A blind fiddler plays to a mixed age audience, among them a dog which is about to be beaten for howling. Etching by W. Geikie.

1 print : etching with tint plate

A blind fiddler. W. Geikie.

Walter Geikie was profoundly deaf. He lost his hearing as a result of illness at the age of two years and therefore never learnt to speak. According to Thomas Frognal Dibdin, who knew Walter Geikie personally, although Geikie "conversed with you by means of a slate ... his utterance of " Yes" and " No" was sufficiently articulate" (T. F. Dibdin, Bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour in the northern counties of England and in Scotland, 1838)

Wellcome Collection 16516i