Taboo Talk

Steve Humphries unlocks the taboo histories of the disabled and handicapped.

As a child growing up in Tottenham, North London, in the 1930s Marie Hagger had an extraordinary secret. She was rapidly losing her hearing. But she could not tell her family or friends anything about this frightening experience because deafness was a taboo subject. Terrified of being rejected by her parents and sent away to an institution she taught herself to lip read. She got by at home and at school by guessing what people were saying.

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