Deaf Murder Casebook Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson, the author of Deaf Crime Casebook and Deaf to Evidence, has brought out another fascinating work containing fifteen cases of Deaf people involved in murder. Older readers will be familiar with the story of Donald Lang who was defended by the Deaf lawyer; Lowell Myers for it was a major novel by the late Ernest Tidyman entitled Dummy.

Jackson, to use his own words, concentrated on stories on Deaf murderers who used sign language, ignoring stories where the murderer was deafened or had a hearing loss as some of those murderers would not be identifiable as members of the Deaf community. However, it is clear that Jackson has more stories which he decided to hold back for a future publication, so we all know that there will be another book in the not too distant future!

Briefly, the book covers the following cases:

1. The murder of a violent shoemaker by Johan Schmidt in Bonn Germany, in 1828. He was found not guilty.

2. The murder of Robert and Sarah Hickson in Hull in 1841.

3. The shooting of Richard Fowler by William Harris in Granville County, North Carolina, USA, in 1859.

4. A murder committed by the sadistic and violent Deaf person, Levi Bodine who axed Daniel Hasbrouk to death in New York, USA. Bodine walked away leaving the axe in the dead man's skull.

RESEARCH HINTS

"Her lip was sewed up very well and she had a silver palate which finding of no effect, was laid aside. I made her pronounce perfectly many sounds she was incapable of before and thereby rendering her speaking intelligible to everybody, to the greatest satisfaction of herself and friends."

It will seem from the above extracts that his personal document is of very great interest, and through the kindness of the secretary and librarian of the society, it may be inspected by anyone interested. This find is probably one of the most important as regards deaf education that has been made for several years, and we would like to thank those who have put us into touch with this very interesting and important bit of history relating to deaf work in the past.

Deaf History Journal has the pleasure of introducing the above article to BDHS members and readers. The editor hopes that some of you would be interested enough to take up full research into the life and works of Henry Baker, brother-in-law to Daniel Defoe the author of The Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, Deaf and Dumb, who is presumed to be the anonymous author of Digiti-Lingua ... and hopefully the research will be published ...

Raymond Lee