In 1829, William Pagen, from Cumberland, England, was sent to Claremont in Dublin, as there was no school for the deaf in the North of England. The nearest schools by land were those at Edinburgh and at Birmingham, but travelling was erratic and costly in those days. So it was cheaper to travel by sea from Cumberland to Ireland. After leaving school, William Pagen went on several voyages with his brother, who was captain of a trading vessel
One of the former pupils – Samuel Hawkins – from Stratford-on-Slaney, Co. Wicklow, emigrated in 1889 to Winnipeg, Canada. The following year, he opened his harness-making shop in Roundthwaite, Manitoba. In the summer of 1903,he and a group of deaf people, including former pupils of the Ontario Institution for the Deaf (established in 1870 by John Barrett McGann, himself Irish), began their trek westward, led by John Alexander Braithwaite, graduate of Gallaudet College, Washington D.C. These deaf pioneers travelled by covered ox-wagons to the ‘promised land’ (free homesteads offered under the Dominion Lands Act) near the Qu’Appelle Valley (South Saskatchewan) and settled on farms near the towns of Lipton, Cupar and Dysart.
Among several former pupils emigrating to England were the McDonalds (Thomas Alexander (Alec), Henry Beville (Harry and Ethel - pictured right). Alec became a Missioner for the Deaf in London, while Harry became likewise in Bath for two years, before moving to Truro, Cornwall.
James Gibson, from Cootehill, Cavan, joined in 1917 the Royal Scot Fusiliers and was in action in France. He spoke well but with a ‘foreign accent’ which resulted with him to be twice arrested in Dublin and in Belfast as a German spy. On 11 October 1918, along with troops from Britain, America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, Gibson boarded the ship, the R.M.S. Leinster, which was torpedoed by a German submarine outside Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, resulting with the death toll of 530.
James Roxburgh left Claremont in 1918, and took up employment in London as a photo engraver. In 1923, he received an award from the Royal Humane Society for saving a young child from drowning in the River Thames.
Amongst those in Australia with connections to Claremont are Margaret (Frances) Lorrigan, (pictured left) who was appointed in 1864 as assistant teacher by Frederick John Rose, formerly of England, who set up a school in Melbourne. She later married Mr Rose’s brother-in-law, Frederick Telfer. Also in Melbourne was Samuel Johnson, teacher (pictured right) at Claremont for six years before his emigration, who obtained a position as assistant teacher at the Victorian Deaf and Dumb Institution, and after three years, became its Principal. Martha Overend-Wilson, who spent a short time in Claremont, was involved in the mission work amongst the deaf in Queensland.
Ernest Simpson, born in 1892 in Cumberland, was sent to Claremont in 1901. In 1910 he left Ireland to join his family in Ontario, Canada. He had served his time in the Canadian Army during the First World War, having been dispatched to England in 1917, ‘expecting to go to the Western Front soon, to fight the murderous and brutal Germans’ (his words).
The Irish Deaf Palatines – In Rathkeale and Adare, Co. Limerick, there were numerous members of the Switzer family, descendants of the immigrants from the Palatine district in Germany. They were part of the contingent who fled to Holland, England, Ireland and North America during the 18th century due to religious prosecution, heavy taxation and poor farming conditions. In Courtmatrix, was a family headed by Jacob and Fanny, who had eleven children, four of whom were deaf – Mary Ann, Henry, Susan and Charlotte - (pictured outside the Switzer home built in 1709 by her ancestors). Other Claremont pupils with Palatine connections are Bovenizer, Doupe, Fizzell and Miller (three families).