John Townsend

John Townsend (24 March 1757 – 7 February 1826) was a Congregationalist minister, and founder of the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, the first public institution in England for deaf children. Life Townsend was born in Whitechapel, London in 1757, son of Benjamin Townsend, a pewterer, and his wife Margaret. He was educated at Christ's Hospital from 1766 until 1771, when he began a seven-year apprenticeship to his father. From 1774 he was drawn to preaching; in June 1781 he was ordained pastor of the Independent Church at Kingston upon Thames. In the same month he married Cordelia Cahusac, and they later had children. He found that William Huntington, who resided in Kingston, was influencing his congregation by his antinomian views, so he resigned his charge, and in October 1784 became minister of the Independent Church in Bermondsey, London. In 1792, with the assistance of Henry Cox Mason, rector of Bermondsey, Henry Thornton and others, he founded the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in the parish of Bermondsey. It rapidly grew in public esteem. On 11 July 1807 the first stone of a purpose-built school in Old Kent Road was laid by the Duke of Gloucester. The first headteacher was Joseph Watson, who had been educated at Thomas Braidwood's school for the deaf. By 1815 the institution was greatly oversubscribed. (A second building was opened in Margate in 1876, and the entire school moved there from London in 1906; the institution, by then known as the Royal School for Deaf Children, closed in 2015.)