Lippitt, Jeanie

Deafened by scarlet fever at age 4. Obsessively tutored at home by her mother for several hours every day, she eventually re-learned to speak and to speechread. She was sometimes claimed (incorrectly) to be the world's first deaf person to learn to read lips. Her case helped inspire Harriet Rodgers to found the Clarke School for the Deaf. At age 14, entered Miss Shaw's School (a private school for hearing girls) for 3 or 4 years. Her father became Governor of Rhode Island, and pushed through a state law mandating that all deaf Rhode Island children be taught speech and lipreading, helped by his daughter appearing before the state legislature to demonstrate her abilities. Later she also learned to speak and lipread French. Married a hearing man, William B. Weeden, in 1893. A published collection of periodical articles about her is Jeanie Lippitt and the Mastery of Silence (1974).