Finding collections relating to d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people

One of the aims of our project is to make collections relating to d/Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people more visible – and to share some of the objects our Fellows and Trainees are discovering.

Some will have quite obvious connections to disabled people’s lives – a walking stick, some braille or images of disabled people. But we will also be exploring less obvious connections too. Sometimes the significance of an object is its owner; its part in a bigger story, or the way someone with lived experience of disability has responded to it. In this way we hope to broaden the ways that d/Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent stories are told.

Collections

BRAILLE WATCH (Watch)

MMM.1993.48.2

ID: A gold wristwatch with a front opening glass cover and a Braille clockface. The front cover is open to show the braille numbers inside.This Swiss made ladies’ wristwatch belonged to Caroline France. Caroline (or Carol, as she liked to be known), was born in 1905 in Edge Hill; the eldest of 13 children. From...

Read More

Rights information: Copyright: Pete Carr

Description

ID: A gold wristwatch with a front opening glass cover and a Braille clockface. The front cover is open to show the braille numbers inside.

This Swiss made ladies’ wristwatch belonged to Caroline France. Caroline (or Carol, as she liked to be known), was born in 1905 in Edge Hill; the eldest of 13 children. From the age of 13 she attended the School for the Blind Children’s Branch in Wavertree.

Aged 16, she went to the Hardman Street School, where she taught machine knitting, basket making and chair caning until 1957.
Carol dressed stylishly, enjoyed holidays and outings with her many friends, sang with church choirs and choral societies, and most of all loved her dogs.

Her friend Barbara Myers remembers, “Carol was dignified and comical, self-disciplined and rebellious. ‘You might as well as wish you had’ was one of her favourite sayings. I believe she died regretting nothing.”