LAURENT CLERC’S SECOND SCRAP WITH THE GUILLOTINE

Sicard if Laurent was bit successful?

Not so long ago I posted a tidbit about Laurent Clerc getting arrested for slandering the soon to be Napoleon Bonaparte. While in a group of students from the school on rue St. Jacques, Laurent avoided harder punishments, perhaps even the guillotine, by cleverly signing his way out if it. 

Even better, I will paste it here: 

“This gets so much better. Edward had this great story about Laurent and Napoleon!

“But,”says a reader,“ we have not reached Paris yet. ” We will be on our way now to the last story told by Mr. Ould. Probably there are few living today who know this story. The great Clerc was once arrested for lese majeste! This is the story as told by Clerc himself to the boys at Hartford. One day while Napoleon I was riding at the head of his soldiers in Paris, Clerc, who was with a group of deaf boys on the street, remarked 1n signs on Napoleon’s thickness of neck and shortness of stature. One of the soldiers noticed it and reported it to the officers, who sent the guard to bring Clerc to them. In reply to their questions, he said his signs meant that Napoleon was the Greatest General and would conquer all the nations on account of his big neck and short body! This explanation was accepted (or as we say, he got away with it) and so Clerc’s clever wit saved him from the firing squad.”

So could Laurent have had another close call with the guillotine while in the company of those same school yard friends?

While going through some of the ASD files on Laurent Clerc I came across a slide presentation by Dr. Karen Dilka, unfortunately deceased on July 3, 2024, so I was unable to speak with  her about where she got this story or reference. 

So, I will have to do what I do best, speculate and make things up!

But why not just believe Karen? Check out her credentials…”After earning her Bachelors and Masters from the University of Northern Colorado she went on to earn her PHD at the University of Arizona. In the late 1980’s, she relocated to Richmond where she went to work at Eastern Kentucky University where she was the heart and soul of the Education of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing program, both graduate and undergraduate, until her retirement in 2013. Dr. Dilka was well known in the Deaf Education professional community where she served as President of the Association of College Educators of Deaf and Hard of Hearing, an international association, and served as Executive Director of the Council on the Education of the Deaf, the accreditation body for standards for teacher certification in that field of education.” Yes, her credentials are far better than my measly DNA strands!

Oh yes, so what did Karen say that connects Laurent to the guillotine? Well, we all know the story of the Abbe Sicard and his brush with death, right? No, then I would suggest you take a look at his diary. This is a really famous story in early Deaf history and it is really a spine tingling story with many dramatic twists and turns. You can read about it here, with access to a free site with all kinds of great goodies in Deaf history: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44401090?seq=1 

But for the sake of expediting our story I will summarize it for you here…”In September 1792, following his arrest, Sicard was reprieved just as he was about to be executed along with so many other priests in the September Massacres. He was saved from the guillotine by the intervention of a sans-culotte who recognised Sicard as ‘one of the most useful men to his country’, and a petition from his students, who exclaimed his value as the ‘father’ of the sourds-muets, secured his release from imprisonment. His skill in navigating governmental change was truly impressive and largely a consequence of the reputation that he had established in the field of deaf education.”

But, could Laurent Clerc have been part of the “students” that Massieu took with him to the prison to advocate for the release of Sicard? Well no, that could not be, as Laurent was not yet at the school on rue St. Jacques, having only come there in 1797. 

But…we do know that Sicard was not there at the school when Laurent’s uncle, Laurent, dropped his namesake off at the school and left him in the courtyard with Jean Massieu. But we do know that Sicard was said to have been in trouble on multiple occasions, being a closet monarchist. He apparently spent some other time in jail. 

Karen comments in her slide show that Massieu, concerned that Sicard was going to be put to death, again and encouraged Laurent and his bunch of buddies to advocate for Sicard as a group, go to the authorities and ask for Sicard to be released, which apparently he was! 

So is this just a mistake by Karen and she confused the 1792 event with some later Sicard scrape with the authorities. Or was there a latter imprisonment that required Laurent and the gang to intervene in? We have to assume, genius that Laurent was, that he needed some time to become the man he was and old enough for Massieu to suggest that he get a gang of students together to free Sicard. So we would assume this arrest came later in Laurent’s career, post 1805 probably, when Laurent was on his road to becoming the #1 teacher at the school. 

So another crowdsourcing question for anyone that reads this. Would you know about this story or reference? If so let me know and we can run this issue to ground! 

-Laurent-