By Alex Jones
FASCINATING black and white photographs from fifties Britain show hearing impaired children undergoing tests at the Department of Education of the Deaf.
Remarkable pictures from 1952 show psychologist, Mr P C Kendall, banging a drum near an upset baby girl, a young boy playing with farm animals as he undergoes a hearing assessment, and a 14-month-old child being taught to lipread by her mother.
Another stunning shot shows a little girl fiercely concentrating on her wooden toy as a woman tinkers with the testing equipment in the background.
Before the 1970s, most deaf children in the UK went to residential schools specifically for deaf children.
By the 1960s, deaf schools had already existed for 200 years.
Deaf children were sponsored to attend a school, usually by a wealthy relative or benefactor.
The conditions in these schools were usually poor and children were poorly fed.
In these schools the children created their own language which eventually evolved into what became known as sign language.
Today, there are more than 50,000 deaf children living in the UK and 32 million deaf children globally. Five babies are born deaf every day.
Ninety per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents with little or no experience of deafness.
