Deaf Mutes, education of.
As early as 1793
Dr. W. Thornton published an essay in
Philadelphia on
Teaching the dumb to speak, but no attempt was made to establish a school for the purpose here until 1811, when the effort was unsuccessful.
A school for the instruction of the silent that proved successful was opened in
Hartford, Conn., by
Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet (q. v.) in 1817, and was chartered under the name of the “
New England Asylum for the deaf and dumb.”
Congress granted for its support a township of land in
Alabama, the proceeds of which formed a fund of about $340,000. Other asylums have since been established, numbering thirty-six in 1870, and a national deaf mute college was established at
Washington in 1864.
In 1876 there were about 4,400 pupils in these institutions.
At the close of the school year 1898 the total number of schools for deaf mutes reporting to the
United States bureau of education was 105, with 1,100 instructors and 10,878 pupils.
There were fifty-one State public schools, which had 945 instructors in the departments of articulation, aural development, and industrial branches, and 9,832 pupils, about one-third of whom were taught by the combined system and the others by the manual method.
The above institutions had grounds and buildings valued at $11,175,933 and libraries containing 94,269 volumes.
The total expenditure for support was $2,208,704. There were also 483 pupils with eighty-one instructors enrolled in private schools for the deaf, and 563 pupils with seventy-four instructors in various public day schools for the deaf.
