Managing Their Own Affairs: The Australian Deaf Community During the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

This thesis examines the development of and interrelationships among organisations in the Australian Deaf community during the early part of the 20th Century, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses on those organisations which Deaf people attempted to establish themselves, or with hearing supporters, in response to their rejection of the philosophy and practices of the existing charitable organisations such as Deaf Societies and Missions. It also analyses the responses of the Societies and Missions to these moves. The thesis adopts a social history perspective, describing events as much as possible from the perspective of the Deaf people of the time. These developments within the Deaf community were influenced by wider social movements in Australian society during these decades, such as the articulation of minority groups as 'citizens', and their search for 'advancement', autonomy and equal rights. Australia's first schools and post-school organisations for Deaf people were closely modelled on 19th Century British institutions. The thesis describes the development of these early Australian institutions and argues that Deaf people had active or contributing roles in many of them. During the early 20th Century most of these organisations came under closer control of hearing people, and Deaf people's roles became marginalised. During the late 1920s many Deaf adults began to resist the control of Societies and Missions, instead aspiring to 'manage their own affairs'. In two states, working with hearing supporters, they successfully established alternative organisations or 'breakaways', and in another state they engaged in protracted but unsuccessful struggles with the Deaf Society. Australian Deaf people established a national organisation in the 1930s, and this led to the creation of an opposing national organisation by the Societies. Most of these new organisations did not survive beyond the 1930s, but they significantly affected the power structures and relationships between Deaf and hearing people in Australia for several decades afterwards. These events have been largely ignored and even strategically suppressed by later generations, possibly for reasons which parallel other episodes of amnesia and silence in Australian history.