'Deaf by God' tried in Old Bailey records

Professor Bencie Woll, Director of the UCL Deafness, Cognition and Language Research (DCAL) Centre says: “With the release of Old Bailey records online, we have been able to explore the treatment of ‘deaf and dumb’ people by the legal system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many of the issues raised are pertinent today, including finding interpreters for signing deaf people in the courts. In many cases, family and friends were used as well as employers (masters to deaf servants). Later, we see teachers from the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, founded in 1792, being brought in to communicate in the courts.

“The central criminal court appears to have had quite an enlightened view, even though there is little evidence that these people "dumb by the visitation of god" were using a fully fledged sign language. The court usually held no objections to signing, gesturing and motioning, provided that this could be interpreted to the satisfaction of the jury.

This rationale still operates largely today, where people are brought in to interpret for deaf people without necessarily being qualified or registered with a professional body.

“British Sign Language can trace its roots to the creation of formal deaf education, the irony being that as deaf children received greater education and as BSL became a full language, the status of ‘deaf and dumb’ people appears to have declined in the courts, just as their language and community were beginning to develop.”

The earliest British account of signing dates back to a wedding in 1575, where the groom used signs during the ceremony. Samuel Pepys’s account of the great fire of London in 1666 refers to a ‘dumb’ boy who describes the fire using “strange signs”. This ‘home signing’, as it is known, was an ad hoc gesturing system developed by deaf children which would not have been passed down generations or across deaf communities.