thomsen.

“authorities described her as being ‘mute by visitation of God’, which is the earliest record of a deaf Australian, but there is no historical evidence yet that she used a sign language. Her charge at the Old Bailey  was for stealing a silver watch from George Childs, who was a customer at the public house she worked at as a prostitute. After two months in Sydney, Elizabeth Steel was transferred to Norfolk Island. In November 1791, Steel married a fellow convict, Irish born James Mackey. Together they successfully farmed a 10-acre (40,000 m2) leasehold until the expiry of their sentences. Elizabeth returned to Sydney in 1794, but died the following year aged 29. Her burial at the Old Sydney Burial Ground was recorded on 8 June 1795.”

He was born with congenital syphilis, which his father had contracted many years before. At the age of seven Albert developed a serious mastoiditis. Risky brain surgery was required. He survived, but was left partially deaf.

Allen claimed to be severely disabled, deaf and blind. He claimed to need a wheelchair for mobility. He did not know any sign language to communicate with hearing people. During his execution, he was able to walk from his wheelchair to the death podium unassisted.

Western Australian journalist, Estelle Blackburn, uncovered new evidence, which she advanced in her book Broken Lives, and which led to the overturning of the convictions of both Beamish and John Button. The two men had both been convicted of crimes committed by the serial killer, Eric Edgar Cooke, and to which Cooke had insistently confessed before his death by hanging. Beamish's conviction was finally overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal in Western Australia on 1 April, 2005, after five failed appeals in the 1960s.

According to legend, a deaf-mute  person named Josh Tatum was the chief perpetrator of this fraud, and he could not be convicted because he simply gave the coins in payment for purchases of less than five cents, but did not protest if he was given change appropriate to a five-dollar coin. There is no historical record of Tatum outside of numismatic folklore, however, so the story may well be apocryphal.[2]  The 1883 nickel is sometimes referred to as the "racketeer nickel", and Josh Tatum is sometimes cited as the source of the saying, "You're not Joshin' me, are you?"