Managing the Experience of Hearing Loss in Britain, 1830–1930

This book looks at how hearing loss among adults was experienced, viewed and treated  in Britain before the National Health Service. We explore the changing status of ‘hard of hearing’ people during the nineteenth century as categorized among diverse and changing categories of ‘deafness’. Then we explore the advisory literature for managing hearing loss, and techniques for communicating with hearing aids, lip-reading and correspondence networks. From surveying the commercial selling and daily use of hearing aids, we see how adverse developments in eugenics prompted otologists to focus primarily on the prevention of deafness. The final chapter shows how hearing loss among First World War combatants prompted hearing specialists to take a more supportive approach, while it fell to the National Institute for the Deaf, formed in 1924, to defend hard of hearing people against unscrupulous hearing aid vendors. This book is suitable for both academic audiences and the general reading public. All royalties from sale of this book will be given to Action on Hearing Loss and the National Deaf Children’s Society.

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: The diverse and changing categories of deafness.- Chapter 3: Advice for managing hearing loss.- Chapter 4: Communicating with hearing loss.- Chapter 5: Selling and using hearing aids.- Chapter 6: Preventing deafness: two medical approaches.- Chapter 7: Institutionally organising for hearing loss.- Chapter 8: Epilogue.

 

Graeme Gooday is Professor of the History of Science and Technology at the University of Leeds, UK. His specialist research themes include communications, electrification, patenting and gender in the period 1850-1930. He collaborates with various museums in collections-based research, especially the Thackray Museum and its substantial collection of hearing aids.

Karen Sayer is Professor of Social and Cultural History at Leeds Trinity University, UK, and addresses changing conceptualisations of the human and animal body in relation to technology. She works within the interdisciplinary team of the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies and organised the landmark conference Disability & the Victorians: Confronting Legacies, 2012.