6 10 61 https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/cf6d36b49ce1f5522650cb4c6715cbe0.jpg 1afd2a6b694b1b748d528160eda8be59 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/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Pratt, Matthew. The American School, 1765, oil on canvas, 36 x 50 ¼”. Image Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art. This painting depicts a group of students painting in Benjamin West’s London studio. Description An account of the resource The artist, Matthew Pratt, is seated at the easel, while West, at left wearing green, gives instructions to another young, unidentified artist. 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. While Trumbull and Stuart were together as pupils of Mr. West, Stuart being the senior student, and more advanced in the art, Trumbull frequently submitted his works to him for the benefit of his remarks. Stuart told Mr. Sully, from whom we derive the anecdote, that on one occasion he was excessively puzzled by the drawing, “and after turning it this way and that, I observed, ‘Why, Trumbull, this looks as if it was drawn by a man with but one eye.’ Trumbull appeared much hurt, and said, ‘I take it very unkindly, sir, that you should make the remark.’ I couldn't tell what he meant, and asked him. ‘I presume, sir,’ he answered, ‘that you know I have lost the sight of one eye, and any allusion to it, in this manner, is illiberal.’ Now I never suspected it, and only the oddness of the drawing suggested the thing.” We have heard from Stuart’s companions in Boston, the same story, in nearly the same words, and when he told it to them, he went into a long dissertation on optics to prove, that a man, with but the sight of one eye, could not possibly draw truly. This notion Sully thought perfectly idle, and only one of Stuart’s whims, who could lecture most eloquently on any subject, from the anatomy of a man, to the economy of his shoe-tie.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> <div> <h3>Note</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1:182. </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 Despite his resistance to the formal study of painting, William Dunlap’s time in Europe would prove critical to the history of American art because it was at West’s studio in London that Dunlap became acquainted with the foremost artists of the time. Dunlap is today best remembered as “the American Vasari,” after Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), the 16th-century Italian biographer of Renaissance painters, as Dunlap would go on to write the first history of American art and artists, History of the Rise and Progress of the Art of Design in the United States, published in 1834. The following excerpt, drawn from the Rise and Progress, recounts an exchange between two other American painters working under West in London, Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) and John Trumbull (1756-1843), as related later by a third American, Thomas Sully (1783-1872). Dunlap’s decision to include this anecdote is likely informed by his own visual impairment, which is identical to that suffered by John Trumbull, described below.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> Although Dunlap does not draw attention to this similarity here, elsewhere in the Rise and Progress and in his 1832 history of American theatre<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> Dunlap details the accident that rendered him blind in the right eye (see linked entry on Dunlap’s self-portraits). Curiously, however, in neither of these accounts does Dunlap suggest that his monocular vision limited his ability to draw in perspective. Instead, Dunlap notes multiple times in his published works that he found his sense of color wanting, possibly as a result of the accident, or, as he hypothesizes, “a natural defect.”<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> Nonetheless, Dunlap appears to use this anecdote, and particularly Sully’s criticism of Stuart’s theory, as a defense of painters, like Dunlap himself, who suffered from visual impairments. <div> <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Stuart’s criticism of Trumbull’s drawing evidently held little weight; Trumbull was commissioned to paint four large American historical scenes for the Capitol Rotunda in 1817. See: http://www.aoc.gov/capitol-hill/artists/john-trumbull </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> William Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), 49, http://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_American_Theatre.html?id=yDEOAAAAIAAJ. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1:259. Also describes his difficulty with color on p. 250. It should be noted that the first widely acknowledged account of color blindness was not published until 1798 by the English physicist John Dalton. Dunlap was likely unaware of the possible genetic explanation for his condition, which may have been a partial color blindness. See: A E Emery, “John Dalton (1766-1844).,” Journal of Medical Genetics 25, no. 6 (June 1988): 422–26. </div> </div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Dunlap, William. History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States. Vol. 1. 2 vols. New York: George P. Scott and Company, Printers, 1834. Available at: https://archive.org/details/historyofrisepro01dunl. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1834 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kim Beil Relation A related resource <ul><li> Dunlap, William. A History of the American Theatre. New York : J. & J. Harper, 1832. http://archive.org/details/historyofamerica00dunl. </li> <li> Lyons, Maura. William Dunlap and the Construction of an American Art History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. </li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Pratt, Matthew. The American School, 1765, oil on canvas, 36 x 50 ¼”. Image Courtesy <a title="Met Museum Link" href="http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/11797">Metropolitan Museum of Art</a>. This painting depicts a group of students painting in Benjamin West’s London studio. The artist, Matthew Pratt, is seated at the easel, while West, at left wearing green, gives instructions to another young, unidentified artist. Title A name given to the resource History of the Rise and Progress of the Art of Design in the United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource William Dunlap Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available George P. Scott and Company Art History Blindness Visual Culture William Dunlap https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/a89573cec699a528200dc6506da1cebe.jpg cf4c32583edb0dffa4e7ecaa4ee7ea10 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 535 Height 800 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String caption:by Henry Meyer, published by Henry Colburn, after Richard Carruthers, stipple engraving, published 1 February 1819 caption_writer:National Portrait Gallery London - www.npg.org.uk headline:NPG D8807; William Wordsworth by Henry Meyer, published by Henry Colburn, after Richard Carruthers special_instructions:Unauthorised reproduction prohibited. For authorisation contact rightsandimages@npg.org.uk www.npg.org.uk byline:National Portrait Gallery London - www.npg.org.uk byline_title:Rights and Images Department credit:National Portrait Gallery London source:National Portrait Gallery London object_name:NPG D8807; William Wordsworth date_created:04.05.2012 city:London, St Martin's Place, WC2 0HE country:United Kingdom copyright_notice:© National Portrait Gallery, London IPTC Array a:13:{s:7:"caption";s:116:"by Henry Meyer, published by Henry Colburn, after Richard Carruthers, stipple engraving, published 1 February 1819";s:14:"caption_writer";s:49:"National Portrait Gallery London - www.npg.org.uk";s:8:"headline";s:100:"NPG D8807; William Wordsworth by Henry Meyer, published by Henry Colburn, after Richard Carruthers";s:20:"special_instructions";s:105:"Unauthorised reproduction prohibited. For authorisation contact rightsandimages@npg.org.uk www.npg.org.uk";s:6:"byline";s:49:"National Portrait Gallery London - www.npg.org.uk";s:12:"byline_title";s:28:"Rights and Images Department";s:6:"credit";s:32:"National Portrait Gallery London";s:6:"source";s:32:"National Portrait Gallery London";s:11:"object_name";s:29:"NPG D8807; William Wordsworth";s:12:"date_created";s:10:"04.05.2012";s:4:"city";s:34:"London, St Martin's Place, WC2 0HE";s:7:"country";s:14:"United Kingdom";s:16:"copyright_notice";s:36:"© National Portrait Gallery, London";} 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 Wordsworth adopts a pensive pose, with his head resting on his hand, in this stipple engraving. William Wordsworth by Henry Meyer, published by Henry Colburn, after Richard Carruthers. stipple engraving, published 1 February 1819. 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. …lost Amid the moving pageant, ‘twas my chance Abruptly to be smitten with the view Of a blind Beggar, who, with upright face, Stood propp’d against a Wall, upon his Chest Wearing a written paper, to explain The story of the Man, and who he was. My mind did at this spectacle turn round As with the might of waters, and it seem’d To me that in this Label was a type Or emblem, of the utmost that we know, Both of ourselves and of the universe; And, on the shape of the unmoving man, His fixed face and sightless eyes, I look’d As if admonish’d from another world. (1805, VII. 608-622) 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 Prelude Description An account of the resource <a title="Wordsworth Wikipedia Entry" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth" target="_blank">William Wordsworth</a>’s (1770-1850) poetry contains several interesting and largely unexplored representations of disability. One familiar pattern, seen in “Resolution and Independence” (1807) has the speaker of Wordsworth’s poem encountering a person with a disability and using the encounter as a spur to personal reflection. In Book VII of his autobiographical epic poem, The Prelude (1805, 1850), Wordsworth gives a detailed description of an encounter with a blind beggar. The blind man, who stands “propp’d against a Wall,” is a visual spectacle for Wordsworth’s speaker, who describes himself as “smitten with the view.” The portrait of the beggar that he provides emphasizes the blind man’s passivity and immobility; this man is “propp’d against a Wall,” his body “unmoving” and his face “fixed.” What matters most to the sighted speaker about the blind man he observes and describes is the sign or “Label” that the blind man wears, a record of “the story of the Man, and who he was.” It is not, however, the content of this sign that is of interest to the speaker. Instead, the sign is identified and valued as a symbol of a universal condition; Wordsworth finds in it a “type/ Or emblem” of the profound ignorance of human beings. His speaker has gained new knowledge about, ironically enough, humanity’s lack of knowledge, but he does not come away with new knowledge about either the experience of disability or the particular experiences of an individual living with a disability. This stands in contrast to Arthur Symon’s (1865-1945) later contribution to the genre of the poetic encounter with a blind street person, “The Blind Beggar” (1892), which leads him to reflect on the material conditions of the disabled poor. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wordsworth, William Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Wordsworth, William. The Prelude: A Parallel Text. Ed. Ernest de Selincourt. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1805 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Vanessa Warne Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Wordsworth adopts a pensive pose, with his head resting on his hand, in this stipple engraving. William Wordsworth by Henry Meyer, published by Henry Colburn, after Richard Carruthers. stipple engraving, published 1 February 1819. 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="William Wordsworth" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw42777/William-Wordsworth?LinkID=mp04931&search=sas&sText=william+wordsworth&role=sit&rNo=13" target="_blank">NPG D8807</a>). Relation A related resource <ul><li>Bowlby, Rachel. “Readable City.” PMLA 122:1 (2007): 306-9. </li> <li>Epstein Kobayashi, Emily V. “Feeling Intellect in Aurora Leigh and The Prelude.” SEL 51:4 (2011): 823-848. </li> <li>Friedman, Geraldine. “History in the Background in Wordsworth’s ‘Blind Beggar.’” ELH 56:1 (1989): 125-148. </li> <li>Symons, Arthur. <a title="Symon's "The Blind Beggar"" href="http://www.nineteenthcenturydisability.org/items/show/12">“The Blind Beggar.”</a> Annotated by Vanessa Warne. Nineteenth-Century Disability: A Digital Reader. </li> <li><a title="Wordsworth Trust" href="https://www.wordsworth.org.uk/home.html" target="_blank">The Wordsworth Trust</a>. https://www.wordsworth.org.uk/home.html</li> </ul> Blindness Class Literature Poetry William Wordsworth 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/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 https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/cde1e133863ba0577af3cdb101bd7874.jpg d4e267a73b13d67e1c7fd0b554c82654 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 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 conversation tube is a non-electric, acoustic device designed to amplify sounds for deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals and is constructed of a flexible tube with a mouthpiece at one end and an ear piece at the other. The device dates to the seventeenth-century, when Puritan couples used them to have private conversations while courting, as social customs of the day limited their interaction in presence of family members (<a href="http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0064953.html">Wellcome Images</a>). During the nineteenth-century, many versions of the conversation tube were manufactured for personal use. The device creates a “direct line from the hearer” who wears the earpiece, and the speaker, who spoke through the mouthpiece; the length of the tube allowed for a “polite and comfortable distance between individuals” (Church). Conversation tubes are often synonymously referred as “speaking tubes.” This particular conversation tube is one of the earliest devices at the CID-Goldstein Collection at the Bernard Becker Medical Library. It was designed and sold by Frederick C. Rein in London, who established the first commercial firm for hearing devices in 1800. The maker’s trademark is inscribed on the mouthpiece as “Rein and Son. Improved. 108 Strand, London.” A very simple design, this 56inch conversation tube is composed of an ivory mouthpiece and ear insert, with two layers of red silk woven around the coiled metal tube. Designs of conversation tube were relatively uniform. The <a href="http://phisick.com/items/ent/?s=&sub=conversation-tubes">standard design for a conversation tube</a> included ivory for the earpiece and mouthpiece, with black wool, leather or silk covering the coil. Later designs incorporated different materials for the tubes in attempts to increase hearing amplification, including: wood, rubber, or celluloid. Ornamental designs were also present in some versions that were preferred by aristocratic or fashionable users and were likely more expensive than standard designs. Some manufacturers, however, abstained from using rubber or gum solutions in their designs, in order to protect the device from climatic conditions (Hawksley). In some cases, the designs were a compromise between amplification and portability, especially as some individuals may have preferred smaller designs to be folded and carried in their pockets (Mills, 76). The length of most tubes was 88 to 176 cm, with an average price of 1 guinea for the most powerfully amplified versions (Bennion), which would enable the user to hear at least 20 to 40dB of sounds (Berger). The red silk of this conversation tube is the most striking design feature, suggesting a fashionable and feminine trait embodied into the design. Even more remarkable is the conspicuous nature of the device, suggesting that the user had no qualms about hiding her deafness. <a href="http://phisick.com/item/photograph-of-woman-with-conversation-tube/">Conversation tubes in general, were not disguised devices to be used in private</a>. To use the device, a user needed to make his or her deafness apparent, since the very nature of the device “required the presence of one other person, who might judge you on your plebeian and unattractive listening device” (Church). As the Hawksley catalog of acoustic instruments declares, “A Conversation Tube is the most useful form of instrument for severe cases of deafness, or when a person is only moderately deaf and wishes to carry on a conversation with a friend” (Hawksley). Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jaipreet Virdi-Dhesi Relation A related resource <ul><li> Bennion, Elisabeth. Antique Medical Instruments (Berkley: University of California Press, 1979). </li> <li> Bernard Becker Library Virtual Exhibit: Deafness in Disguise: Concealed Hearing Devices of the 19th and 20th Centuries <a href="http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/did/index.htm">http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/did/index.htm</a> </li> <li> Berger, Kenneth W. The Hearing Aid, it’s Operation and Development. Michigan, USA: National Hearing Aid Society, 1970. </li> <li> Church, Joanna. “Conversation tube, circa 1900,” A Fine Collection: Blog of the Montgomery County Historical Society Maryland <a href="http://afinecollection.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/conversation-tube-circa-1900/">http://afinecollection.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/conversation-tube-circa-1900/</a> </li> <li> Gallery of Conversation Tubes, The Hearing Aid Museum: <a href="http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Non-Electric/ConversationTubes/index-contubes.htm">http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Non-Electric/ConversationTubes/index-contubes.htm</a> </li> <li> Hawksley, T. Catalogue of Otacoustical Instruments to Aid the Deaf, 3rd Edition (London: T. Hawksley, 1895). </li> <li> Koelkebeck, Mary Lou, Collen Detjen, and Donald R. Calvert, Historic Devices for Hearing: The CID-Goldstein Collection. St. Louise: The Central Institute for the Deaf, 1984. </li> <li> Mills, Mara. “Hearing Aids and the History of Electronics Miniaturization,” in Jonathan Sterne (Ed.), The Sound Studies Reader (London & New York: Routledge, 2012), 73-78. </li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A conversation tube constructed with red silk, ivory mouthpiece, and ivory ear insert, made by Rein & Son. Courtesy of The Central Institute for the Deaf-Max A. Goldstein Historic Devices for Hearing Collection. Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine (VC703001). Title A name given to the resource A Red Conversation Tube Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Becker Medical Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1800 to 1850 Deafness Material Culture Prosthesis Technology https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/7816e3d4d7e51ad59b7626eece1c807d.jpg 54b9166ffbc42ea19f8cbeac79f415b1 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. (Reprinted from a London newspaper, October 7, 1887) The “Ugly Clubs,” of which particulars are to be met in “Hone’s Every-Day Book,” and like compilations, have a somewhat apocryphal air; but at last documentary evidence of the constitution and history of one of these facetious societies of the last century has been brought to light.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> It is an old thin volume in manuscript discovered by a Liverpool bookseller. It contains the rules, accounts, and minutes of proceedings of “The Most Honourable Society of Ugly Faces,” who appear to have been in active existence in that city at least from January 1743 to January 1754, and who were possibly the model for other like facetious societies in later days. The primary condition of membership was that the candidate should have “something odd, remarkable, droll, or out of the way in his phiz; as in the length, breadth, or narrowness thereof, or in his complexion, the cast of his eyes or make of his mouth, lips, chin, &c.”<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> Of all this (it is added) the Majority of the Society are to judge, the President to have a casting vote. Extensive lists of names of actual members are duly entered, together with records of meetings, from which it appears that sober subjects were not excluded from their table, since on one occasion the President makes a speech “On the Declaration of War against France.” In this book there also appear minute descriptions of members. James Ashton, D.D., Chaplain to the Society, is stated to have “a fine carv’d face, Eyelashes like two Beesoms, Nose like a shuffle Nos’d Shark, a triangular Mouth, blubber Lips, Meagre Cheecks, and Eyes of a Sea-Green,” and to be “an excellently well qualified member.” Mr. John Woods, of Liverpool, architect, elected July 22, 1751, is sketched in the following flattering terms: “A stone Colour’d complexion, a dimple in his Attick Story, the pilasters of his face fluted, tortoise ey’d, a prominent nose, wild grin, and face altogether resembling a badger, and finer, tho’ smaller, than Sr Chryst. Wren or Inego Jones’s.”<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> As there is an entry in the accounts of a payment “for five pictures of ugly faces” there may be some more convincing record still extant of the claims of these persons to figure at the gatherings at the old “Exchange Coffee House,” which place of entertainment, it seems, was their headquarters. But it has been shrewdly observed that it is not certain whether these were portraits of exceptionally ill-favoured persons, purchased for the general delight and comfort of the club. <div> <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> “Hone’s Every-Day Book” was a British periodical published by William Hone in Britain in the 1820s and subtitled “A guide to the year: describing the popular amusements, sports, ceremonies, manners, customs, and events, incident to the three hundred and sixty-five days, in past and present times.” </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> “Phiz” refers to “physiognomy,” or judging a person by their outward appearance. This practice originated in antiquity and regained popularity in the eighteenth century through theorists like Johann Caspar Lavater (who published his Essays on Physiognomy in the 1770s), often with discriminatory ends. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> John Woods was the architect of Liverpool’s Town Hall, and Sir Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones were renowned British architects of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. </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 Ugly Clubs reflect changing notions of deformity through the long nineteenth century, before and beyond. Ugly Clubs arose from fictional forebears in early eighteenth-century satirical periodicals in Britain, including Ned Ward’s The Secret History of Clubs and Joseph Addison’s and Richard Steele’s Spectator papers.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> The factual club in Liverpool, England (1743-54) reflected a number of social, political, and moral debates as it communally satirized deformity and, by extension, disability. In an era when Samuel Johnson interchangeably defined “deformity” and “ugliness” in his ground-breaking A Dictionary of the English Language, and contemporary with the artist William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty, the Ugly Face Club paralleled debates about physiognomy, artistic caricature, and minority dissent toward the club’s focus on ugliness—which “doubles the Ridicule,” according to William Hay, a member of Parliament who was hunchbacked and who wrote Deformity: An Essay (1754), in which he vowed never to be a member of an Ugly Club.<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> Like other Clubs that permeated eighteenth-century British social culture, the Ugly Face Club was a voluntary fraternal organization whose activities revolved around meeting in a coffee house, drinking ale, and singing songs. Liverpool’s “Most Honourable and Facetious Society of Ugly Faces” consisted of bachelors who banded together to satirize their “odd,” “remarkable,” and “out of the way” facial deformities, not construed as disabling. One membership rule stated that even if a candidate is “humpback’d and leg’d and posses’d of all the perfections besides of the great and immortall worthy Aesop,” he could not be admitted to the Club if he lacked the requisite facial deformities, ranging from “Blubber lips, little goggyling or squinting Eyes” to “a large Carbuncle Potatoe Nose.”<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> Members were drawn mainly from Liverpool’s merchant class, also including doctors, ship captains, tradesmen, and the architect of the city’s Town Hall. Throughout the nineteenth century, Ugly Clubs continued to spread, with variations immigrating to America and populating colleges (including the Universities of Virginia and North Carolina), also published in periodical literatures. Perhaps more than their English forebears, Ugly Clubs at American colleges were social fraternities. Framed by the Civil War (1861-65), these satiric portraits appeared against more sobering and realistic contrasts of deformed bodies. UVA’s rituals quieted during the war, when many Americans suffered disabling, rather than amusing, deformities. The heroism or horror of war likely fit uneasily with self-ridicule and fraternal pranks, and the overriding realism and rise of naturalism likely dampened the Club’s antics. In the 1860s, European writers like George Augustus Sala and Victor Hugo mentioned Ugly Clubs, but beyond that, Ugly Clubs seemed to retreat.<a title="" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a> In the United States, so-called “Ugly Laws” (circa 1880s-1970s) attempted to prohibit individuals with physical deformities from visiting public spaces, perpetuating historic conflations of disability with ugliness.<a title="" href="#_ftn5">[5]</a> A different lineage of Ugly Clubs arose in Piobicco, Italy, which to this day celebrates a Festival of the Ugly.<a title="" href="#_ftn6">[6]</a> Throughout their history, Ugly Clubs were complexly entwined with a culture that demeaned deformity, but their communal affiliation refrained deformity that was otherwise isolating and disparaging. Via their witty self-ridicule and ridiculous rules (not to mention the projected self-respect that went with abiding by them), Ugly Clubs participated in a broader historical interrogation of humanity and disability that persists to this day. The published volume of archival papers of Liverpool’s Ye Ugly Face Clubb (1912) provides evidence of this transatlantic trend across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the following excerpt dated 1887. This surviving volume is particularly interesting because it notes how Ugly Clubs made a practice “of destroying all documentary evidence of their natural gifts; for even in this MS. many pages are missing, whether by accident or design is open to conjecture.”<a title="" href="#_ftn7">[7]</a> <div> <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Ned Ward’s account or invention of the “Club of Ugly-Faces” (1709) likely inspired Joseph Addison’s and Richard Steele’s fictional Club of the same name in The Spectator papers (1711-12, 1714), including societies at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Samuel Johnson published his first edition of <a href="https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofengl01johnuoft" target="_blank">A Dictionary of the English Language</a> in 1755. In <a href="https://archive.org/details/analysisbeauty00hogagoog">The Analysis of Beauty </a>(1753), William Hogarth identified beauty in curved or serpentine lines, which critics disparaged as his “Anti-line of Beauty” and “Line of Deformity.” See also William Hay, Deformity: An Essay, ed. Kathleen James-Cavan (Victoria, BC: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 2004). </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> Edward Howell’s edition of Ye Ugly Face Clubb, Leverpoole, 1743-1753 (Liverpool, 1912), pp. 26-7. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[4]</a> George Augustus Sala was an English journalist, and Victor Hugo was a French writer whose novels include The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and The Man Who Laughs. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[5]</a> See Susan M. Schweik, The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (New York: New York University Press, 2009). </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[6]</a> Rebecca Pike, “<a title="BBC" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3107852.stm">Italy’s ugly club defies convention</a>,” BBC News, 14 Sept. 2003. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[7]</a> Howell, Ye Ugly Face Clubb, p. 9. </div> </div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Edward Howell, ed., <a href="http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0000230185;view=1up;seq=19%20">Ye Ugly Face Clubb, Leverpoole, 1743-1753 </a>(Liverpool, 1912), pp. 17-19. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Gretchen E. Henderson Relation A related resource <ul><li> Clark, Peter. British Clubs and Societies: 1580-1800: The Origins of An Associational World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. </li> <li> Hay, William. Deformity: An Essay. Ed. Kathleen James-Cavan. Victoria, BC: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 2004. </li> <li> Henderson, Gretchen E. “<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=cAtgAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT35&dq=ugly+face+club&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yjgGU92KIcaIogS-4YGQCg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=ugly%20face%20club&f=false">The Ugly Face Club: A Case Study in the Tangled Politics and Aesthetics of Deformity.</a>” Ugliness: The Non-Beautiful in Art and Theory. Eds. Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014. pp. 17-33. </li> <li> Schweik, Susan M. The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public. New York: New York University Press, 2009. </li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource From an advertisement for an Ugly Face Club anniversary celebration (1806) reprinted with the frontispiece in Edward Howell’s edition of Ye Ugly Face Clubb, Leverpoole, 1743-1753 (Liverpool, 1912). Image courtesy of Gretchen E. Henderson. Title A name given to the resource Ugly Clubs Aesthetics Class Deformity Literature Visual Culture https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/b8adb47826a9c84dcd49d446641781df.png 7a9c61fe960cf7039aaee49f26e01bc1 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. Tom was born blind, and, learning nothing from sight, manifested in his early infancy so entire a want of intellect as to induce the belief that he was idiotic as well as blind. His imbecility and helplessness secured for him the sympathy and care of the family in his infancy; when he began to walk and run about the yard, his amusing peculiarities made him a pet. His first manifestation of interest in anything was his fondness for sounds; the first indication of capacity, his power of imitating them. Musical sounds exerted a controlling influence over him; but all sounds, from the soft breathings of the flute to the harsh grating of the corn-sheller, appeared to afford him exquisite enjoyment […] The first effort to teach him was made one evening when the family was at supper, (Tom, as usual at meals times, being present,) when his owner, upon being informed that his mother, as an excuse for not teaching him something, had said he had not sense enough to learn anything, replied, “That is a mistake. A horse or a dog may be taught almost anything, provided you always use precisely the same terms to express the same idea. Show him what you mean, and have the patience to repeat it often enough. Tom has as much sense as a horse or a dog, and I will show you that he can be taught.” He thereupon arose from the table, and approaching Tom, said to him, “Tom, sit down,” Tom, of course as was expected stood still and repeated the words. He repeated the order and sat him upon the floor. He then said to him, “Tom, get up.” Tom sat still and repeated the order. He then repeated the order and lifted Tom to his feet. He then ordered Tom to sit down, which he did promptly—to get up, and he sprang to his feet […] He was perfectly delighted by cries of pain. When his mother whipped any of the older children he would laugh and caper, and rub his hands in an ecstasy of enjoyment, and soon would be found whipping himself, and repeating the words of the mother and the cries of the child. He enjoyed so highly the crying of children that he would inflict pain upon them, for the pleasure of hearing them cry; and a constant watch had to be kept on him when he was about younger children. He once choked a younger brother nearly to death, and at another time burnt an infant sister so badly as to produce fears of a fatal result. To this day any exclamation or expression indicative of pain gives him great pleasure; and though he will express sympathy for the suffered, and prescribe remedies for his relief, he cannot restrain his expressions of pleasure. Doubtless it is the strength and the intensity of expression given to sounds produced by pain, that afford the enjoyment. […] When he was three or four years of age, it was observed that he passed most of his time with his face upturned to the sun, as if gazing intently upon it, occasionally passing his hands back and forth with rapid motion before his eyes; that was soon followed by thrusting his fingers into his eyes with a force which appeared to be almost sufficient to expel the eye-balls from their sockets; from this he proceeded to digging into one of them with sticks, until the blood would run down his face. All this must have been pleasant to him, or he would not have done it; and there is no doubt that he is indebted to the stimulus thus applied to his eyes, for the measure of sight he now enjoys. […] The mere technicalities of music Tom learns without difficulty. Its substance he seems to comprehend intuitively. To teach him the notes, it was necessary only to sound them, and tell him their names. With the elements and principles of music he seems to be familiar, long before he knew any on the names by which they were indicated […] Considering that in early life he learned nothing, and later but little from sight, that he is possessed by an overmastering passion, which so pervades his whole nature as to leave little room for interest in anything else, and the gratification of which has been indulged to the largest extent, it is not surprising that, to the outside world, he should exhibit but few manifestations of intellect as applicable to any of the ordinary affairs of life, or that those who see him only under its influence should conclude that his is idiotic. 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 Thomas Greene Wiggins, better known as “Blind Tom,” was an autistic savant with an encyclopedic memory. He is known for his mind-boggling ability to replicate music and other sounds after only one hearing. Wiggins was born into slavery in Columbus, Georgia in 1848. His master, Wiley Jones, was reluctant to care for a blind infant slave and sold Wiggins to his neighbor, General Bethune. By six Wiggins had found the Bethune piano and managed to replay exactly songs performed by his white master’s family. By eight Wiggins was contracted to a traveling showman named Perry Oliver who promoted him as a “freak.” With Oliver he performed all over the United States and Europe. His extraordinary talent for imitation, music and memory earned him an invitation to play before President James Buchanan at the White House. He was the first African American musician to officially perform in the White House. Unfortunately, emancipation failed to deliver Wiggins from the shackles of slavery. His enormous fame sullied by the deep-rooted racism of the period. Audiences often confused Wiggins’s autism with “idiocy,” and reinforced the widespread belief that people of African descent were mentally inferior to whites and incapable of caring for themselves. Through “Blind Tom” we learn just how easily misinformation about autism allowed antebellum Americans to continue to conflate race with disability. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Marvelous Musical Prodigy, Blind Tom: The Negro Boy Pianist, Whose Performances at the Great St. James and Egyptian Halls, London, and Salle Hertz, Paris, Have Created Such a Profound Sensation : Anecdotes, Songs, Sketches of the Life, Testimonials of Musicians and Savans, and Opinions of the American and English Press, of "Blind Tom." Sun Book and Job Printing Establishment, 1867. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1867 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource George Gordon-Smith Relation A related resource <ul><li> Davis, Rebecca Harding. “Blind Tom,” Selected Writing From the Borderlands: Stories of the Civil War Era. Eds. Sharon M. Harris and Robin Cadwallader. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 2010 </li> </ul><ul><li> O’Connell, Dierdre. The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist: America’s Last Musical Genius. New York: The Overlook Press, 2009. </li> <li> Southall, Geneva Handy. Blind Tom, Black Pianist-Composer, Continually Enslaved. London: Scarecrow Press, 2002. </li> </ul> Title A name given to the resource Blind Tom Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Head and shoulders photograph of Blind Tom by John J. Bethune, 1880. Image courtesy <a title="Blind Tom Wikimedia Commons" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blind_Tom_Wiggins.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a> under a Creative Commons License. Blindness Celebrity Cognition https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/808b46dd6ea7968d1fd078d547cdae01.jpg 66505229236caf8973e661a0fc830074 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/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Philadelphia: American Artificial Limb Company, 1865, 27. Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD. Description An account of the resource Illustration of the mechanism inside a Palmer Patent Leg. From The Palmer Arm and Leg, Adopted for the U.S. Army and Navy by the Surgeon-General, U.S.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 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. Brigadier-General Bartlett. [This gallant General has risen from the rank of Captain while using the Palmer Leg in the service. Amputation above the knee.] Boston, Mass., January 6, 1865. Dear Sir: I have now used the Palmer Leg (full length) for more than two years. During most of that time I have been on active duty in the field. It has stood the severe test of campaigning, exposure to all weathers, and constant use in the saddle, admirably; not better than I had hoped, but far better than I expected. I have never been kept off duty an hour by any fault in its mechanism. I willingly bear testimony to its merits, and express my satisfaction with the result of the test to which I have subjected it. (It is not bullet-proof—few legs are!) I am, sir, very respectfully, W.F. Bartlett, Brigadier-General <div> </div> *** James S. Stackhouse, Esq. Philadelphia, January 9, 1865. Dr. B. Frank. Palmer. Dear Sir: On the 22d of April, 1857, it was my misfortune to lose a foot and ankle-joint by a railroad accident. Since wearing your Artificial Leg, I have, the greater portion of the time, been employed on the Pennsylvania Central Railroad in the capacity of conductor, and in the position have run, at different times, the most difficult trains on the road (accommodation trains<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>), from the fact of these requiring greater activity on the part of the conductor, such as jumping on and off at stations, passing quickly through the train from one car to another, &c. It affords me great pleasure to add my testimony to the superiority of your limb. In fact I can scarcely realize that I have suffered so severe a loss as that of a foot. During the six years I have worn the leg I have thoroughly tested it in the most trying position in which a leg, particularly an artificial leg, can be used, and am happy to say I have never found it wanting. Should you wish to refer any parties to me for information concerning the good qualities of my limb, I would be happy to see them at my residence, No. 1344 Coates Street. I remain yours, truly, Jas. S. Stackhouse, Conductor P.R.R.<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> <div> **** </div> The Opinion of a Lady [Syme Operation.]<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> Irving House, Twelfth Street, Near Broadway, New York, January 12, 1865. Dear Doctor: Having derived so much benefit from your skill in the adaptation of an artificial foot, I cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude—daily increasing as it is—for I more and more experience the ease and facility movement through your invaluable invention. The 17th of last March my foot was amputated. The period of deep distress, and the frightful future of helplessness then opening before me in my 22d year, can only be realized by those of similar sad experiences. Unfortunately, not a few, in this day of crippled humanity from war’s sad footprints, will understand me. When Dr. Olcott,<a title="" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a> of Brooklyn, after close investigation of the subject, made me acquainted with your wonderful invention, I confess I had but little faith in the possibility of so far repairing my loss; but, from your care, I found myself not only able to throw aside my crutches, but was surprised immediately to find myself an independent walker. The second day of the trial I walked, without crutch or cane, full two miles; and now, after five months’ use, part of that time travelling, I find that I can run up and down stairs, walk without limping, and, with a perfect feeling of security, make my way through the crowds of a metropolis; indeed my most intimate friends would scarcely suspect the presence of an artificial foot. It would be an easy matter to conceal my loss, were I so disposed; but my sympathy with the unfortunate, and my gratitude to you, my dear Doctor, forbids anything of the kind; and I ask you to permit me to offer my public testimony to your skill, and will ever hold myself ready to gladly respond to any inquiries from those who may be interested. I remain yours, gratefully, Mrs. John B. Eagan. <h3> Notes</h3> <div><a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Local trains that make frequent stops, often carrying both passengers and freight.</div> <div><a title="" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> The Pennsylvania Railroad, founded in 1846.</div> <div><a title="" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> An amputation technique pioneered by James Syme (1799-1870), which removed the foot by disarticulating the ankle, removing the malleoli, and using a heel flap to cover the ends of the tibia and fibula.</div> <div><a title="" href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> Cornelius Olcott, who graduated from the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York in 1849 and practiced at 104 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn.</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/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Illustration of the mechanism inside a Palmer Patent Leg. From The Palmer Arm and Leg, Adopted for the U.S. Army and Navy by the Surgeon-General, U.S.A. (Philadelphia: American Artificial Limb Company, 1865), 27. Image courtesy of the <a title="National Library of Medicine" href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/">National Library of Medicine</a>, Bethesda, MD. Description An account of the resource In 1846, B.F. Palmer filed the first patent for an artificial leg in the United States. His product, characterized by its smoothly articulated knee, ankle, and toe joints, as well as its elegant and lifelike appearance, was an immediate success. It won awards at dozens of industrial fairs and competitions in the United States, but Palmer was most proud of his invention’s performance at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Not only did the Palmer Patent Leg win a silver medal, it was also celebrated in the London Times and lampooned in Punch, a popular satirical magazine.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> By 1857, Palmer had sold nearly three thousand of his famed appliances, and almost five hundred of them belonged to women. The Civil War (1861-65) resulted in thousands of amputations and dramatically changed the retail landscape for prostheses. The number of patents issued for artificial legs in the United States more than quadrupled from 21 between 1846 and 1860 to 88 between 1861 and 1873.<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> In 1862, the United States government agreed to supply artificial limbs to injured soldiers, and manufacturers fought vehemently for both government contracts and the patronage of wounded clients. Palmer’s advertising included this brochure, The Palmer Arm and Leg, Adopted for the U.S. Army and Navy by the Surgeon-General, U.S.A., which featured testimonials from surgeons and artificial limb wearers, both military and civilian. The three letters excerpted here articulate three different experiences of disability in nineteenth-century America, but their perspectives remain limited, as they were curated and likely edited by a manufacturer who aggressively controlled his product’s reputation. Still, the testimonials illustrate how the artificial limb intersected with popular ideals of military masculinity, as well as men’s physical command over railroads and other symbols of industrial growth and achievement, even as these technologies were responsible for much civilian limb loss. Both men and women put a premium on physical activity and ease of movement, and many of these advertising letters, including the third excerpted here, also appealed to the conventions of sentimentalism. In the end, Palmer’s greatest achievement was his ability to present the artificial limb as a desirable consumer product, bearing the diverse values and priorities of his time and place. <div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> “The Great Exhibition,” Times [London] (19 September 1851): 4; “Palmer’s Legs,” Punch (27 September 1851): 137. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> Laurann Figg and Jane Farrell-Beck, “Amputation in the Civil War: Physical and Social Dimensions,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 48 (1993): 461. </div> </div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Palmer Arm and Leg, Adopted for the U.S. Army and Navy by the Surgeon-General, U.S.A.. Philadelphia, PA: American Artificial Limb Company, 1865. 30, 41, 42-43. Full text available at <a title="Archive link" href="https://archive.org/details/101462403.nlm.nih.gov">https://archive.org/details/101462403.nlm.nih.gov</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1865 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Caroline Lieffers Relation A related resource <ul><li> Figg, Laurann, and Jane Farrell-Beck. “Amputation in the Civil War: Physical and Social Dimensions.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 48 (1993): 454-475. </li> <li> Hasegawa, Guy. Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. </li> <li> Herschbach, Lisa. “Prosthetic Reconstructions: Making the Industry, Re-making the Nation.” History Workshop Journal 44 (1997): 22-57. </li> <li> Life and Limb: The Toll of the American Civil War. National Library of Medicine Web Exhibit. 2011. Curated by Manon Parry. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/lifeandlimb/index.html . </li> </ul> Title A name given to the resource The Palmer Patent Leg Language A language of the resource English Prosthesis https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/06f5b1577456228044d43531780df354.jpg 03315ef06120b10c195a07432d8be15f 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/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Druck von Leo Krause & Ewerlien “Maximo und Bartolo die leßten lebenden Azteken,” a 1909 postcard of siblings Bartola and Maximo, most likely from their final engagement in Germany. Image from author’s collection. Description An account of the resource The front of this black and white postcard shows the siblings sitting cross-legged. https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/da2709afa118b3b1b303e3d3c3ba675b.jpg da3256faf98e55ba86751fda32347a86 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 back of the postcard shows a faded address and stamp. 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. The place of residence assigned to our travelers was the vacant wing of a sumptuous and spacious structure, at the western extremity of the city, which had been appropriated, from time immemorial, to the surviving remnant of an ancient and singular order of priesthood called Kaanas, which it was distinctly asserted in their annals and traditions, had accompanied the first migration of this people from the Assyrian plains. Their peculiar and strongly-distinctive lineaments, it is now perfectly well ascertained, are to be traced in many of the sculptured monuments of the Central American ruins, and were found still more abundantly in Iximaya. Forbidden, inviolably sacred laws, from intermarrying with any persons but those of their own caste, they had here dwindled down, in the course of many centuries, to a few insignificant individuals, diminutive in stature. They were, nevertheless, held in high veneration and affection by the whole Iximayan community, probably as living specimens of an antique race nearly extinct. [ … ] Such is the marvelous story detailed by Velasquez. Containing all elements which can well stimulate curiosity, it also lays claim to a credence which further inquiry must either substantiate or withdraw. The Aztec Children stand independently as the most wonderful members of the human race, whatever their origin or descent; yet at the same time, all testimony professing to throw light on this is worthy of calm and considerate attention. To view these children is less to inquire whence they came, than to regard them as they are; to watch the progressive dawn of intelligence and continually stronger development of individual characteristics. To see them is an event in the life of the beholder, which will never be forgotten. Were they deformities, without proper lineage or name, excrescences or mere freaks of nature, their history would little merit the inquiry or examination now courted. They are here—the descendants of a people probably passed over to the Américan continent at a period too remote to be ascertained, members of a race kept preserved in rocky fastness, and now discovered on the eve of physical decline and disappearance. [ … ] It might be considered just, with great propriety, to class these remarkable specimens of humanity with fabulous existences, if the truth of their being rested on mere individual assertion—BUT HERE THEY ARE! LIVING!—and open to public examination—not merely imaginary creatures, like the strange men of Africa mentioned by Herodotus, the phoenix or the mermaid. Not a fictitious people, like the dryads of the Arcadian vales—not the moonlight fairies; the little grey men of Norse legends—not nymph, sprite, nor elf—but human beings of flesh and blood—the remnant of strange and wonderful race—the greatest marvel of a land of wonders, and of the nineteenth century—more strange than the vast skeletons of the Mastodon, which have been exhumed in the same region—but, like the black swan of New Holland formerly regarded as a myth, but now a well-established existence. In short, as curious and as well substantiated as the singular sightless fish of the mammoth cave of Kentucky. In brief, these Aztec Children present the most extraordinary phenomenon in the human race ever witnessed by the modern world: let their origin be what it may – let their history and their country’s history be every so vague and traditionary—doubt the truth of Velasquez’s narrative or believe it wholly—these children present in themselves the eighth wonder of the world. They are, without exception, the most remarkable and intensely interesting objects that were ever presented to the European public. 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/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Druck von Leo Krause & Ewerlien “Maximo und Bartolo die leßten lebenden Azteken,” a 1909 postcard of siblings Bartola and Maximo, most likely from their final engagement in Germany. Image from author’s collection. Description An account of the resource Pedro Velasquez’s gripping 1851 Illustrated Memoir of an Expedition into Central America chronicles the enterprising Hammond expedition that absconded with a pair of native children after discovering Iximaya, a fabled city hidden in deep in the jungles of untouched Central America. These, however, were not just any children, but the two last living members of a pureblood priestly caste: Bartola and Maximo, “The Aztec Children.” Diminutive in stature and well beloved by the otherwise war-like Iximayans, after their “rescue,” the siblings became two of the most sought-after freak show performers of the nineteenth century. However, Bartola and Maximo were not Aztecs; and neither Pedro Velasquez nor Iximaya actually existed. Their life story pamphlet was actually a doctored up version of American lawyer and explorer John Lloyd Stephens’ travelogue, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841), a text that revitalized interest in Mayan antiquity during the nineteenth century. The wild romance of the “Aztec Children” was nothing more than freak show fabrication. Bartola and Maximo’s actual origins are unknown, but they were most likely born in San Salvador. They were both born with microcephaly, a neurodevelopmental disorder that impaired physical and cognitive development, earning them the nicknames the “Aztec Children” and “Aztec Lilliputians.” They first appeared with their impresario J. Morris in Boston, MA in the early 1850s. After catching the attention of Horace Greeley and President Millard Fillmore, they travelled to London in 1853 to meet Queen Victoria. For the next fifty years, they were continuously exhibited in London, Europe, and the US. They even briefly worked with P.T. Barnum, one of the most famous nineteenth-century showmen, which testified to just how popular the “Aztecs” were. Eventually interest in the siblings faded, and their last known sighting was around 1901. The postcard is a souvenir from one of their final performance engagements in Germany. Throughout their career, Bartola and Maximo sparked hot debates over the nature of physical, cultural, and racial difference. The conclusion of the “Aztec Children’s” pamphlet reveals how disability, science, and colonialism supported each other during the nineteenth century. On the one hand, they were routinely used as medical, ethnological, and anthropological evidence of the existence of degenerate species. But, Bartola and Maximo were also deemed imposters: they were little more than imperfect Aztec knockoffs, much like their fraudulent life story pamphlet. The twists and turns of their long career represent the freak show’s signature “artful deception,” a clever interweaving of truth and fiction, authenticity and fabrication, cover ups and exposé.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> The freak show does not just calm anxieties and uncertainties that accompany physical difference, but also incites energetic debate that complicates cultural standards of normalcy. <h3>Note</h3> <div><a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Including the freak show, automatons, stage magic, and trompe l’oeil, James W. Cook maps out the modern form of trickery he refers to as “artful deception “ in The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) </div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Illustrated Memoir of an Eventful Expedition into Central America Resulting in the Discovery of the Idolatrous City of Iximaya in an Unexplored Region; and the Possession of Two Remarkable Aztec Children Maximo (the Boy) and Bartola (the Girl,) Descendants and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste (now Nearly Extinct), of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of That Country. Edited by John L. Stephens and Other Travelers. Translated by Pedro Velasquez. New York: Wynkoop, Hallendeck, and Thomas, 1860. Pages 30 to 34. Available at: <a href="https://archive.org/details/101188943.nlm.nih.gov">https://archive.org/details/101188943.nlm.nih.gov</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1860 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ann McKenzie Garascia Relation A related resource <ul><li>Aguirre, Robert D. Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture. Minneapolis: Minnesota, 2005. </li> </ul><ul><li>Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988.</li> <li> Durbach, Nadja. Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. </li> </ul> Title A name given to the resource Bartola and Maximo, “The Aztec Children” https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/330ec4540b1eaa1ced6a997f31704ba3.png 7bd31ae1f48e2961b4f55d86c291f079 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/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This image is reproduced by courtesy of Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. Description An account of the resource A white plastic glove with all the letters of the alphabet printed in lower case along the fingers and palm. 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 moment he evinced the independent desire to communicate with others by written words, I felt that the time had come to give him a means of forming written words for himself by teaching him his letters and a manual alphabet.” “For this purpose I adopted the plan, recommended by George Dalgarno, of writing the alphabet upon a glove. This glove I presented to him one morning as a new plaything He put it on his left hand, and then went to the card-rack, as usual, and presented me with the word for some object he desired; we shall suppose the word “doll.” I then covered up the word with the exception of the first letter, “d,” and directed his attention to the glove. After a little searching he discovered the corresponding letter upon the glove. I then showed him the letter “o” on the card, and he soon found it on the glove; and so with the other letters.” “After a little practice of this kind he became so familiar with the places of the letters that he no longer required to search, but pointed at once to the proper letter upon the glove. Every time he required a card from the card-rack I made him spell the word upon his fingers.” “In communicating with me it was unnecessary for him to wear the glove, as we both remembered the places of the letters. I kept up the practice of writing to him, as before, but required him to spell the words upon his hand while I wrote them on the board. He soon became so expert that he could spell faster than I could write, and often finished his sentence by guessing what I was going to add before I had written more than two- thirds. When this stage had been reached I often used the manual alphabet with him, instead of writing. I took his hand in mine and touched the places of the letters upon his hand. He did not require to look; he could feel where he was couched. He recognized the words in this way, however rapidly I spelled them upon his hand. As I had five fingers, I could touch five letters simultaneously, if I so desired, and a little practice enabled me to play upon his hand as one would play upon the keys of a piano, and quite as rapidly.” “I could also give emphasis by pressure upon the fingers, and group the words together as they would be grouped in utterance, leaving pauses, here and there, corresponding to the pauses made in actual speech.” “The more I used with him this means of communication the more I rejoiced in the fact that I had decided to employ an alphabet addressed to the sense of touch, instead of sight. It left his eye free to observe the expression of my face and the actions and objects which formed the subject of our conversation.” 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/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A replica of the talking glove used by Alexander Graham Bell to teach George Sanders and, later, to communicate with Helen Keller. This image is reproduced by courtesy of Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. Description An account of the resource In 1873 Alexander Graham Bell was employed to teach George Sanders, a five year-old congenitally deaf boy. As part of his instruction of Sanders, Bell used the ‘talking glove’ found in the 1680 book, Didascalocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man’s Tutor, by George Dalgarno (1628-1687), with slight modification. The letters of the alphabet were written on a glove in specific places on the glove’s surface. A sighted person would then spell words by touching the appropriate letter on the glove. Because of his success with this method of communication with George Sanders, Bell employed it when he met with Helen Keller in Washington in May of 1888. Keller, who was anxious to utilize any method that would allow her to communicate with others, was quite interested in this technology. On 15 May 1888, Anne Sullivan wrote to her former teacher at Perkins Institute for the Blind, Sophia Hopkins, to tell her that when the then-former Governor of Maine, Dr. Alonzo Garcelon, asked Keller what she would like to have as a present, Keller responded with “‘Some beautiful gloves to talk with.” Sullivan continues, writing that the “Doctor was puzzled. He had never heard of ‘talking-gloves’; but I explained that she had seen a glove on which the alphabet was printed, and evidently thought they could be bought. I told him he could buy some gloves if he wished, and that I would have the alphabet stamped on them” (Keller 261-62). While she could understand the potential the glove presented as a method of communication, Sullivan was also concerned by the accessibility of communication she saw with the glove. Dorothy Herrmann quotes an undated letter from Sullivan to Michael Anagnos, the director of the Perkins School for the Blind, in Helen Keller: A Life. In this letter, Sullivan is reluctant to have Keller use the talking glove as she saw its potential to allow anyone the ability to communicate with Keller, giving Sullivan little control over what Keller was exposed to: I cannot bring myself to the mental state, where I can feel contented to allow irresponsible and unreasoning persons to have easy access to my darling’s pure and loving little heart. I am sure that while I stay with her, she will never have occasion to feel the solitude of her life, and when I go, the glove, I doubt not, will add greatly to her enjoyment. But until then I am determined to keep my beautiful treasure pure and unspotted from the world. (quoted in Herrmann 71) In the end, although Keller herself was, initially, enthusiastic about the glove, it became inconvenient, as she grew more skilled at fingerspelling. Keller expressed her thoughts and opinions so rapidly with fingerspelling that the glove became slow and awkward for her. Indeed, the talking glove, or alphabet glove as it is now commonly called, is still used today by deafblind individuals, but, according to the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore, Maryland, it “is a cumbersome communication method, but it works well when no other system is available.” As early as 1868, Bell had been involved in teaching deaf students how to speak through his father’s system called Visible Speech. However, rather than challenging Bell’s beliefs that the deaf could be integrated into American society through articulation, the alphabet glove was a part of his larger method of instruction intended to achieve this goal. Bell envisioned that the introduction to language through the alphabet glove and other tools would eventually lead to his students being able to lip-read and speak. While Keller did go on to realize Bell’s problematic oralist agenda and eventually learn to speak, Sanders was not able to master articulation<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>. Sanders was, nevertheless, skilfully educated by Bell at least in part through the use of the alphabet glove. Bell’s success in instructing Sanders, who would go on to attend The National Deaf-Mute College in Washington, D.C. in 1882 and work as a printer, added to Bell’s growing reputation as an accomplished instructor to the deaf. Additionally, Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Greene Hubbard were so impressed with the alphabet glove and Bell’s success in educating George that they became major investors in Bell’s phone company. Building on the reputation that came from his use of tools such as the alphabet glove in his teaching and the proceeds from his invention of the telephone, Bell became one of the most influential figures in the oralist movement, a movement that sought to suppress sign language in favour of speaking and lip-reading and would have, and still has today, significant negative ramifications for deaf communities throughout the world. Note <div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> In a forced emotional scene in the 1939 The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, George Sanders is depicted as being able to eventually say “father” while his father, Thomas, weeps with happiness. </div> </div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bell, Alexander Graham. “Upon a Method of Teaching Language to a Very Young Congenitally Deaf Child.” American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb. XXVII (1883): 124-139. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1883 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nadine LeGier Relation A related resource <ul><li> Clark, Harold T. Talking Gloves For The Deaf and Blind: Their Value to Men Injured in the Present War. Cleveland, Ohio, 1917. </li> </ul><ul><li> Dalgarno, George. Didascalocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man’s Tutor. Oxford: Printed at the Theater, 1680. </li> </ul><ul><li> Herrmann, Dorothy. Helen Keller: A Life. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1998. </li> </ul><ul><li> Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Modern Library, 2003. </li> </ul><ul><li> National Federation for the Blind. <a href="https://nfb.org/deaf-blind-resources">https://nfb.org/deaf-blind-resources</a> </li> </ul> Title A name given to the resource Talking Gloves Language A language of the resource English