Kirk, Edward Alfred

Born at Doncaster and deaf at age 7 from scarlet fever. Yorkshire Institution for the Deaf and Dumb ages 11-16, then in 1871 hired as a resident assistant teacher in the Yorkshire Institution. After a change of heads, the Institution began phasing in an oral-only education policy, which forced Kirk out of his job in 1883. That year, he became the sole teacher and adminstrator of a small day class of deaf children within a hearing school at Leeds. After suffering years of underfunding, he finally convinced the school board to build a new school for deaf children, which opened around 1900. Kirk continued to fight the exclusion of deaf persons from teaching positions in other schools for the deaf; an 1895 national survey showed that Kirk's school was the only really successful day school for the deaf in the country, far ahead of those with hearing teachers, but this finding was ignored by the education establishment. Wrote articles on this topic in both the deaf press and the deaf education journals. Died of exhaustion after two months of illness; buried at St. Mary's Church, Whitkirk, just outside Leeds.