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Mr T Webster's School for Young Gentlemen of the Higher Classes (c1852–c1866)

Webster's School for Young Gentlemen was a private school for the Deaf, set up at Malvern House, Elm Lane, in Redland. Webster had previously been the Master at the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in Park Row, but had been sacked for taking pupils from the city-run school to his own, private business.

Very little is known about Webster’s private school, and although the reasons and causes of deafness were clearly not as well understood as they are today, Webster appears to have tried to profit with quack—that is, fake— ‘cures’ for deafness. For example, in 1860 Webster advertised in the Western Daily Press ‘To Persons affected with DEAFNESS and other Diseases connected with the Brain’ (21 August 1860). He continued to advertise in this manner until August 1863.

Advertisements of this type were not uncommon in 19th-century Bristol, and range from Dr Boerhaave's Red Pill which claimed in 1919 to cure deafness, amongst many other things, to Lilly’s Deafhear, to be bought from the ‘patent-medicine proprietor’ at Lilly & Co, Botanic Hall, [33] Colston Street, St Augustine’s in 1896.