May. Over now! The twenty-five years’ life, the seven years’ captivity on her couch, the anxious headship of the motherless household, the hopeless betrothal, the long suspense, the efforts for resignation, the widowed affections, the slow decay, the tardy, painful death agony – all was over. Nothing left, save what they had rendered her undying spirit, and the impress her example had left on those around her. The long continuance of the last suffering had softened the actual parting; and it was with thankfulness for the cessation of her pain that they turned away, and bade each other good-night. Ethel would not have believed that her first wakening to the knowledge that Margaret was gone, could have been more fraught with relief than with misery. And, for her father, it seemed as if it were a home-like, comfortable thought to him, that her mother had one of her children with her. He called her the first link of his Daisy Chain drawn up out of sight; and, during the quiet days that ensued, he seemed as it were to be lifted above grief, dwelling upon hope. [...] Jennings [was] added to the bearers, their own men, and two Cocksmoor labourers, who, early on Christmas Eve, carried her to the Minster. Last time she had been there, Alan Ernescliffe had supported her. Now, what was mortal of him lay beneath the palm tree, beneath the glowing summer sky, while the first snow flakes hung like pearls on her pall. But, as they laid her by her mother’s side, who could doubt that they were together?” Book 2, Chapter 25, pages 645-648 <h3>Note</h3> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> The bells were paid for by Margaret's fiance, Alan Ernescliffe, a sailor who died overseas before they could be married, and endowed the new church at Cocksmoor in his will. The lovers are shown to be united in death through the church, as they never could be in life. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Daisy Chain Description An account of the resource Yonge’s 1853 novel The Heir of Redclyffe was the bestseller which made her name, but it was The Daisy Chain (1856) which cemented her reputation. In the preface, Yonge describes it as “a Family Chronicle” (v), and this was the genre with which she came to be most closely associated. The novel tells the story of the eleven May children,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> who lose their mother in the opening chapter. Yonge was to become famous for her portrayals of invalids, and disabled characters abound in all her major novels: Charles Edmonstone in The Heir of Redclyffe, Ermine Williams in The Clever Woman of the Family (1865) and Geraldine Underwood in The Pillars of the House (1873). Margaret May is perhaps Yonge’s most archetypal representation of an invalid; injured in the carriage accident which kills her mother, she never walks again, spending seven years as an invalid before succumbing to a wasting illness. Margaret’s patience and resignation, developed during her years confined to her couch, are a powerful influence on her impulsive younger sister, Ethel, whose maturation forms the novel’s main narrative arc. It is Margaret who persuades Ethel to give up her attempt to keep pace with her brother Norman’s classical studies in order to focus on her daughterly duties, and whose decline and death make way for Ethel to take her place as the mother-substitute in the family. Margaret herself is said to be “perfectly content and happy”, knowing “the temptation of her character had been to be the ruler and manager of everything, and she saw it had been well for her to have been thus assigned the part of Mary, rather than of Martha” (633). She repeatedly suggests that she would have enjoyed managing a household and a social life, to the point of being domineering and worldly, like her sister Flora, had not the enforced passivity of invalidism enabled her to achieve a submissive, and truly Christian, attitude. Yonge’s depiction of Margaret’s invalidism had great cultural resonance: in 1866, a critic for the Saturday Review wrote that “An angelic being with a weak spine, who, from her sofa, directed with mild wisdom the affairs of the family or the parish, was a favourite creation of our lady-novelists of the pre-Braddonian period.” (438-9)<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> The author mentions Yonge as one of a group of novelists, including Elizabeth Sewell and Dinah Mulock Craik, who were famous for their interest in invalidism. Although this subject was seen as distasteful by some twentieth century critics – Georgina Battiscombe describes Margaret as “a sad bore” (94) and Q. D. Leavis was revolted by Yonge’s “morbid” preoccupation with “permanent invalid[s]” (153) – more recently, critics have begun to point out the powerful aspects of Margaret’s representation as an invalid. Before bequeathing her place to Ethel, she achieves a central place in the domestic sphere which is Yonge’s focus and ideal, and thus succeeds in transforming her enforced immobility into a source of indirect power. The following extract is taken from her death-bed scene. <h3>Notes</h3> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> The family reappear in subsequent novels, including The Trial (1864) and The Pillars of the House (1874). <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> “Novels Past and Present”, Saturday Review, 21.546 (April 1866), pp.438-440. Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) became famous for her ‘sensation’ novels, such as Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and Aurora Floyd (1863), notorious for their shocking plot-lines and sensuous heroines. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yonge, Charlotte Mary Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Yonge, Charlotte. The Daisy Chain, or, Aspirations: A Family Chronicle. 1856. Macmillan: London, 1879. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Macmillan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1856 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Clare Walker Gore Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This watercolour and chalk portrait shows a young, ringletted romantic version of Charlotte Yonge. Portrait by George Richmond (1844). Courtesy <a title="National Portrait Gallery" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/" target="_blank">National Portrait Gallery</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Portrait of Yonge" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw06981/Charlotte-Mary-Yonge?" target="_blank">NPG 2193</a>). Relation A related resource <ul><li> Battiscombe, Georgina, Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable: London, 1943. </li> <li> Chen, Mia, ‘ “And there was no helping it”: Disability and Social Reproduction in Charlotte Yonge’s The Daisy Chain’, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 4.2 (Summer 2008) </li> <li> Leavis, Q.D., ‘Charlotte Yonge and “Christian Discrimination”’ Scrutiny. 12 (March 1944): 152-160. </li> <li> Sturrock, June, Heaven and Home: Charlotte M. Yonge’s Domestic Fiction and the Victorian Debate Over Women Victoria, B.C.:University of Victoria, 1995. </li> </ul> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Portrait of Charlotte Yonge (1844) by George Richmond. Courtesy <a title="National Portrait Gallery" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/" target="_blank">National Portrait Gallery</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Charlotte Yonge Portrait" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw06981/Charlotte-Mary-Yonge?LinkID=mp04969&search=sas&sText=charlotte+yonge&role=sit&rNo=0" target="_blank">NPG 2193</a>). Charlotte Yonge Class Gender Invalidism Literature Mobility Novel https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/cd07918c6f0f82a422b73c24f001ba6e.jpeg 99d2438f56b35820b9b03f6c8d86386e Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 280 Height 430 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource This black and white photograph shows a young woman holding Rhodes’ Audiphone to her mouth, c.1926. Courtesy of The Central Institute for the Deaf-Max A. Goldstein Historic Devices for Hearing Collection. Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1880 to 1901 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. The mute will feel the influence of the sound on his hand in the instructor's throat, imitate it in his own throat, will hear the speaker's voice on the Audiphone and will be aided in imitating the speaker by seeing his lips, and will also hear his own voice on the Audiphone, and readily learn to speak. It is remarkable how rapidly they learn to distinguish words by sound. In a very short time, they have learned to repeat whole sentences spoken to them while blindfolded. It is believed that every mute child may hear and learn to speak by using the Audiphone. It must be borne in mind, however, that a mute who has never heard has no conception of the meaning of the simplest words. Even though he be very intelligent and highly educated, read and write fluently, and interpret language readily by the motion of the speaker's lips, still he will not understand the most elementary sound until he is taught. He is familiar with visible, but knows nothing of articulate, language. At first, if you ask him to intimate whether or not he hears by means of the Audiphone, he may indicate that he feels a peculiar sensation that is new to him. It will not be long, however, until he realizes that what seemed to him feeling we call sound. Parents and teachers of mutes are, therefore, recommended to begin with the rudiments of language, as in teaching a child of two years. Mutes enjoy music from the first. A piano or organ should be used daily in their early training, at first resting the handle of the Audiphone on the instrument. Start and stop the music at intervals, until they realize the difference. Then they may withdraw from the piano and gradually accustom themselves to the new sensation. Faithful and patient practice, repeating over and over again the vowels and other simple sounds day after day, must be the ground-work of the mute's articulate education. To expect him to understand the first sounds that reach his brain is like asking the child in the A B C class to read Bacon or Shakspeare [sic]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Audiphone Description An account of the resource On September 1879, Richard Silas Rhodes (1842-1902), president of a publishing company in Chicago, received a patent for his “Audiphone for the Deaf” his various improvements to the device. (<a>U.S. Patent No. 319,828</a>). Rhodes had conductive hearing loss<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> for twenty years following a bout of illness and was frustrated with his continuous failed encounters with ear trumpets. He observed he could hear the ticking of his watch when he held it in his mouth, and this inspired his construction of the Audiphone, which exploited the fact sound waves can be transmitted through the teeth or cranial bones. Hearing through bone conduction by using a material to transmit external sound through the jaw or teeth is an ancient notion, with references to its use dating back to the Ancient Greeks. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some scholars observed sounds could be heard at a distance upon placing a rod on the ground and holding the other end to the teeth. Physicians, educators, and even deaf individuals experimented with a variety of materials, such as wood, to figure out which objects best could transmit sound from a vibrating source (Mills 143; Goldstein 345). The Audiphone was made of a flexible sheet of polished black vulcanite (hardened rubber), with a handle, and was constructed in the shape of a fan. It was 24cm wide 27.7cm long, and 1mm thick. Another model was later constructed consisting of two leaves, designed so the user could also hear his or her voice. The standard model sold for $10 and the double-model sold for $15, an expensive sum at the time. For an extra charge, Rhodes would add ornamental features to disguise the instrument and make it inconspicuous as a hearing aid device. It was designed to be held loosely in the hand, with the upper edge placed under the upper teeth with slight pressure; the lower teeth should not be allowed to come into contact with the instrument (Goldstein 347). The device was effective only in conductive hearing loss. Users could improve their hearing up to 30 decibels, equivalent to a soft conversation heard a few feet away in a quiet room (for comparison, 20dB is the rustling of leaves, or whispering; 0dB is the hearing threshold). In January 1881, Rhodes received a patent for a modified version of his design, an Audiphone that folded as a fan of 10mm. The model was awarded a medal at the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago. In an <a href="http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Stout38-t13-body-d1.html">advertising pamphlet</a>, The Audiphone: A New Invention that enables the deaf to hear (1879), Rhodes remarks the Audiphone was “GOOD NEWS FOR THE DEAF,” for it enables them to hear ordinary conversation readily and was beneficial for church, lectures, concerts, plays, and so forth. Moreover, the design of the device as a fan meant the user could easily conceal their deafness if they wished, by pretending they were simply using a fan. Numerous testimonials from the United States and Europe commented on the Audiphone’s <a href="http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Stout38-t13-body-d3.html">acoustic capabilities</a>. The Englishman James Samuelson, for instance, purchased one in his visit to the United States in 1880, and tried it himself both in private and in public. He testifies: “It seems to me that aurists [medical specialists of the ear] and teachers of the deaf will be very much benefited by the invention: the former, through being able to use it as an instrument for diagnosis…the latter, where the child is deaf from some injury or imperfection of the mechanical portions of the auditory apparatus” (Samuelson 12). Indeed, the Audiphone was used in schools for the deaf, particularly in France, though opinions on its benefits varied. Some teachers were astounded at its ability to assist deaf children to speak, while others noted it was completely unnecessary as a pedagogical aid. Mary McCowen, for instance, who taught a class of semi-deaf children at the Nebraska School for the Deaf (est. 1869), and at the “Voice and Hearing School for the Deaf” in Chicago, remarked: “Though I began the year’s work as a most enthusiastic advocate of the audiphones, and used it conscientiously for several months, I cannot without a protest allow it to be said that the teacher of that class ascribes the success to the audiphones. I make a specialty in my work here of training the hearing, but I have thus far failed to find a single child that was really and truly helped by the audiphones” (American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb 87). Some schools in England even reported that at least twenty percent of the pupils had sufficient hearing when assisted with the audiphone, enabling them to participate more diligently in their speech-training and learning. Rhodes’ Audiphone remained a popular bone-conduction hearing instrument until the early years of the twentieth century, long after Rhodes’ unfortunate death—he was killed while walking along the Wisconsin Central Railroad tracks in Illinois (Berger 318). Various other patents and designs of the Audiphone popped up over the ears, each boasting a more efficient conduction system, a cheaper price tag, or a more revolutionary design. Some of these were quickly dismissed as nothing more than another <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20716FE34551B7A93C6A81788D85F448884F9">“quack cure” for deafness</a>. <h3>Note</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Conductive hearing loss is when it is difficult for sound waves to conduct through the tympanum (the ear drum) or the middle ear, where the ossicles (three tiny bones in the ear) reside. </div> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhodes, Richard S. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Rhodes, Richard S. The Audiphone: A New Invention that Enables the Deaf to Hear. Chicago: Rhodes & McClure, 1879. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1881 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jaipreet Virdi-Dhesi Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This black and white photograph shows a young woman holding Rhodes’ Audiphone to her mouth, c.1926. Courtesy of The Central Institute for the Deaf-Max A. Goldstein Historic Devices for Hearing Collection. <a href="http://beckerimages.wustl.edu/">Becker Medical Library</a>, Washington University School of Medicine. Relation A related resource <ul><li> Berger, Kenneth W. The Hearing Aid, it’s Operation and Development. Michigan, USA: National Hearing Aid Society, 1970. </li> <li> Berger, Kenneth W. “Early Bone Conduction Hearing Aid Devices.” Archives of Otolaryngology 102 (May 1976): 315-318. </li> <li> Murdy, Albert and Tjellstorm, Anders. “Historical Background of Bone Conduction Hearing Devices and Bone Conduction Hearing Aids.” Archives of Otorhinolaryngology 71 (2011): 1-9. </li> <li> Mills, Mara. “When Mobile Communication Technologies Were New.” Endeavour 33.4 (2009): 140-146. </li> <li> Goldstein, Max A. Problems of the Deaf. St. Louis: The Laryngoscope Press, 1933. </li> <li> Samuelson, James. “Rhodes’s Audiphone.” British Medical Journal 3.1 (1880): 12. </li> </ul> Advertisement Deafness Medicine Mobility Prosthesis Technology https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/0f1e1e4b36e4d6ba81e11ade96dd1eab.jpg df74c52653c74bdcbaac3c00b95b985c Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 1050 Height 922 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String byline:Picasa IPTC Array a:1:{s:6:"byline";s:6:"Picasa";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource The frontispiece of The Pillars of the House, Vol.I, Herbert Gandy, shows Felix and Wilmet kneeling at the foot of their father's deathbed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1860 to 1880 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Felix found Geraldine cowering down in her chair, with her hands clasped together over her forehead. She looked up at him, as if startled by his entrance. ‘O Felix, how could you?’ broke from her. ‘My dear, I could not help it. Has it been so very distressing?’ ‘Oh!’ with a great gasp, ‘I’m sure to refuse a man is the most horrible thing in the world – except to accept him!And such a man too – so great and good and kind. You shouldn’t have let him do it, Felix.’ ‘Don’t scold me, Cherry; how was I to know you would not like it?’ ‘Felix! an old man like that!’<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> ‘Well, that’s decisive,’ said Felix, laughing at the tone; ‘but, indeed, I did think you admired him very much.’ ‘So I do – but not in that way – not so as to bear to see him lower himself – and – and have to grieve him –’ and the tears started from her eyes. ‘But you know, he only could have done it because he saw a poor little lame thing and wanted to take care of her.’ ‘I think it goes a good deal deeper than that, Cherry.’ ‘I’m very sorry,’ said Cherry. ‘How very disagreeable it is that such things will happen; I thought, at any rate, that I was safe from them; and he was such an old man, and such a kind friend, that I was so proud of; and now I have vexed him so – and it is all over.’ ‘Do you really regret it? are you sure you did not speak only in the first surprise?’ ‘Felix! you! you to be against me!’ [...] ‘Cherry dear, don’t you think we ought to look at it reasonably? If you do not feel as if you cared for him – like a novel – yet still –’ ‘Hush, Felix! he is much too good to be accepted any other way.’ ‘I am not sure that he thinks so.’ ‘I do, then!’ said Cherry, raising her head up indignantly. ‘I should be ashamed to marry a man without! A lame, sickly, fretful thing like me ought to bring real love at least, to make up to a man for being bothered with her. Come, Felix, have done talking sensible nonsense! I know you don’t wish it, so don’t pretend.’ ‘I am making no pretence. It would be a dreadful business for me; but at the more I think I ought to make you consider.’ ‘Consider! Oh! I’ll consider fast enough; that beautiful drawing-room, with the statues, and the conservatory – and a carriage – and going to Italy! Do you think I am going to be bribed by things like that?’ ‘No; but to have one so fatherly, kind, and tender –’ ‘As if one wanted one’s husband to be fatherly! [...] I like him, I tell you; but not so much as the tip of your little finger!’ ‘Perhaps not now; but – ’ ‘Felix! You don’t want to get rid of me? I know you were right to argue with Wilmet,<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> and persuade her, because she had let her heart go, and only was afraid to acknowledge it; but mine isn’t gone, and couldn’t go. If I had not learnt to work, and had not a work to do, I might try to think of freeing you from a burthen; but now that I have, why should I upset it all, and wrench myself away from you? When I lean against you, I have got my home, and my rest, and all I want here. I never go away from you but I feel that I do want you so; and when one feels that, what’s the use of looking out for somebody else?’ ‘Dear little Sweetheart! Yes!’ as she lay contentedly against him, with his arm round her; ‘it only makes me tremble that you should give up a home like that, and risk so much upon my one life. [...]’ ‘I should love you better dead that any other man alive!’ cried Cherry impetuously. ‘I won’t do it, Felix! so spare your dutiful remonstrances! I do hate them so, and I know you don’t mean them!’ <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Mr.Grinstead is forty-six. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Wilmet is the eldest sister in the family, who has already become engaged, and is subsequently married. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Pillars of the House Description An account of the resource One of Charlotte M. Yonge’s last great family sagas, The Pillars of the House (1873) prominently features disability. Several of the thirteen orphaned Underwood siblings experience disability or chronic illness: Felix, the eldest, struggles against the weakness of the lungs he has inherited from his father, who died of tuberculosis; his younger sister Geraldine has a tubercular ankle, which impairs her mobility and ultimately causes her to have her foot amputated; and the youngest brother, Theodore, is deaf, mute and developmentally disabled. The novel’s attitude towards disability and impairment is captured in the family motto, which Yonge included as a subtitle, “Under Wode, Under Rode”. The dying Reverend Underwood explains this to Felix, on his death-bed: “ ‘Bear thy cross, and thy cross will bear thee, like little Geraldine’s cross potent – Rod and Rood, Cross and Crutch – all the same etymologically and veritably.’” (1.35) This image of the Cross as prosthesis indicates the central place disability came to have in Yonge’s understanding of Christian experience. Having said this, Yonge’s representation of disabled characters in The Pillars of the House is highly various, and while physical suffering is clearly shown to be spiritually salutary, Geraldine Underwood is no saintly invalid. Although Geraldine refers to her diseased ankle as her “cross” (1.357), she does not endure pain passively: instead, she chooses to have her foot amputated, so that she can play a more active role in the family home. In fact, domesticity does not turn out to be her true calling, and she pursues her artistic talents, eventually going to stay in London to study art, and having her paintings successfully displayed at the Royal Academy. While she is in London, she receives a proposal of marriage from her new friend, the wealthy and distinguished sculptor Mr. Grinstead, which she refuses.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> The extract below is taken from the scene in which she informs Felix of her decision. What is striking in this passage is that Geraldine appears to cite her disability as a reason not to marry, primarily in order to justify a decision she has already made for other reasons. As the scene develops, it becomes clear that she does not want to leave her adored brother Felix, nor to give up her new-found career as an artist. Disabled women are rarely depicted as marriageable in novels of this period,<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> but in this episode, Yonge represents Grinstead as being deeply in love with Geraldine, and Geraldine’s refusal as stemming from her aversion to the match, rather than from a sense of inferiority. While the heroine of Dinah Mulock Craik’s 1850 novel <a title="Link to Olive" href="http://www.nineteenthcenturydisability.org/items/show/5">Olive</a>, another disabled artist, can be seen to overcome her self-hatred through her marriage, Geraldine Underwood asserts herself in this refusal scene, and is shown to be “peaceful and happy” (2.172) in her chosen life as a celibate artist and sister. <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> In the sequel to The Pillars of the House, The Long Vacation (1895), Geraldine is shown to have married Mr. Grinstead many years later, after Felix’s death. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> For a discussion of this, see Martha Stoddard Holmes, Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004) </div> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yonge, Charlotte Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Pillars of the House, Charlotte M. Yonge (1873), (repr. Macmillan: London, 1889), 2 vols. Vol. II, Chapter XXX, 132-134. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Clare Walker Gore Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The frontispiece of The Pillars of the House, Vol.I, Herbert Gandy, shows Felix and Wilmet kneeling at the foot of their father's deathbed. Relation A related resource <ul><li> Colón, Susan E., “<a title="Colon Article" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09699081003754998#.UgivP23hcy0" target="_blank">Realism and Reserve: Charlotte Yonge and Tractarian Aesthetics</a>”. Women’s Writing 17.2 (August 2010): 221-235. </li> <li> Elizabeth Hale, “<a title="article link" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09699081003755151#.UgiwkW3hcy0" target="_blank">Disability and the Individual Talent: Adolescent Girlhood in The Pillars of the House and What Katy Did</a>”. Women’s Writing 17.2 (August 2010): 343-360. </li> <li> Juckett, Elizabeth C., “Cross-Gendering the Underwoods: Christian Subjection in Charlotte Yonge’s The Pillars of the House”, Antifeminism and the Victorian Novel: Rereading Nineteenth-Century Women Writers. Ed. Tamara Wagner Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2009. </li> <li> Losano, Antonia, The Woman Painter in Victorian Literature. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2008. </li> </ul> Charlotte Yonge Gender Invalidism Literature Mobility Novel https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/4e666e957ca572d0e5c1b82159c1a7e2.jpg 0f79da7c2f9d8878cc73865aada87311 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 712 Height 868 Bit Depth 8 Channels 1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Jane and Rochester reunite. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. “It is time some one undertook to re-humanize you,” said I, parting his thick and long-uncut locks; “for I see you are being metamorphosed into a lion, or something of that sort. You have a ‘faux air’ of Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain, : your hair reminds me of eagles’ feathers; whether your nails are grown like birds’ claws or not, I have not yet noticed.” “On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails;” he said, drawing the mutilated limb from his breast, and shewing it to me. “It is a mere stump—a ghastly sight! Don’t you think so, Jane?” “It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes—and the scar of fire on your forehead; and the worst of it is, one is in danger of loving you too well for all this; and making too much of you.” “I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my cicatrized visage.” “Did you? Don’t tell me so—lest I should say something disparaging to your judgment. Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire and have the harth swept up. Can you tell when there is a good fire?” “Yes; with the right eye I see a glow—a ruddy haze.” “And you see the candles?” “Very dimly—each is a luminous cloud.” “Can you see me?” “No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.” “When do you take supper?” “I never take supper.” “But you shall have some to-night. I am hungry: so are you, I dare say, only you forget.” Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared him, likewise, a comfortable repast. My spirits were excited, and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time after. there was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him: all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lied; and he lived in mine. Blind as he was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his lineaments softened and warmed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jane Eyre Description An account of the resource Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 sensation, Jane Eyre, ends with a dramatic climax in which the hero is blinded and maimed. This ending is often read as a symbolic castration. Richard Chase first proposed this Freudian reading of Rochester's disabilities in a 1948 essay, arguing that "Rochester’s injuries are, I should think, a symbolic castration. The faculty of vision, the analysts have shown, is often identified in the unconscious with the energy of sex."<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> Peter Pickrel summed up the argument thus: “Charlotte Brontë’s spinsterish sensibilities were such that his [Rochester’s] rampant sexuality had to be tamed before he could become a suitable husband for a nice early-Victorian heroine like Jane Eyre”.<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert found that the opposite was true thirty years later, and that though Brontë really did wish to castrate Rochester, the urge came from her anger at being a woman author in a patriarchal society rather than from her spinsterish inability to handle her hero's sexuality.<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> Recent disability studies readings of Jane Eyre, collected in The Blindman and the Madwoman, have overturned this critical chestnut. Critics have found an erotics of care-giving in the Jane-Rochester dyad, and an emphasis on interdependence. In this scene from the penultimate chapter of the novel, Jane returns after an absence to find Rochester has been blinded and maimed in an attempt to save his estranged wife from a fire she has set to Thornfield. Rochester is surprised to find that Jane finds him as attractive as ever. Far from suggesting that Rochester’s sexuality has been tamed, the couple’s playful banter and the tactility of their rapport now that Rochester is blind and must feel Jane to see her suggest an erotic side to disability. <h3>Notes</h3> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Chase, Richard. “The Brontës, or, Myth Domesticated.” Forms of Modern Fiction. Ed. William Van O'Connor. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1948. 108-109. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Pickrel, Peter. "Jane Eyre: The Apocalypse of the Body." ELH 53.1 (1986): 165-82. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. “A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane's Progress.” The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brontë, Charlotte Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard Nemesvari. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1999 [1847]. 537-538. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1847 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource "You are altogether a human being Jane? You are certain of that?" Jane stands facing the viewer, clasping Rochester's hand, who is seated in a chair with his back to the viewer. F.H. Townsend illustration to the second edition of Jane Eyre, 1847, Chapter 37. Image in the public domain courtesy of <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AP422b.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>. Relation A related resource <ul><li> Bolt, David, Julia Miele Rodas, and Elizabeth Donaldson, eds. The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. </li> <li> Carpenter, Mary Wilson. <a href="http://differences.dukejournals.org/content/17/3/52.refs">“Blinding the Hero.”</a> Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 17.3 (2006): 52–68 </li> </ul><ul><li> Chen, Chih-Ping. "Am I a Monster?": Jane Eyre Among the Shadows of Freaks.” Studies in the Novel. 34.4 (Winter 2002): 367-384. </li> </ul> Language A language of the resource English Amputation Blindness Charlotte Brontë Literature Novel https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/fb7ce80138920dad18666487654cbcc2.jpg 5af8776fd4134ba5d848c9cf861eabe0 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 449 Height 552 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Mrs. Skewton, seated in a three wheeled chair in a crowded street, is greeted by a gentleman who tips his hat to her. Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), “Major Bagstock is delighted to have that opportunity”, from Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1847. Scan by Philip V. Allingham. Victorian Web. <http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/phiz/104.html>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. In this manner the Major and Mr Dombey were walking arm-in-arm, much to their own satisfaction,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> when they beheld advancing towards them, a wheeled chair, in which a lady was seated, indolently steering her carriage by a kind of rudder in front, while it was propelled by some unseen power in the rear. [ . . . ] ‘Why, what the devil have we here, Sir!’ cried the Major, stopping as this little cavalcade drew near. ‘My dearest Edith!’<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> drawled the lady in the chair, ‘Major Bagstock!’ The Major no sooner heard the voice, than he relinquished Mr Dombey’s arm, darted forward, took the hand of the lady in the chair and pressed it to his lips. With no less gallantry, the Major folded both his gloves upon his heart, and bowed low to the other lady. And now, the chair having stopped, the motive power became visible in the shape of a flushed page pushing behind, who seemed to have in part out-grown and in part out-pushed his strength, for when he stood upright he was tall, and wan, and thin, and his plight appeared the more forlorn from his having injured the shape of his hat, by butting at the carriage with his head to urge it forward, as is sometimes done by elephants in Oriental countries. <h3>Notes</h3> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Mr. Dombey and Major Bagstock have just arrived in Leamington, a British resort town famous for its medicinal springs. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Edith Granger is Mrs. Skewton’s daughter. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dombey and Son Description An account of the resource Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son (1846–1848) attests to his career-long interest in chair-bound characters<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>—characters who, because of illness, injury, or egotism, are confined or confine themselves to a “wheeled chair” (alternately referred to as the “Bath wheeled chair” or the “Bath chair”). In this particular novel, Dickens provides two examples of Victorian chair users: Paul Dombey, who, when ill, travels by wheeled chair so that he can sit by the sea with his sister; and Mrs. Skewton, an elderly lady who travels in a wheeled chair to perpetuate an illusion of wealth and social status. The former he renders sympathetic, while the latter he depicts as a figure of falseness—a heap of makeup and clothes that almost melts into the chair with which she joins her body. This excerpt from Dombey and Son, in which Mrs. Skewton is first introduced to the reader, illustrates Dickens’s perhaps harsh treatment of Mrs. Skewton and invites readers to consider the reasoning behind certain prejudices against chair users. In his depiction of the relationship between Mrs. Skewton and her page, Withers, Dickens engages with past and contemporary criticism directed toward people who travel by chair. In the novel, Withers is reduced to a beast of burden, “butting at the carriage with his head” like an elephant (317). To further his point, Dickens later describes Withers as another animal: “toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow battering-ram” (321). Dickens’s furious humor levels an attack on Mrs. Skewton for her treatment of Withers as though he were an animal, an object for her personal use. To better understand Dickens’s portrayal of Mrs. Skewton, a brief history of the wheeled chair’s evolution from the sedan chair is necessary. First used in London by the Duke of Buckingham in the early seventeenth century, the sedan chair was less a “chair,” per se, and more of an enclosed box with glass doors and a detachable roof that was carried through the streets of London by two or more porters (alternately called “chairmen”), with “link-boys,” or torch bearers, employed to light the way for nighttime journeys. Patronized primarily by the wealthier classes of society, the sedan chair received much negative attention from the public, in part because the sedan chairs often collided with and injured pedestrians and in part because the public viewed the technology as demeaning to the chairmen. As evidenced by nineteenth-century periodicals, the negative discourse surrounding the sedan chair continued well past its era of usage. For instance, one anonymous writer for Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts suggests that seventeenth-century Londoners “grumbl[ed] indignantly at the pride of the man [the Duke] who employed his fellow-creatures to do the service of beasts of burden” (91–92).<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> While the chairs were most often used by those for whom walking was a burden, their support by lower-class muscle caused the public to reject them wholesale as an unnecessary luxury. In the nineteenth century, the sedan chair became increasingly obsolete as it was replaced by the wheeled chair, which was initially introduced in Bath, Leamington, and other seaside health spas as a means to transport the ill to the mineral water baths. Contrary to their wheel-less predecessors, which were owned or hired by the “able-bodied” and “disabled” alike, Bath chairs were used almost entirely by those who could not walk easily. The demographic of chair users shifted in another way: whereas the sedan chairs were primarily employed by elite society, wheeled chairs, because cheaper to hire, were more accessible to middle class patrons. Despite these changes, the wheeled chair still attracted hostilities, particularly owing to its effect on the chairmen, who often developed orthopedic impediments of their own while working. For example, in “The Bath-Chair Man’s Story,” Florence Marryat’s chairman-protagonist references his “old round back,” which results from his constant stooping (516).<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> Prejudices against wheeled-chair users as lazy—choosing to ride rather than walk—and as demeaning and debilitating the lower-class chairmen continued to solidify during the nineteenth century. In characterizing Withers alternately as a battering ram and as an elephant, then, Dickens underscores the class dynamics inherited by the wheeled chair from its seventeenth- and eighteenth-century precursor. Dickens alludes to such class tensions when he portrays Mrs. Skewton as “calling to the page with all the languid dignity with which she had called in days of yore to a coachman with a wig, cauliflower nosegay, and silk stockings” (320). Her use of the wheeled chair thus exposes her to the narrator’s and the reader’s critical gaze, especially because she travels in it not out of necessity, but rather as a display of the wealth and status that she, in actuality, lacks. As the narrator indicates, after becoming accustomed in her youth to travel by barouche, Mrs. Skewton “[maintains] the wheeled chair and the butting page: there being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent her from walking” (319). Attending to the various elements that contributed to the assemblage of the Victorian wheeled chair—the page, the chair user, and the chair itself—Dickens highlights the objectification of an often forgotten participant, the chairman, thereby positioning prejudices against chair users as, at least partially, class-based. Mrs. Skewton’s pretense of need and her mistreatment of Withers contribute to her removal from readerly sympathy until she becomes terminally ill and truly dependent upon the aid and support of others. <h3>Notes</h3> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> This preoccupation of Dickens’s was first noted by M. J. Lesser in “Dickens and the Chair-Bound.” See below for full reference. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> “Sedan-Chairs.” Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts 12.580 (9 February 1895): 91–93. British Periodicals. Web. 14 June 2013. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> Marryat, Florence. “The Bath-Chair Man’s Story.” Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers 22 (March 1868): 507–20. British Periodicals. Web. 13 June 2013. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. London: Penguin, 2002. 316–17. Print. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1847 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jennifer Janechek Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Mrs. Skewton, seated in a three wheeled chair in a crowded street, is greeted by a gentleman who tips his hat to her. Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), “Major Bagstock is delighted to have that opportunity”, from Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1847. Scan by Philip V. Allingham. <a title="Victorian Web" href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/phiz/104.html" target="_blank">Victorian Web</a>. <http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/phiz/104.html>. Relation A related resource <ul><li> Fawcett, Trevor. “<a title="Fawcett Chair Article" href="%3A//condor.depaul.edu/cchaden/bath/chairtransport.html" target="_blank">Chair Transport in Bath: The Sedan Era</a>.” Bath History. Vol. 2. Gloucestershire, United Kingdom: Sutton Publishing, 1988: n. page. See <://condor.depaul.edu/cchaden/bath/chairtransport.html </li> <li> Lesser, M. J. “Dickens and the Chair-Bound.” Dickensian 73.381 (January 1977): 25–32. </li> <li> Sussman, Herbert and Gerhard Joseph. “Prefiguring the Posthuman: Dickens and Prosthesis.” Victorian Literature and Culture 32.2 (2004): 617–28. </li> </ul> Language A language of the resource English Charles Dickens Class Literature Mobility Novel Prosthesis Technology https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/575f6f2bdd8657306182d472178086e6.jpg b8d973c68cb81d3baaaf9d48cc6265bf Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1880 to 1901 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. “I first saw the light on the 5th of August, 1860, I was born in Lee Street, Wharf Street, Leicester. The deformity which I am now exhibiting was caused by my mother being frightened by an Elephant; my mother was going along the street when a procession of Animals were passing by, there was a terrible crush of people to see them, and unfortunately she was pushed under the Elephant's feet, which frightened her very much; this occurring during a time of pregnancy was the cause of my deformity. The measurement around my head is 36 inches, there is a large substance of flesh at the back as large as a breakfast cup, the other part in a manner of speaking is like hills and valleys, all lumped together, while the face is such a sight that no one could describe it. The right hand is almost the size and shape of an Elephant's foreleg, measuring 12 inches round the wrist and 5 inches round one of the fingers; the other hand and arm is no larger than that of a girl ten years of age, although it is well proportioned. My feet and legs are covered with thick lumpy skin, also my body, like that of an Elephant, and almost the same colour, in fact, no one would believe until they saw it, that such a thing could exist. It was not perceived much at birth, but began to develop itself when at the age of 5 years. I went to school like other children until I was about 11 or 12 years of age, when the greatest misfortune of my life occurred, namely - the death of my mother, peace to her, she was a good mother to me; after she died my father broke up his home and went to lodgings; unfortunately for me he married his landlady; henceforth I never had one moment's comfort, she having children of her own, and I not being so handsome as they, together with my deformity, she was the means of making my life a perfect misery; lame and deformed as I was, I ran, or rather walked away from home two or three times, but suppose father had some spark of parental feeling left, so he induced me to return home again. The best friend I had in those days was my father's brother, Mr. Merrick, hair Dresser, Church Gate, Leicester. When about 13 years old, nothing would satisfy my step-mother until she got me out to work; I obtained employment at Messrs. Freeman's Cigar Manufacturers, and worked there about two years, but my right hand got too heavy for making cigars, so I had to leave them. I was sent about the town to see if I could procure work, but being lame and deformed no one would employ me; when I went home for my meals, my step-mother used to say I had not been to seek for work. I was taunted and sneered at so that I would not go home for my meals, and used to stay in the streets with an hungry belly rather than return for anything to eat, what few half-meals I did have, I was taunted with the remark – ‘That's more than you have earned.’ Being unable to get employment my father got me a pedlar's license to hawk the town, but being deformed, people would not come to the door to buy my wares. In consequence of my ill luck my life was again made a misery to me, so that I again ran away and went hawking on my own account, but my deformity had grown to such an extent, so that I could not move about the town without having a crowd of people gather around me. I then went into the infirmary at Leicester, where I remained for two or three years, when I had to undergo an operation on my face, having three or four ounces of flesh cut away; so thought I, I'll get my living by being exhibited about the country. Knowing Mr. Sam Torr, Gladstone Vaults, Wharf Street, Leicester, went in for Novelties, I wrote to him, he came to see me, and soon arranged matters, recommending me to Mr. Ellis, Bee-hive Inn, Nottingham, from whom I received the greatest kindness and attention. In making my first appearance before the public, who have treated me well -- in fact I may say I am as comfortable now as I was uncomfortable before. I must now bid my kind readers adieu.” Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource The story of Joseph Carey Merrick began in 1862, when he was born to Mary Jane and Joseph Merrick of Leicester, but the story of the Elephant Man did not start until several years later. It was when he was a toddler that tumours first appeared on Merrick's body. They continued to grow and multiply throughout his short life, the result of what is now generally understood to be <a title="Proteus Syndrome" href="http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/proteus-syndrome" target="_blank">Proteus Syndrome</a>. Without modern surgical treatment, the condition eventually became so severe that it made a normal life impossible. As the autobiographical pamphlet above states, Merrick found a means of supporting himself by joining travelling 'freak shows', displaying his deformity to the public under the stage name of The Elephant Man. While touring, Merrick composed – albeit possibly with the help of an external writer – the above statement as part of a pamphlet to be distributed to crowds at each exhibition. He later attained fame of a different sort through his relationship with Dr. Frederick Treves, whose reports to the Pathological Society of London made him a medical curiosity. Similarly, F.C. Carr Gomm, chairman of the London Hospital, sent letters to The Times requesting charitable donations to cover the cost of Merrick’s residence there in the final years of his life, and these appeals saw the former sideshow performer faced with an entirely new audience of upper-class benefactors comprised of some celebrities and even royalty. As a result of the spectacular career pressed upon him, scholarly discussions about Merrick’s life and experiences tend to take place within frameworks focused on freakery or nineteenth century medicine rather than a wider perspective of disability history. It’s perhaps significant that most critical approaches centre on the many second-hand accounts of his life. Treves’ reports and his own autobiographical The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences, Carr Gomm’s letters, even accounts in the diaries of those who visited Merrick while at the London Hospital: these typically combine with official documents to form the basis on which contemporary scholars analyse Merrick. Primarily, these second-hand accounts present confused attempts to define Merrick as ‘other’, whether other-as-object or other-as-martyr. In most accounts he becomes both, and yet he is neither. Merrick is other, and yet he is also human; more accurately, he is the realization of the other within humanity, and the reflection of the limitations of binaries and boundaries which define humanity in opposition to the other. But while the contemporary accounts that refer to Merrick struggle with this reflection, the one account which at first glance seems most to struggle, Merrick’s own autobiography, in fact offers a more complete acceptance of his redefined humanity. Despite debate over the authorship of the statement in this pamphlet, I refer to it as an autobiography because I find no evidence to convince me otherwise; Merrick was literate, and there is no concrete evidence that the pamphlet was composed by anyone else, although he may have had help with the physical act of writing. That said, confusion as to the author is understandable given the strange narrative voice that characterises the autobiography. In their critical exploration of Merrick’s narrative construction, Peter Graham and Fritz Oehlschlaeger note that the persistent detachment of the statement “might plausibly be ascribed either to an external writer... or to Merrick's own distinguishing between his essence and the misshapen 'thing' that was his body” (13). However, to explore Merrick’s written experience as a means of understanding his own perspective on his “essence” and his “body”, it helps to consider the way in which the autobiographical pamphlet can be considered a piece of disability writing, and to examine this voice in relation to those which speak about Merrick. Mark Mossman explores the function of disability writing in relation to the disabled persons’ construction or definition of selfhood; he describes how disability writing “attempts to reclaim ownership of the body and the way the body is understood” by spinning the body’s inherent instability into “the articulation of a volitional mode of selfhood” (7). For Mossman, “writing disability becomes an empowering act of control, a deconstructive critical strategy that attempts to break down oppressive and imprisoning cultural construction… the performance and general representation of disability is re-centered, re-focused on the disabled subject itself” (7-8). At first glance, it would appear that Merrick’s autobiography does not constitute “an empowering act of control” or a “deconstructive critical strategy,” given that Merrick seems to describe himself within the confines of stereotypes imposed on him by Treves and others. Merrick emphasises his own otherness by referring to his right hand as “almost the size and shape of an Elephant's [sic] foreleg,” and to himself as an impossible “thing”, informing readers that “no one would believe until they saw it, that such a thing could exist.” The way that Merrick both distances and owns his body throughout his autobiography also seems not to fit under the heading of disability writing, which Mossman asserts attempts to reclaim ownership of the body. Merrick’s narrative alternates between the use “the” and “my” when referring to his body: “my head is 36 inches”, “the face is such a sight that no one could describe it”, “the right hand”, “my feet and legs”, “my body”, “my deformity.” While these fluctuations and the images of otherness that Merrick employs could be seen as an inability to reclaim his body or as evidence of an external writer, they can also be interpreted another way. Merrick describes his body as both part of his subjectivity, claiming his embodied experience as a fundamental part of his humanity, and at the same time realizing his body as an object. His language throughout this passage reflects a subjectivity like that outlined by Ruth Robbins, in which “we are not only subjective selves... but also objective selves - selves with a material presence in the world, selves with bodies that may in fact be subject to actions and forces that we cannot control, which are in fact the objects of the actions and desires... of others” (8-9). From this perspective, then, Merrick is not hesitating or unable to reclaim his body; he is in fact claiming ownership of his body as intertwined with his subjectivity and as distanced object. In short, he is claiming ownership of his body in a way that those whose bodies conform to the strictures of “normal” humanity cannot do, at least, not comfortably. Understanding Merrick’s autobiography as a method of reclaiming his body and his embodied subjectivity brings it more in line with disability narratives. However, rather than simply “deflect[ing]and displac[ing] the powerful gaze of the ‘norm’” (Mossman 8), Merrick’s autobiography calls the very nature of the ‘norm’ into question. The accounts written about him by others attempt to divide him into the bodily other and the human spirit, but Merrick’s autobiography denies this separation, and brings his body and his spirit together into one lived experience. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Merrick, Joseph Carey. “The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick.” In Michael Howell and Peter Ford, The True History of the Elephant Man, 3rd Edition. 173-174. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1980, 1992. (Available online at <a href="http://www4.ncsu.edu/~leila/documents/autobioMerrick.pdf">http://www4.ncsu.edu/~leila/documents/autobioMerrick.pdf</a>) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1884 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ally Crockford Relation A related resource <ul><li> Evans, Jonathan. Treves and the Elephant Man. Compiled by Jonathan Evans. Loughton, Essex: Metloc Printers, 2003. </li> <li> Montagu, Ashley. The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity. London: Allison & Busby Ltd, 1972. </li> <li> Mossman, Mark. “Acts of Becoming: Autobiography, Frankenstein, and the Postmodern Body.” Postmodern Culture 11, no. 3 (May 2001). </li> <li> Robbins, Ruth. Subjectivity. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. </li> <li> Treves, Sir Frederick. The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences. London: Cassell & Company Ltd, 1923. (Available at: <a href="http://archive.org/details/elephantmanother00trevuoft">http://archive.org/details/elephantmanother00trevuoft</a>) </li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Carte de visite photograph of Joseph Carey Merrick. Image Courtesy <a title="Merrick" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJoseph_Merrick_carte_de_visite_photo%2C_c._1889.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a> under a Creative Commons License. Title A name given to the resource Joseph Carey Merrick, ‘The Elephant Man’ Autobiographical pamphlet Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Merrick, Joseph Carey Language A language of the resource English Celebrity freakery life writing Medicine https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/223e90d53a50a30669bcdec5a4411574.jpeg 44ccb11f742b60fa912395d02a2ae58e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource A woman swathed in the robes of a Greek goddess measures two children with a ruler that reads: “Haec est regula recti” (“This is the model of straightness”). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. [T]here is no higher pleasure, no greater distinction, no more exalted exercise of the human mind, than that profession which has for its object the benefit of our species, and the mitigation and removal of those ills to which all of mortal birth are subjected. To the visitation of deformity this remark applies with double force, for the deformed have been regarded as loathsome in body, and depraved in mind; they have often isolated themselves from their fellow creatures; persecution of them has ever been sanctioned by the Mosaic ceremonial, which admitted the unblemished alone to the dignity of priesthood. Possessing all the feelings, and susceptible of all the impulses which animate the breast of man, frequently morbidly sensitive from the consciousness of their deformity, adorned with genius, gifted with wit, graced by fortune and by birth, crowned with learning,--still is the deformed man exposed to the derision of the heartless, and is shut out from the world simply because nature has played some freak by which he differs from his fellow mortals. Nevertheless, history records the names of many whose spiritual excellence overcame their bodily deformity: Socrates, Aesop, Alexander the Great, whose head his said to have inclined slightly to the left shoulder, the illustrious Lord Burleigh, Pope, Talleyrand, Sir Walter Scott, Flaxman, and Byron, were all deformed in different degrees.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> I believe the sole instance recorded by the classic poets of female deformity is a woman named Kutila, who lived to be a hundred, she is spoken of by Pliny, and also by Juvenal. A facetious Englishman, named Hay, has written an Essay on Bodily Deformity, in which he good-naturedly and sensibly vindicates those labouring under such an affliction from the stigma so ungenerously cast upon them.<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> He was himself deformed. <div> <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates">Socrates</a> (c. 469-399 BC), an ancient Greek philosopher, was considered by some ugly to the point of deformity; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop">Aesop</a> (c. 620–564 BC), was an ancient Greek fabulist sometimes depicted as a hunchback; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great">Alexander the Great</a> (356-323 BC) was the King of Macedon who united Greece; <a href="http://www.britannia.com/history/r-cecil.html">Lord Burleigh</a> (Robert Cecil, 1563-1812), a powerful Elizabethan politician, had a slight hunch back; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pope">Alexander Pope</a> (1688-1744) a satirical English poet, had a hunch back; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand-P%C3%A9rigord">Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord</a> (1754-1838), a politician and aristocrat who survived the French Revolution, had a clubfoot caused by Marfan syndrome; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott">Walter Scott</a> (1771-1832), nineteenth-century novelist, was lame; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Flaxman">John Flaxman</a> (1755-1826) a neoclassical sculptor, had a shoulder deformity; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron">Lord Byron</a> (1788-1824), a Romantic poet, was born with a club foot. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Member of Parliament <a title="William Hay" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hay_(MP)">William Hay</a> (1695-1755), who had a hunch back, wrote what is now considered the first personal memoir of deformity in 1754. See William Hay. Deformity: An Essay. Ed. Kathleen James-Cavan. Victoria, BC: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 2004. </div> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Tamplin, Richard William. Lectures on the Nature and Treatment of Deformities, Delivered at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, Bloomsbury Square. London: 1846. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1846 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Relation A related resource <ul><li>Borsay, Anne. “Disciplining Disabled Bodies: The Development of Orthopaedic Medicine in Britain, c.1800-1939.” Social Histories of Disability and Deformity: Bodies, Images and Experiences. Ed. David M. Turner and Kevin Stagg. New York: Routledge, 2006.</li> <li>Bourrier, Karen. “Orthopaedic Disability and the Nineteenth-Century Novel.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts. 36.1 (2014): 1-17.</li> <li>Klenerman, Leslie. The Evolution of Orthopaedic Surgery. London: Royal Society of Medicine, 2002.</li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Frontispiece from Nicolas Andry's Orthopaedia. A woman swathed in the robes of a Greek goddess measures two children with a ruler that reads: “Haec est regula recti” (“This is the model of straightness”). Image Courtesy the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine under a Creative Commons License. Title A name given to the resource Lectures on the Nature and Treatment of Deformity Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tamplin, Richard William Description An account of the resource Orthopaedic medicine began as a general practice of child rearing in France with Nicolas Andry’s Orthopaedia (1741). (Andry’s work was translated into English in 1743.) In the mid-nineteenth century, orthopaedic medicine became a specialized branch of surgery that aimed to surgically correct asymmetries in the human frame, ranging from club foot to wry neck to hunch back. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_National_Orthopaedic_Hospital">Royal Orthopaedic Hopsital of London</a>, which began as a small institution in Bloomsbury Square in 1838, had moved to Oxford Street by 1865, and treated over 1600 cases of “deformity of all kinds”, according to surgeon William Adams, annually.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> The following excerpt, from surgeon R. W. Tamplin’s 1846 series of lectures, brings to the fore several ideas associated with orthopaedic disability in the nineteenth century. Firstly, orthopaedic disability, rather than being seen as a variation in human form that may or may not need any intervention, became seen as an individual medical “problem” that needed to be treated through specialized surgery. In addition, orthopaedic disability was presumed to have a strong emotional impact on the individual, who would feel isolated from the community; this emotional impact, rather than any medical issue, was often given as one of the primary reason to operate on a person with a disability. A second emotional effect that orthopaedic disability might have on an individual was to spur them to “overcome” their disability by achieving great success, as Tamplin notes in his list of eminent individuals below.<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> Nineteenth-century thinkers seemed to associate orthopaedic disabilities and their presumed emotional excesses with men in particular, though there is no reason to think that orthopaedic disabilities affected men in greater numbers than women. <div> <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> William Adams. Lectures on the Pathology and Treatment of Lateral and Other of Forms Curvature of the Spine. London: 1865, page 9. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> As disability studies scholars have noted, this overcoming narrative can have the pernicious effect of making it seem as though people with disabilities must achieve great success in order to compensate for a perceived lack. </div> </div> Medicine Mobility Orthopaedic Disability https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/f0fdb31dd757f85ebcf5f006e5b54570.jpg 457130ed11ce7472bb682ff34e922548 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Conjoined twins born into slavery, Millie and Christine McKoy, pictured seated, facing the camera, wearing a Victorian dress with two bodices and a single large skirt. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1902 to 1914 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. There are giants and giants, dwarfs and dwarfs, fat men and women, living skeletons of both sexes, hirsute monsters and baldheads by the century; there are marvels of nature, science and art, of all which the world knows; but there can only be one NONPAREIL, one UNEQUALLED, and that is the subject of our brief sketch, for only one living creature is like Millie Christine, and her name is Christine Millie. But, says the curious reader, was there ever such another heard of before? Only one is on record, attested as a fact, and leaving out of the question fabulous monsters. The first year of the eighteenth century witnessed the birth of a similar phenomenon in Hungary, the sisters Helen and Judith, born in the year 1701. These girls were united at the lower part of the body only, and were perfectly distinct beings in every way. Helen was larger, stronger, and better-looking than Judith, besides being much more active and inteiligent. These girls lived to their twenty second year, when Judith fell sick and died, Helen following her within a few minutes of her demise. And all this, you remember, happened more than a century since, so that it takes Nature a hundred years at least to produce such a marvel again. Helen and Judith died at twenty-two years of age, while Millie Christine still lives, healthy and happy, at thirty-eight, and bids fair to attain a ripe old age as easily as less wonderful beings. The following pages, confined to a simple record of the facts in her career, will therefore prove of interest and value. Miss Millie Christine, or Christine Millie, was born of slave parents, on the plantation of Mr. Alexander McCoy, near the town of Whiteville, Columbus County, North Carolina, on July 11, 1851. At her birth her mother was in her thirty-second year. She was a handsome woman, finely formed and in excellent health. Millie Christine's father, of Moorish descent, slender and sinewy, with the powerful activity characteristic of his race. Prior to the birth of Millie Christine, her mother had borne seven other children, five boys and two girls, all of ordinary size, with no peculiarities of conformation, and some of them are still alive. The wonder of the family, Millie Christine, weighed seventeen pounds when she entered the world, and, although her mother was only attended by a colored midwife, no serious consequences attended such a remarkable birth. But, when the child was once fairly in the world, how rumor flew about the township of Whiteville, and spread from thence over the whole country! "Have you seen the girl?" was the first question asked of every one by every one, and pilgrimages to visit her became all the rage in the country side. The old nurse who had superintended her introduction into this world was doubtless awestruck at the anomalous and wonderful addition she had made to her master's property, and not unnaturally prided herself on having assisted Nature to produce a phenomenon; but the master himself, and his amiable lady, without stopping to question the designs of Providence, immediately surrounded the extraordinary infant with such care and attention as enabled it to thrive and grow. The dual-headed child was taken from the cabin to the mansion, and Mr. McCoy's family commenced then a course of care and attention to her health and welfare. During the first eighteen months of her life nothing of importance occurred to Millie Christine worthy of note. She grew as other girls grow, learned to walk at twelve months old, was of a lively and agreeable disposition, and at fifteen months began to talk with both her mouths. She was cheerful and active as any girl of her age, with every appearance of robust health. Her vivacity and goodness, together, no doubt, with her peculiar formation, rendered her the almost idolized child of the mother and a general favorite of both old and young, and every attention and kindness was bestowed upon her. At this time Mr. McCoy, being a man in very moderate circumstances, a plain farmer, thinking the girl would become a burden to him, and annoyed with the frequent visits of strangers to see her, determined to dispose of her. He was not long in finding for her a purchaser, a person of the name of Brower, who offered $10,000 for her, seeing the possibilities of the child in the way of an exhibition. But inasmuch as this Brower was not possessed of the requisite cash to back his faith, and only offered to give a note of hand for the purchase money, Mr. McCoy naturally desired some responsible person to whom to look for the money in case of the non-payment of the note when due. This person was ultimately found by Brower in Joseph P. Smith, of Wadesboro, North Carolina, and Mr. McCoy finally parted with Millie Christine, in consideration of Brower's note for $10,000 endorsed by Mr. Smith. The happy Brower, in full possession of his prize, at once departed for New Orleans, in obedience to a request from the medical faculty of that city asking that she be brought there for a scientific examination. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Millie (left) and Christine (right) McKoy were born into slavery in Columbus County, North Carolina, in 1851. These conjoined twin sisters were sometimes called Millie-Christine McKoy. Each sister had two arms and two legs, but they were connected at the lower spine and shared one pelvis. Jabez McKay owned Millie and Christine, but the twins later adopted the last name, “McKoy.” McKay, who was concerned whether the twin sisters would be productive and frustrated when visitors flooded his farm to view their unusual anatomy, eventually sold Millie and Christine for $1,000 to a showman interested in exhibiting them. Millie and Christine ended up in the possession of Joseph Pearson Smith, who hired them out to various road shows. At this time Millie and Christine also appeared in P.T. Barnum's famed American Museum in New York City. The twins were kidnapped and taken to England by one of the men responsible for exhibiting them, but Smith eventually found the girls and, with their mother, sued to regain custody. He won this suit, and the twins returned to North Carolina. Smith's wife taught Millie and Christine how to read, write, sing, dance, and play the piano; she also taught them to deliver recitations in German and French. The sisters used these skills when they were exhibited. After the Civil War, the twins decided to remain with the Smiths. They continued to appear widely for nearly thirty years, even returning to England in 1871, where they performed for Queen Victoria. In the 1880s, the sisters joined Barnum's traveling circus, but they retired to Columbus County at the end of the decade. Throughout their career and retirement, Millie and Christine gave financial support to black schools and churches. When Millie died of tuberculosis in October 1912, doctors gave Christine morphine to help end her life quickly and painlessly. Millie and Christine are central to our own understanding of the freak show as a place where a community secures its anxieties and questions about people that are perceived as different. As women of African descent, their display as “freaks” serves as an example of the conflation of race and disability and the perceived dependency of both women and people of African descent within nineteenth-century American culture. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Biographical Sketch of Millie Christine, the Carolina Twin, Surnamed the Two-Headed Nightingale and the Eighth Wonder of the World Cincinnati: Hennegan & Co. Print, [between 1902 and 1912]. Author unknown. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource George Gordon-Smith Relation A related resource <ul><li> Martel, Joanne. Millie-Christine: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The Remarkable Journey of Siamese Twins from Slavery to the Courts of Europe. New York: McNaughton & Gunn, 2000. </li> <li> Frost, Linda. Conjoined Twins in Black and White: The Lives of Mille-Christine McKoy and Daisy and Violet Hilton. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2009. </li> <li> Garland Thomson, Rosemarie. Ed., Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body New York: New York UP, 1996. </li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Michael A. Wesner. Early to mid-1890s era cabinet photo of conjoined twins Millie and Christine McCoy, likely taken while they were on tour in California. Image Courtesy <a title="Wikimedia Commons" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Millie_%26_Christine_McCoy_c1890s.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a> under a Creative Commons License. Title A name given to the resource Millie and Christine McKoy Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anonymous Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1902-1912 https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/374aedbb98b3796bed18aaa47edb59c1.png b9893c43ff89b64cb4654938a07bdca2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource A black and white etching shows the North view of the York Retreat, a grand manor surrounded by trees. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1798 to 1837 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. The female patients in the Retreat, are employed, as much as possible, in sewing, knitting, or domestic affairs; and several of the convalescents assist the attendants. Of all the modes by which the patients may be induced to restrain themselves, regular employment is perhaps the most efficacious; and those kinds of employment are doubtless to be preferred, both on a moral and physical account, which are accompanied by considerable bodily action; that are most agreeable to the patient, and which are most opposite to the illusions of his disease. In an early part of this chapter, it is stated, that the patients are considered capable of rational and honourable inducement; and though we allowed fear a considerable place in the production of that restraint, which the patient generally exerts on his entrance into a new situation; yet the desire of esteem is considered, at the Retreat, as operating, in general, still more powerfully. This principle in the human mind, which doubtless influences, in a great degree, though often secretly, our general manners; and which with peculiar force on our introduction into a new circle of acquaintance, is found to have great influence, even over the conduct of the insane. Though it has obviously not been sufficiently powerful, to enable them entirely to resist the strong irregular tendencies of their disease; yet when properly cultivated, it leads many to struggle to conceal and overcome their deviations, within such bounds, as do not make them obnoxious to the family. This struggle is highly beneficial to the patient, by strengthening his mind, and conducing to a salutary habit of self-restraint; an object which experience points out as of the greatest importance, in the cure of insanity, by moral means. That fear is not the only motive, which operates in producing self-restraint in the minds of maniacs, is evident from its being often exercised in the presence of strangers, who are merely passing through the house; and which, I presume, can only be accounted for, from that desire of esteem, which has been stated to be a powerful motive to conduct. It is probably from encouraging the action of this principle, that so much advantage has been found in this Institution, from treating the patient as much in the manner of a rational being, as the state of his mind will possibly allow. The superintendent is particularly attentive to this point, in his conversation with the patients. He introduces such topics as he knows will most interest them to display their knowledge to the greatest advantage. If the patient is an agriculturist, he asks him questions relative to his art; and frequently consults him upon any occasion in which his knowledge may be useful. I have heard one of the worst patients in the house, who, previously to his indisposition, had been a considerable grazier, give very sensible directions for the treatment of a diseased cow. These considerations are undoubtedly very material, as they regard the comfort of insane persons; but they are of far greater importance, as they relate to the cure of the disorder. The patient feeling himself of some consequence, is induced to support it by the exertion of his reason, and by restraining those dispositions, which, if indulged, would lessen the respectful treatment he receives; or lower his character in the eyes of his companions and attendants […] To consider them at the same time both as brothers, and as mere automata; to applaud all they do right; and pity, without censuring, whatever they do wrong, requires such a habit philosophical reflection, and Christian charity, as is certainly difficult to attain […] In considering our first division of this subject, viz. the modes by which self-restraint may be induced, we have anticipated many of the means by which the comfort of this unhappy class of our fellow beings is promoted; indeed we might, without impropriety, have included all these means under our former division; since whatever tends to promote the happiness of the patient, is found to increase his desire to restrain himself, by exciting the wish not to forfeit his enjoyments; and lessening the irritation of mind, which too frequently accompanies mental derangement. The comfort of the patients is therefore considered of the highest importance, in a curative point of view. The study of the superintendents to promote it with all the assiduity of parental, but judicious attention, has been, in numerous instances, rewarded by an almost filial attachment. In their conversation with the patients, they adapt themselves to their particular weaknesses; but, at the same time, endeavour to draw them insensibly from the sorrow, or the error, which marks the disease. The female superintendent, who possesses an uncommon share of benevolent activity, and who has the chief management of the female patients, as well as of the domestic department, occasionally gives a general invitation to the patients, to a tea-party. All who attend, dress in their best clothes, and vie with each other in politeness and propriety. The best fare in provided, and the visitors are treated with the attention of strangers. The evening generally passes in the greatest harmony and enjoyment. It rarely happens that any unpleasant circumstance occurs; the patients control, in a wonderful degree, their different propensities; and the scene is at once curious, and affectingly gratifying. Some of the patients occasionally pay visits to friends in the city; and female visiters [sic.] are appointed every month, by the Committee, to pay visits to those of their own sex; to converse with them, and so propose to the superintendents, or the Committee, any improvements which may occur to them. The visiters sometimes take tea with the patients, who are much gratified with the attention of their friends, and most behave with propriety. It will be necessary here to mention, that the visits of former intimate friends, have frequently been attended with disadvantage to the patients; except when convalescence had so far advanced, as so afford a prospect of a speedy return to the bosom of society. It is, however, very certain, that as soon as reason begins to return, the conversation of judicious, indifferent persons, greatly increases the comfort; and is considered almost essential to the recovery of many patients. On this account, the convalescents of every class, are frequently introduced into the society of the rational parts of the family. They are also permitted to sit up till the usual time for the family to retire to rest, and are allowed as much liberty as their state of mind will admit. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In 1791 a female patient, belonging to the Society of Friends, was admitted to the York Asylum. Since her family did not live nearby, they requested that their friends who lived in the city visit her. These visits were refused, and a few weeks later the patient later died in mysterious circumstances. The Quaker community were appalled and decided to found a charitable asylum which opened in 1796 under the direction of William Tuke, based on the more human principle of moral management, without the use of physical restraints. The publication in 1813 of a description of the retreat by Samuel Tuke, the grandson of the institution’s founder, quickly drew the public’s attention the plight of the insane, exposing the routine and systematic maltreatment of those incarcerated at madhouses such as the York Asylum and London’s notorious Bethlem Hospital. The description was of vital importance, leading to the establishment of a select committee in Parliament to regulate asylums in 1815. The resulting legislation, the Lunacy Acts of 1845, outlawed practices such as allowing paying members of the public to view patients, established the Lunacy Commission to inspect asylums, and required the establishment of a public asylum in every county. Tuke’s description also marked a turning point in the history of the treatment of the insane, increasing support for the moral management on which the new nineteenth-century medical discipline of psychology was largely based. The following extract emphasises the familial homeliness of the Retreat’s environment, in contrast to the prison-like conditions of previous institutions, and the use of middle-class domestic rituals, such as tea parties, to promote conformation to societal norms of gendered behaviour. Patients’ return to reason and sanity was determined to a considerable extent by their adherence to conventions like good manners, with those who did not match expectations being treated ‘like ill-disciplined children.’<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> Despite the policy of non-restraint,<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> Tuke acknowledges the deliberate establishment of fear of punishment in patients’ minds. This may be seen as one of the main roots of Michel Foucault’s contention that ‘the absence of constraint in the nineteenth-century asylum is not unreason liberated, but madness long since mastered.’<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> According to this influential critique of the asylum system, patients, like prisoners, no longer needed such high levels of restraint or supervision since this had been replaced by a more sinister method of control: the internalisation of restraint which amounted to the self-policing of individuals’ behaviour. <div> <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present. London: HarperCollins, 1997. Page 497. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> In practice, attendants at the asylums sometimes resorted to the use of strong clothing and straitjackets to restrict patients’ movement and prevent them from ripping their clothing. In the rare cases of violent mania, patients were kept in a darkened room in solitary confinement until they became calmer. In the meantime, they could move around the room or lie in bed as they chose. Similarly rare were instances of force feeding when there was a high risk of starvation, and of strapping patients to their beds if they seemed likely to attempt suicide during the night. Tuke repeatedly stresses that such episodes were regrettable but sadly necessary in the most extreme cases. The use of chains, however, was strictly prohibited. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated from the French by Richard Howard. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Page 239. </div> </div> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1812 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Helen Goodman Relation A related resource <ul><li> Digby, Anne. Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. </li> <li> Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated from the French by Richard Howard. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. </li> <li> Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present. London: HarperCollins, 1997. </li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Frontispiece from A Description of the Retreat, an Institution Near York, for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends (1813). Courtesy of Wellcome Images under a Creative Commons License. Title A name given to the resource The York Retreat Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Samuel Tuke Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1813 Institutions Mental Illness https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/999cce7e0d14ddd37ad898e6e403bc96.jpg 7195eedfc35ffc4dcb129e6c9a92bc30 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1860 to 1880 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Of course, we all know the instrument entitled the phonautograph,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> and these curves were drawn by an improved form of phonautograph.<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> There was a cone into which you spoke, which condensed the air from your voice; at the small end of the cone, you had a stretched membrane, which vibrated when a sound was produced, and, in the course of its vibration, it controlled the movement of a long style of wood,<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> about one foot in length, and those curves were drawn by the style upon a surface of smoked glass, which was dragged rapidly along. I myself uttered the vowels that are here shown, viz., e, a, eh, ah aah; these vowels were sung at the same pitch and with the same force, but you will observe that each is characterized by a shape of vibration of its own. In fact, when you come to examine the motion of a particle of air, there can be no doubt that every sound is characterized by a particular motion. [ . . . ] I attempted to construct one modelled as nearly as possible on the mechanism of the human ear, but upon going to a friend in Boston, Dr. Clarence J. Blake, an aurist, he suggested the novel idea of using the human ear itself as a phonautograph, and this apparatus we constructed together. It is a human ear. The interior mechanism is exposed, and to a part of it is attached a long style of hay. Upon moistening the membrane and the little bones with a mixture of glycerine and water, the mobility of the parts was restored, and on speaking into the external artificial ear, a vibration was observed, and after many experiments we were able to obtain tracings of the vibration on a sheet of smoked glass drawn rapidly along. Many of those were very beautiful, and I am sorry I have not any of them here to-night to show you, but as it is foreign to our subject, it is perhaps as well. I would merely direct your attention to the apparatus itself, as it gave me the clue to the present form of the telephone. <div> <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Bell is referencing Leon Scott’s 1857 invention, the phonautograph. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> This is an account of Bell’s 1877 Salem lectures, which explains his frequent references to visuals for the audience. The first account of these lectures appeared in the 31 March 1877 issue of Scientific American and was accompanied by pictorial illustrations. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, a style is “[a] sharp instrument or point for engraving, tracing, etc.” (3076). See “Style.” Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 6th ed. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. </div> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource As disability theorists such as Douglas Baynton, Jonathan Rée, Lennard J. Davis, Jennifer Esmail, and Jan Branson and Don Miller explain, in both America and England in the mid-nineteenth century, attitudes toward sign language shifted: whereas in the first half of the nineteenth century, “finger speech,” as signing was sometimes called, was largely approved of as a means for deaf-mutes to be included in the Christian community, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the public began to treat deaf signers as menacing outsiders who needed to be assimilated into the larger speaking community.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> Oralists, those educators against signing, rejected signing as a primitive language, one that demeaned its users to the level of brutes (Rée 83). Oralist reformers thus fought for the removal of sign language from the curriculum of deaf schools and looked to emergent sound and writing technologies to help the pre-lingual deaf learn to speak English—and to speak it “properly.” In teaching the deaf to speak English, oralists sought a way to “soften” the “distasteful, loud, or harsh voices of deaf speakers” (Esmail 174). Bell’s father, Melville Bell, attempted to do so in the 1860s by developing a phonetic system of writing termed “Visible Speech.” Such a “universal alphabetics,” as he called it, was supposed to teach those with pre-lingual deafness how to properly enunciate English words by visually representing the shapes of sounds. Unfortunately for Bell, the system proved largely unsuccessful because deaf students could not hear themselves speak and therefore could not accurately reproduce sounds (Esmail 184). As a consequence of the inability of Visible Speech to narrow the divide between spoken language and its graphic representation, Alexander Graham Bell, a teacher of deaf children and an ardent oralist who fought for the eradication of sign language, determined to create a device that would serve as a feedback mechanism by visually representing the sounds that his deaf students were making, thus enabling them to check themselves against the tracings of “correct” speech sounds. With the assistance of Clarence J. Blake, an American ear specialist, Bell attempted to modify and repurpose Leon Scott’s 1857 invention, the phonautograph, a mechanism that used the principles of resonance to transcribe speech sounds (Sterne 31–36). Whereas Scott’s tool featured a membrane-like “diaphragm,” Bell and Blake’s 1874 “ear phonautograph” employed an actual human ear taken from a corpse to transduce sound waves into writing (Sterne 35, 31; Esmail 185). The deaf students’ vocal emissions, funneled through a metal mouthpiece, would vibrate the dead man’s ear, which would, in turn, activate a stylus to make tracings of the voice’s “shapes” onto smoked glass (Sterne 31). With the ear phonautograph, sound is thus experienced as disembodied—as alien to the speaker—and “heard” through the amputated organ of the corpse. As Esmail notes, “[T]he sound that is the source of these visual traces is wholly absent from both their ‘speaking’ and their visual ‘listening’” (Esmail 186). This prosthetic hearing device cleared the way for the invention of other sound technologies that treat sound as dislocated from the body in order to mechanically reproduce it. In fact, as Bell indicates in the lecture excerpted below, the telephone owes its realization to the ear phonautograph. <h3>Note</h3> <div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> See Douglas Baynton, “‘A Silent Exile on This Earth’: The Metaphorical Construction of Deafness in the Nineteenth Century,” The Disability Studies Reader, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2010); Jonathan Rée, I See a Voice: Deafness, Language and the Senses—A Philosophical History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999); Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (London: Verso, 1995); Jennifer Esmail, Reading Victorian Deafness: Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture (Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2013); and Jan Branson and Don Miller, Damned for Their Difference: The Cultural Construction of Deaf People as Disabled, A Sociological History (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet UP, 2002). </div> </div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bell, Alexander Graham. “The Telephone.” The Musical Standard 13.698 (15 December 1877): 375–76. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1879 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jennifer Janechek Relation A related resource <ul><li> Blake, Clarence J. “The Use of the Membrana Tympani as a Phonautograph and Logograph.” Archives of Ophthalmology and Otology 5.1 (1876): 108–13. See <a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=b2c1AQAAMAAJ">https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=b2c1AQAAMAAJ</a> </li> <li> Esmail, Jennifer. Reading Victorian Deafness: Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2013. </li> <li> Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003. </li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Moncel, Count Du. The Telephone, the Microphone and the Phonograph. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1879. 45. See <a href="https://archive.org/details/telephonemicrop00moncgoog">https://archive.org/details/telephonemicrop00moncgoog</a>. Title A name given to the resource The Ear Phonautograph Deafness Prosthesis Technology