Richard Aslatt Pearce

Richard Aslatt Pearce (9 January 1855 – 21 July 1928) was the first deaf person to be ordained as an Anglican clergyman. He was educated via the sign language of his era, he became Chaplain to the Deaf and Dumb, and he fulfilled this duty in the Southampton area for the rest of his life. In 1885 he was introduced to Queen Victoria, who then ordered the Royal Commission on the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb and Others of the United Kingdom, 1889.

Pearce came from a Southampton family. His paternal grandfather was Chatham-born officer of the Royal Navy Robert Pearce, and Sarah née Seward, both of Southampton.

Their son, and the father of Richard Aslatt Pearce, was Richard Seward Pearce, a solicitor and town clerk of Southampton, who married Frances Aslatt in 1854 at South Stoneham. Frances Aslatt was the daughter of John Aslatt, liveried coach manufacturer of Above Bar, later high sheriff of Southampton 1845–1846, and his wife Hester Martha Colson.

Pearce was born in Portswood on 9 January 1855, one of four siblings of whom three were deaf. Two of his siblings were artist Walter Seward Pearce, and Fanny Pearce, all three described as "deaf and dumb from birth" in the 1881 Census. His single hearing sibling was solicitor Arthur William Pearce, who was mayor of Southampton 1917–1918.

There are two indications that Pearce did not speak. One is that in his own handwriting on the 1911 Census form he differentiated himself, as "deaf and dumb", from his wife whom he described as "deaf." The second is the Hampshire Advertiser's description of his sermon at Golden Common in 1887, as "silent eloquence."

Pearce's father paid £50 (equivalent to £5,932.23 in 2023) per year from 1860 to 1872, for him to attend the Brighton Institution for Deaf and Dumb Children at 127–132 Eastern Road, Kemptown, Brighton, where he received private tuition using only the manual system. His headmaster, who gave him personal tuition via the manual and sign system of that era, was William Sleight. The 1861 Census shows him at six years old, already at the Institution, when it had 82 inmates and two teachers besides the headmaster. In 1871 when Pearce was 16 years old, the Institution had 93 inmates, plus several former female inmates employed as servants and as an assistant teacher. Besides the headmaster who taught, the only other teachers besides the deaf former pupil, were an assistant master and a pupil teacher; however, all the inmates were described as "scholars". In that year, 40 of the inmates were of unknown origin, and 31 were of vague origin, where only the county or country were known.

Pearce met his wife Frances Mary Monck at St Saviour's, Oxford Street, in 1887, and they married on 26 April 1888. She was born in Dublin, the daughter of Charles Monck, 4th Viscount Monck, who until 1869 had been Governor General of Canada. Her 1911 Census record, completed in her husband's handwriting, says that she was deaf "from illness". Her father did not want them to marry, believing that because they were both deaf, they would be poor, but they moved to Southampton where Pearce was to remain in employment, serving the deaf community for the rest of his life.

Pearce and his wife had no children. It is not known whether Pearce's childlessness had any connection with recommendations of castration of the congenitally deaf by early 19th century eugenicists who held those views which were later developed by Francis Galton. In 1901 he and his wife were living at 2 Christ Church Road, Winchester, with two servants. The 1911 Census finds them living at Christ Church Lodge, Winchester, where he describes himself as "chaplain to the deaf and dumb in the Diocese of Winchester." It is not known why the same record, completed in R.A. Pearce's own hand, states that he and Frances were deaf "from illness," when according to his 1881 Census record, his father informed the enumerator that he was "deaf and dumb from birth." Similarly, the 1861 and 1871 Census, in which the enumerator was informed by the Brighton Institution, state that the inmate Pearce was "deaf and dumb from birth." However, by 1911 a congenital condition such as profound deafness could potentially have made him a target for eugenics. On 21 July 1928 he died in Winchester at his home, two years before the death on 30 October 1930 of his wife Frances.