Attitudes

Christine O'Mahony: None So Deaf

Christine O’Mahony was born in 1952 in Northampton. As a young child Christine spent time in Nazareth House children’s homes with her two sisters, before returning to family life in Camden, London aged five. Christine attended local C of E and Catholic primary schools and a local Catholic Secondary School, also spending time in hospital aged seven.

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Christine O'Mahony

Here Christine describes attitudes within her family about her deafness as she grew up and became an adult.

  • Christine O'Mahony
  • Christine O'Mahony
  • Christine O'Mahony
https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/none-so-deaf.mp3

Transcript

They always told these stories about my Irish grandmother as if she was an idiot, and not only an idiot but a charlatan as well, you know, a cheat and they talked about me like that as well, my family, you know, they’d say things like, ‘There’s none so deaf as those that don’t want to hear’. ‘Christine can never hear the washing up being done but she can hear a sweet paper being unwrapped at 50 yards,’ or even after I grew up, you know, they’d say, ‘Oh Christine, you know, she does – when her kids were small she’d always take her hearing aid off so she wouldn’t have to hear them,’ you know, just rubbish, I wouldn’t have dreamt of it, I was so scared of having them taken away from me, you know.

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