"Most famed contemporary stammerer
is King George VI, * whose private
teacher, Lionel Logue, is a crony of
Lawyer Smith's. Logue has spent many
hours coaching the King, used to sit
near him to encourage him at all
speechmaking functions. Unlike a
commoner, King George cannot practice
before an audience."
time/magazine/article
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| Lionel Logue PIONEER SPEECH THERAPIST 1880 - 1953 COPYRIGHT © 2002 CAROLINE BOWEN
This page contains an
article about Lionel Logue. Cite it as:
DO YOU KNOW
SOMETHING ABOUT LIONEL LOGUE? |
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1880 - 1907 In Adelaide, Logue studied elocution with Edward Reeves, "who purged his voice of much of its Australian accent" (Edgar, in Ritchie, 2000). By 1902 he had become Reeves' secretary and assistant teacher, while pursuing his studies at the Elder Conservatorium of Music. He remained a music and theatre-lover throughout his life and enjoyed walking and gardening. |
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Western Australia On March 20, 1907 he married a 21 year old clerk, Myrtle Gruenert in St George's Anglican Cathedral, Perth. Lionel and Myrtle settled in Perth, where he taught elocution, public speaking and acting, staged plays, recited Dickens and Shakespeare at public gatherings, and founded a public speaking club. As well, he taught at the YMCA, Scotch College, and from 1910, Perth Technical School. In 1911 he went on a world tour. As a Christian Scientist, Logue was passionate about healing, and perhaps this, coupled with his background in elocution, lead to a role he assumed during World War I (1914-1918) when he treated returned servicemen who had speech disorders attributed to shell shock. Edgar (in Ritchie, 2000) writes, "Using humour, patience and 'super-human sympathy' he taught them exercises for the lungs and diaphragm, and to breathe sufficiently deeply to complete a sentence fluently". Logue's approach included the recitation of tongue twisters such as, "She sifted seven thick stalked thistles through a strong, thick sieve." ( Denis Judd, King George VI, in Langford, p.472). Perth feminist activist Irene Greenwood (1899-1983) recalled being taught "voice production" by Lionel Logue in Perth, circa 1921, also noting that "his techniques were designed to repair the damaged vocal cords of gassed war veterans" (Richardson 1996). |
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1924 - 1953 In 1924 Logue commenced practice at 146 Harley Street, London. He made a good living, charging wealthy patrons substantial fees while providing a free service to poorer people who sought his professional help. A Freemason, Logue was appointed as speech therapist to The Royal Masonic School, Bushley. During the second world war his practice dwindled, and he worked as an air raid warden (probably unpaid, or for a small allowance) in London three nights a week. After his wife's death in 1945, Logue was attracted to spiritualism. Survived by three sons: Valentine, Laurie and Anthony, Logue died in London on April 12, 1953, and was cremated. |
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| King George VI (b.1895 - d.1952) Encouraged (Davie, 2002) by his wife Elizabeth (1900-2002), the then Duchess of York, the Duke of York, later to become George VI (reigning from1936 to1952) consulted Logue about his stutter in 1926. |
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 The future King George VI with his wife the Duchess of York at the opening of Parliament House Canberra in 1927. |
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| "Until Edward VIII abdicated, his younger brother Bertie was not expected to succeed to the throne. He was born in 1895 and led a regimented childhood without a great deal of family warmth or empathy. Although naturally left-handed he was required to learn to write with his right hand. He developed a serious stutter as a young boy which caused him difficulty and embarrassment and which he fought to conquer throughout his life. Adding insult to injury, his siblings were apparently allowed to ridicule his speech" (Baker 2002). | ||
"King George VI is arguably Britain's most famous stammerer" BBC - Ouch! |
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| Sinclair (1988)
reports that the young duke visited Logue's rooms almost every day
for two months, and that he was:
"frequently accompanied by the Duchess, who became thoroughly familiar with Logue's program of breathing exercises so that she help her husband to practise them at home. Within a few weeks, an improvement was apparent and the Duke told his father that, although 24 years of speaking in the wrong way could not be set right in a month, he was confident that in time he would be able to talk without stammering." There have been several reports in the popular press of Elizabeth helping him with breathing exercises, some of which were online around the time of Elizabeth's death. According to Davie (2002) an author, and also deputy editor of The Observer: "When the young duke went off to Harley Street to be treated by the Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue, she often went with him. He gradually overcame his disability, but she was always beside him when he had to make a speech, and helped write them, eliminating the difficult consonants." Suzanne Edgar on Logue "The therapist diagnosed poor coordination between larynx and diaphragm, and asked him to spend an hour each day practising rigorous exercises. The duke came to his rooms, stood by an open window and loudly intoned each vowel for fifteen seconds. Logue restored his confidence by relaxing the tension which caused muscle spasms. The duke's stammer diminished to occasional hesitations. Resonantly and without stuttering, he opened the Australian parliament in Canberra in 1927. Using tongue twisters, Logue helped the duke rehearse for major speeches and coached him for the formal language of his coronation in 1937. At Westminster Abbey on 12th May, wearing the M.V.O. decoration given to him by King George VI on the previous night, Logue sat in the apse to encourage him during the ceremony. Before the King's radio broadcast that evening, Logue whispered to him: "Now take it quietly Sir". "The 'slow, measured pace' which he had afforded the King's diction proved affecting in His Majesty's wartime broadcasts and speeches. Elevated to C.V.O in 1944, Logue was with the King for the V.E.-Day broadcast on 8 May 1945. Their friendship was 'the greatest pleasure' of Logue's life" (Edgar, 2000). According to acclaimed author Margaret Drabble, who has a particular personal insight into stuttering, despite Logue's help George never became comfortable with public speaking, particularly broadcasting. "He rehearsed everything with Logue and dreaded last minute alterations to his text: the Sovereign's Speech afforded him an added difficulty as it had to be delivered sitting, not standing. Occasionally, he was able to be pleased with his efforts: in 1940, his diary records that his he was very pleased with the way he delivered his speech on Empire Day - 'it was easily my best effort. How I hate broadcasting.' "(Drabble, 2001). |
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British Society of Speech Therapists Logue was a founder, in 1935, of the British Society of Speech Therapists, and in 1944, a founding fellow of the College of Speech Therapists (now called the RCSLT). The College was granted royal patronage by George VI (in 1948, according to Eldridge, 1968) and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother was its patron from 1959 until her death on March 30th, 2002. Indeed, she was patron or president of 350 organisations. |
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| Spiritualism Logue's interest in spiritualism brought him in contact with Lilian Bailey OBE, described by Marjorie Aarons as: "one of the greatest trance mediums of modern times. During her forty years of dedicated service to countless people in all walks of life who received comfort and guidance. Many famous people, The Queen Mother, Lionel Logue, speech therapist to King George VI are just a few of the people who sort (sic) her great gifts." He also knew Hannen Swaffer, the well-known journalist and spiritualist apparently confiding in him that he had read John Brown’s diary at Windsor Castle! SEE HERE |
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| Margaret Eldridge on Logue Australian historian and qualified speech therapist Margaret Eldridge provides a slightly different view of Lionel Logue in her 1968 book. "Yet another link between the future of speech therapy in England and in Australia was forged in the nineteen twenties when Mr Lionel Logue of Western Australia arrived in London. Mr Logue was then a young man whose work in the field of voice production and public speaking had led him to specialise in the treatment of stammering. His interest in the therapeutic aspect of speech training may have arisen from the fact that medicine was his first choice of a career, but for reasons of health he had been unable to pursue it, so had turned to his second field of interest: the study of voice and speech. In Australia, at the time, there was no provision for the study or practice of the treatment of speech disorders; anyone wishing to supplement his own investigation in logopaedics would be most likely to find what he sought either in England or on the European continent. On arriving in England Mr Logue made his home in London, where he set up in private practice - in voice production and remedial speech training. His success, particularly with stammerers, was immediate, and before long he was specialising in that branch of his work. His method of treating stammering consisted in establishing in each patient a firm belief in (a) the possibility of ultimate release from the stammer, (b) that this release would be achieved through the patient's own effort of will, courage and determination; the practice of exercises in breathing, voice and speech, and the performance of speech-situation assignments were the means by which self-confidence was gradually established. There is no doubt that Mr Logue's own character and personality - his gift of practical sympathy allied to common sense, his humour and his charm - were important factors in the success of his treatment." |
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| References Edgar, S. (2000). Logue, Lionel George (1880-1953). In Ritchie (2000) Ed. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 15 1940-1980. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. http://adb.anu.edu.au/ now available here Eldridge, M. (1968). A history of the treatment of speech disorders. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire. Richardson,
J. (1996). The Limits of Authorship: The Radio Broadcasts of Irene
Greenwood,1936-1954 Retrieved from Sinclair, D. (1988). Two Georges: The making of modern monarchy. London, Hodder and Stoughton. |
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Stuttering
Links British Stammering Association The UK web site for stammering has a very good links page, as well as many excellent articles and resources.
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speech and public silence "Speaking is worse than being photographed. I was not cut out by my natural talents to be a lecturer or a public speaker. From an early age – the age of three, I am told - I suffered from a stammer, at times severe, though now very episodic and temperamental. So I could take the line that both Arnold Bennett and Somerset Maugham took when asked to speak in public, at after-dinner gatherings, or to literary societies. Both were severe stammerers, and both insisted that they didn't speak, they wrote. I could argue, though disingenuously, that my objections to the modern commercial literary circus spring from the fact that I entered it with a handicap, and that I feel that, as a writer, that I am being expected to display skills or abilities that I do not possess. This is where King George the Sixth comes back into the story. He, as you know, inherited the throne in 1936 because of the abdication of his older brother Edward - just as, coincidentally, King Charles the First, another royal stammerer, became king through the death of his older brother Henry. George the Sixth was not born to the crown, he had the crown and the burden of public broadcasting unexpectedly thrust upon him. Bertie, as George the Sixth was known, is recorded to have stammered from the age of six, and his biographer Robert Lacey relates that ‘His brothers and sister were allowed to make fun of his stammer, ragging him without mercy after the style set by his father's quarter-deck chaff, and he withdrew still more tightly into himself.' (Centuries earlier Prince Henry, we are told, had mocked his little brother Prince Charles.) As a child Bertie was prone to bouts of self-pity and fits of explosive rage: he was also bottom of the class. And he was naturally left handed - what is known as ‘a misplaced sinister' - was this, some speculated, according to a current theory, the cause of his problem? Unlike a writer, he was not allowed to choose public silence. He had to speak. He struggled bravely, but, despite the help of an Australian-born speech therapist called Lionel Logue, he never overcame his dislike of public speaking, and especially of broadcasting. He rehearsed everything with Logue and dreaded last minute alterations to his text: the Sovereign's Speech afforded him an added difficulty as it had to be delivered sitting, not standing. Occasionally, he was able to be pleased with his efforts: in 1940, his diary records that his he was very pleased with the way he delivered his speech on Empire Day - ‘it was easily my best effort. How I hate broadcasting.'" MORE
Stuttering: What can be done
about it?
Webwords 11 Stuttering
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