The Story of John P. Gloyn and “the City Road Congregation” (1872-1877), or How a Deaf-led Deaf Space Came into Existence in Victorian North London

In 2017, Mary Kitzel outlined London’s first ‘Deaf place’, the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb Poor, which opened in Bermondsey in 1792. Within the cracks of its hearing-led provision, she argued, a ‘Deaf space’ arose in which sign language became the primary mode of communication. This article exams a largely-hidden deaf place established between 1872–1877 outside the Asylum by its pupils; North London’s ‘City Road congregation’. To uncover details of its activities, this article counter-reads an assertion made by both deaf magazines and the Royal Association in Aid of the Deaf and Dumb, that John P. Gloyn was appointed as its leader in May 1872, five years before official records show he was given that post.