On the corner of 35th Street NW and Volta Place NW in Washington D.C. can be found Vawlty Towers. Basil Fawlty wont be spotted there but the ghost of a certain Alexander Graham Bell may well turn up! The former was well known for shouting all over the place and taking the birch upon his beloved but failed mini. The latter was noted for the invention of speaking devices where voices could be heard across vast distances. In a sense that could be construed as a form of shouting from one end of the country to the other. In lieu of his other historicist endeavours Bell was rather more known for wanting Deaf children to upscale their abilities to a more abled level of communication, and not use sign language in any way or form.
The Vawlty building was the headquarters of the famed (or is it infamous) Volta Bureau – the headquarters from which Bell’s ideals were operationalised – such as the great endeavour to ensure the deaf were encouraged (forced more likely) to speak. The Bureau regularly published a magazine that espoused the worldwide efforts being made to convert deaf children who were full of life and signing into fully conversant deaf adults who merely moved their mouths with a bit of vocal theatrics to impress the hearing whilst keeping their hands behind their backs.
Brooch commemorating the significance of the American Association to promote the teaching of speech to the deaf. This association was clearly a part of the, erm, Volta Bureau. Image cleaned and upscaled by Deaf21 from one found on Ebay.
Did it work? Well that’s something only a few would know. K, M, N, P, Q, S, X, Z were certainly buggers to try and pronounce. As for the oralists it was seen as a great success then – and today it still is, alas, seen as a great success. Its a one sided perspective of course and the only tears of joy are those exercised by the hearing upon detecting those guttural tones from a newly converted deaf child. There are no tears of joy for the deaf child, especially when they grow up and find quite considerably every aspect of social and work life stacked against it in one way or another. Evidently being a pretend hearing person doesn’t work many wonders.
The Bureau building was opened in 1893 and its alliterative name comes after the Prix Volta (or Volta Prize). Bell had previously been a recipient of the prize in 1880. Note that specific year which was when the tsunami against the Deaf began – although the prize in question was for Bell’s telephone inventions and not for his oralist endeavours. Anyhow not a lot needs to be said of the place itself but if one is in Washington DC well why not go visit what was once the world headquarters of oralism – and ponder for a moment just how much of a world power the oralist movement had grown into soon after the controversial Milan 1880 Congress. Also consider the horrific eugenics that followed – a powerful force for the next ninety years or so with the ideology being embraced by a manic warmongering despot whose Triumph of the Will would in due course endear an ideal Aryan race of humans. It involved eliminating vast numbers of the deaf as well as many others who were deemed imperfect.
The Volta Bur… sorry… Vawlty Towers, in Washington D.C. some four miles west of Gallaudet University in Kendall Green.
For those who might be remotely interested, the complete works of the Bureau’s Volta Review from 1910 to 1961 can be found at the Internet Archive.
For reference aside, here’s a Wikipedia on the BBC’s iconic comedy series VFawlty Towers.
