UCL Ear Institute and RNID Libraries
By H Dominic W Stiles, on 11 November 2011
JEWISH DEAF SCHOOL, Nightingale Lane, Balham, London (1865- 1965)
Henry Isaacs, later knighted, had sent his daughters to the Rotterdam deaf school where the Oral method was used. He and two other members of the Jewish community decided to form a Jewish School for the deaf and managed to get the support of Baroness Mayer de Rothschild. They bought a house for the school at 15 Mount St in Whitechapel in 1865. The school was started with 3 or 4 pupils who were taken from the Old Kent Road school. Initially they were taught by the Rev. C. Rhind using manualism, but the scool committee was quickly persuaded by Isaacs that Oralism was better. Shortly after, under the headship of the Rotterdam trained Jewish Teacher of the Deaf William van Praagh, the school became the first in the U.K. to introduced the Oral method of education.
Photo: Jewish School – view from the garden
In the first few years the school moved several times. In 1875 it went to Walmer House in Notting Hill the former episcopal palace of the Bishop of Norwich, before ending up in Nightingale Lane in 1899 (see Weinberg).
The school closed in 1965 due to a decline in the number of pupils.
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