I don’t know what it is about the Victoria line, but when I lived in London, I kept meeting deaf people on it.
This would usually happen between Victoria station and King’s Cross. I would be standing or sitting down on the tube, when I would notice someone in my carriage who looked familiar.
I’d be trying to place them, when they would notice that I was looking in their direction, spot my hearing aids, and then, to my shock, they’d ask me: “are you deaf?” in perfect sign language.
A few minutes later, I would get off at my stop and say goodbye to my five-minute friend, having enjoyed a good sign-wag in between.
The strange thing is that however familiar they looked, I’d realise that I had never met them before.
So, when this happens, what is it I find myself recognising?
‘Read’ this entire article in BSL on the video below, provided by our supporter, Signworld!
For me, it is something ‘deaf.’
Something in their eyes, the way they look around the carriage, and at the people in it, that is distinct from everyone else.
It’s a subtle difference, that I think is obvious only to other Deafies.
I think that hearing people don’t look around in the same way – in London, they’re certainly far less keen on risking looking directly at another passenger, so they tend to keep their eyes pointed directly at the floor.
Hearing people also behave differently as they travel. They know that if anything happens, such as a heated argument on a packed tube train, or some kind of major incident, or even a passenger trying to squeeze past them, their ears will alert them to it.
As a result, they’re more likely to spend a journey glued to their phone or book, without looking up once.
Deaf people, meanwhile, have to make sure they have an idea of what is going on around them by sight alone. Even if they are glued to their phone or a book, they still look up and across the carriage once in a while.
Which is when what I like to call the ‘Deafdar’ starts to become alterted…
The idea that deaf people conduct themselves differently in public places is backed up by one of our earliest articles, written by Andrew Hearn, who wrote about how much he enjoyed scanning all the activity – the people and shops – of Gatwick airport, which he had to pass through on his way to work every morning.
Andrew’s article (read it by clicking here) explained that because of the way he visually scanned his environment, he started to get searched regularly by the airport police.
The police didn’t have a ‘Deafdar,’ but they did have a ‘Terroistdar’ that picked out Andy’s behaviour as being suspect. He later realised that if he ‘walked like a hearie’ and looked down at his feet, he no longer found himself being touched up by men bearing firearms and a not-so-friendly manner.
Recently, I picked out the deaf person I was meeting (who I had never met before) in a crowded train station, from his manner alone. He looked at me in surprise.
I didn’t tell him my theory, in case it made him feel self-conscious, or like I was offending him in some way. To some people, “you look deaf!” would be a compliment, to others, I’m not sure. Best to be cautious at first, I thought.
That said, I don’t see a downside to looking ‘deaf.’ I like the way we look around. It’s part of who we are, and another interesting difference between deaf people and their hearing peers.
And I’m pretty proud of being in possession of a ‘Deafdar.’
Do you possess a ‘Deafdar’? Can you spot a deaf person at fifty paces? Tell us below!
Charlie Swinbourne is the editor of Limping Chicken, as well as being a journalist and award-winning scriptwriter. He writes for the Guardian and BBC Online, and as a scriptwriter, penned the films My Song, Coming Out and Four Deaf Yorkshiremen.
Check out the services our supporters provide: Phonak: innovative technology and products in hearing acoustics. Deaf Umbrella: sign language interpreting and communications support. 121 Captions: captioning and speech-to-text services.Signworld: online BSL learning and teaching materials. STAGETEXT: theatre captioning.Ai-Live: Live captions and transcripts. Krazy Kat: visual theatre with BSL. SignHealth: healthcare support for Deaf people. Deafinitely Theatre: theatre from a Deaf perspective.Lipspeaker UK: specialist lipspeaking support. SDHH: Deaf television programmes online. Sign Solutions:, language and learning. Lexicon Signstream: BSL interpreting and communication services. Action Deafness Communications: sign language and Red Dot online video interpreting. Hamilton Lodge School in Brighton: education for Deaf children. RAD Deaf Law Centre: and legal advice for Deaf people.
Irene Winn
November 11, 2013
I found this article very interesting. I am completely deaf in one ear and I never become totally involved in my book, etc., on the train. I am always ‘coming up for air’ and I look around and then go back to what I was doing. I have never understood this, it is just something I do. I am also a people watcher. I enjoy doing it. People can be very funny and predictable. I refer to myself as deaf, but others call me hard of hearing. I often think of myself as an ‘inbetweenie’, because I don’t have an exact fit in either world. Thank you for explaining.
Andy Hearn
November 11, 2013
Ta for the mention! Definitely, many a time we’ve spotted fellow, yet unknown, Deafies while travelling round the world – and once while trekking the Himalayas (of all the places), so our Deafdar does work outside of the London Underground!
Andy. Not him, me.
November 11, 2013
I have travelled on the Tube since infancy and I have seen some odd things, but I can’t recall a single deafie. That’s the funny thing about London, something that is a common experience to one person is as rare as hen’s teeth to another. It probably depends on which area you are travelling in.
I remember a drunken tramp wanting to be my friend and getting very nasty when I refused to share a drink from the bottle of whisky he was dribbling over. Never seen a fight or anything like that but I have had some pleasant experiences of being rammed face to face with good looking women in the rush hour!
It’s true that Londoners never look each other in the eye. There’s just a quick flick in case it’s someone they do know and then it is back into the contemplative look again. I often used to wonder, what do they think about? I’m quite good at sneaking looks at people on the Tube, I used to try and guess what they did for a living, judging by their appearance.
Back when I was a kid there were lots of “uniforms”. Painters always wore white overalls, engineers blue ones, mechanics brown ones. Shop assistants in hardware stores all wore brown coats, bakers wore white coats and funny hats. Storemen also wore brown coats. The secret was to look at the hands. A manual labourers hands will show it, a clerk’s hands will be soft with neat nails, unless they are a nibbler.
Stock exchange staff wore special clothes. for example the black and white pinstripe trousers and bowler hat. Messengers wore a black frock coat and a top hat, just occasionally you would see one on the Tube sans top hat. At work they took taxis.
And then of course there is race. Ever since I was a kid I was surrounded by different nationalities and it was a game to guess where people came from. Sometimes it is obvious because of colour or facial features but sometimes you’d meet someone in their national dress and wonder where they are from. It was a game with me long before racism was even thought of!
Also of course there are people with odd socks, women with a ladder in their stocking, people with a button missing. Someone with a fresh plaster on their hand or bangae on their finger. There is huge scope for the observant to have a bit of a giggle. People with vital buttons undone, women with a bit too much on show.
The best thing that ever happened to the Tube was the ban on smoking. It absolutely stank. Not just the trains but the whole place. Everyone smoked on trains, there was nothing better to do and people smoked constantly causeing huge fogs the the carriages. When the train stopped the doors would open and all the smoke billowed out onto the platform. If passive smoking is really as harmful as they say I should have dropped down dead by the age of 14. Actually I retaliated by starting to smoke myself. Better than inhaling other people’s!
Lana
November 11, 2013
Very few times, I see two people signing or more in group, with me, it is usually at London Bridge – sometimes at Victoria – myself I am from a Deaf family, but I rarely go to them because they are often signing in the middle of alleyway with no consideration of busy people rushing past them.
Robert Mandara
November 11, 2013
“Could you spot a deaf person in a crowded room?” is certainly something I have wondered about. It depends:
1) If someone is signing then presumably they are either deaf or talking to someone who is.
2) If a deaf person is talking and you can hear them, you may well hear from the nature of their speech that they are deaf.
3) If a deaf person is talking and you can’t hear them, I think that you can still often read from the face, eyes, lips or hands that they are deaf. This obviously varies from person to person. The person who isn’t laughing with everyone around him hasn’t heard the joke.
4) Even if a deaf person is doing absolutely nothing, I suspect that very often the trained eye can still see some clues to deafness in the face or behaviours. Think of an identity parade with 9 hearing people and one deaf person (without hearing aids or other clues) – don’t you think it’s quite likely (beyond mere chance) that we deafies could identify the deaf person?
There’s nothing for it! We need to set up an experiment!
Andy. Not him, me.
November 11, 2013
As a control set up 9 deaf people and a hearing. It would be interesting to see what happened.
Editor
November 11, 2013
I think it’s a great idea! Do you mean 9 hearing people though?
Robert Mandara
November 11, 2013
What “Andy. Not him, me.” means is that we’d have to run the experiment twice. Once where you have to spot the deaf person and the other where you have to spot the hearing person. A variation would be where you’d have a line up of deaf and hearing people to sort into groups just on the basis of appearance.
I think it would be a cool experiment and would be very interested in the results.
Editor
November 11, 2013
Well we’re now running a smaller-scale version of this, if people send their pics in. Hopefully they will!
Andy. Not him, me.
November 11, 2013
Do it both ways and compare results.
Andy
November 11, 2013
I can sometimes tell by looking a photo if someone in it is deaf.
Editor
November 11, 2013
Really? Is that just the way they’re looking at things?
Andy. Not him, me.
November 11, 2013
The look of total bewilderment is often a clue.
“What? What? …. oh!”
Lana
November 14, 2013
I notice some Deaf men have strange ear shapes!
deaflinguist
November 11, 2013
I seem to have the knack of finding the other deaf person in a room – whether it is a sign user, a lipreader, someone who is deaf in one ear, someone who is recently deafened, or whatever – and it can be in quite random circumstances, e.g. at a funeral where the person who has died was hearing. We haven’t sought each other out, precisely, but in conversation we will find out we’re both deaf.
Quite often the person will tell me first that they are deaf, confirming my initial ideas about them – and they’re pleased to talk to someone who knows where they’re coming from!
As an extension of this, my OH always comments on my uncanny ability to turn on the television in a foreign hotel room exactly at the time and on the right channel for that country’s equivalent of See Hear to be broadcast, or for the signed news on Al-Jazeera, or something like that. I’m just weird like that.
Celeste
November 11, 2013
CODA here- I was just talking about this to my parents! I feel like I can always spot deaf people around who I’ve never met before. I was recently working an athletics event in Atlanta and after the game I saw a man walking down the stands in my direction and I had already assumed he was deaf. He happened to be a friend of my mother who wanted to say hi, but we had never met. This has happened many times I feel like. There is a distinct difference in mannerisms between the hearing and the deaf. It’s quite interesting!
James
November 11, 2013
I’m convinced that when I “come up for air”, people think I’m some kind of weirdo who’s staring at them, when all I’m doing is seeing what’s going on.
It’s also so that I don’t inadvertently give the impression that I’m ignoring someone trying to talk to me.
Blaithin
November 11, 2013
Hi all!
Anyone particularly interested in this topic Rupert Sheldrake’s “The Sense of Being Stared At”. The book is about aspects of the extended mind in general, and especially how our powers of perception rule us more than we give them credit for. I read the book in a previous life when I played a lot of informal music sessions with other musicians. As sense of timing and “reading” other musician’s minds is important on these occasions, and basically it all comes down to one’s perception of their playing and instinct as to what they will play next. I have found the same sense of timing and perception invaluable to me since becoming deaf. Don’t know if this will make sense to anyone else, but it certainly does to me!
R. M. Fraser
November 11, 2013
Great article! I am a CODA, but have always recognized that I behave more like Deaf than hearing in many situations. Out in public is definitely one. I am forever looking at people and what they are doing on the subway, even when I am attempting to distract myself with my phone or something. I see it in some people’s faces that it puts them off, but it’s so instinctive for me I can’t stop unless I really keep myself 100% aware of it. That at least keeps me from looking too long at people who look like they could hurt me, lol.
Ashton
November 11, 2013
Being Deaf AND black at the airport – Double standard…
Mairickay
November 12, 2013
I’m hearing. From a smallish island (20,000 or so). I can pick out other islanders in cities having never met them before. It’s a culture thing, I think. something about someone else just connects with something in you 🙂
Runaway Train
November 15, 2013
I have APD, so I often feel like a deafie but my audiogram says otherwise – but yes, I can and do spot deaf people from fifty paces! I’m not very good at reading people, and interaction can be a nightmare, but from a distance there are always the telltale signs of being visually aware of one’s surroundings.
(I sometimes feel a bit like an infinitely less intelligent cross between Sherlock and House – I will pick up on certain medical things, and details about people generally fascinate me. Quite what those details imply, however, I couldn’t say with much accuracy. Incidentally, the tube is one of the best places to people-watch, because almost nobody else is looking around to notice me observing!)
David Jonsson
November 28, 2013
one time i was at a diner with a hearing friend and, me, being HOH/Deaf, naturally I look around alot, well he made a comment that i shouldnt look around so much because it makes people think im looking for something.. hmm..