Oxley, Kate

Born as Kate Whitehead at Goole and deafened by scarlet fever at age 8. Yorkshire Institution for the Deaf and Dumb 1906-1912. Basically self-trained in writing, she nevertheless wrote a best-selling children's historical mystery novel, The King's Legacy. Her second novel was For Prince Charlie (1929), followed by Stubby, The Story of a Cat (1931?), More About Stubby (1932), Kellyann, Being the Story of a Manx Cat (1933), and Kellyann Married (1935), all published under her maiden name. Beginning 1924, served as a secretary to Selwyn Oxley, a hearing missioner to the deaf who aspired to build up a library of all literature relating to deafness. She married him in 1929 and they eventually amassed a collection of over 5000 books, magazines, and pamphlets up to 1940. A wartime move seriously disrupted the library and it was systematically dismembered, batches of books going to deaf schools overseas, especially Australia, and to Oxford University. After his death in 1951, Kate wrote one last book, a biography of him, A Man with a Mission (1955). Died in a London hospital.