Aaron Honigman's language of the eyes - the Montrealer who trained New York City police to communicate without words

Honigman and his daughter Lily in 1923

 Montrealer Aaron Honigman once persuaded New York City's police to hire him to train officers in his "language of the eyes" that relied on a system of eye movements and physical twitches, finger manipulations, pencil-twirling, cigar-twirling and movements of the teeth and lips. 

  Russian-born Aaron Honigman (1869-1961) was aged 38 when hired by the City of Montreal to work as a Sanitary Inspector for the city's Health Department in January 1912.  Honigman was conversant in French, English, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish and something called  Ruthenian.

  Honigman stayed with his City of Montreal job but kept busy in his spare time inventing a system that allowed people to communicate with small, discreet motions.

  His language initiative caught the attention of New York City's police force, who paid him in 1923 to teach some of their officers to learn his system.  

 Honigman's language was heavily publicized and in one interview he said that he was inspired to invent the system after observing the humiliation that deaf people suffered when others mocked their sign language gesticulations. 

Honigman, on the right, with police brass

I was walking down the street in Montreal one day about 15 years ago when I saw a big crowd. I stopped to see what it was all about. In the center of the crowd two deaf mutes were conversing with their cumbersome sign language. Suddenly one of the mutes noticed the crowd both had been so engrossed in their conversation that they had not noticed it before. They flushed with embarrassment and hurried away. I decided then that I would try to devise a scheme so that the deaf and dumb could converse without embarassment in public. My system in the result. I was looking for some philanthropist to help me get the system before these unfortunates. The idea came that it would be a Godsend to the police. So I offered it to Commissioner Enright and he asked me to train a corps. It will take me about a month to do it. After that I may institute the system in the police forces of other American cities.

 New York Deputy Police Commissioner Faurot and Captain Thomas Fay tested Honigman and his daughter to see if they could communicate notes that they wrote on a paper.

 Honigman and his 13-year-old daughter Lily proved that the messages they were given could be transmitted without words. Honigman said that the language is based on a mathematical problem involving the first nine numerals. It can be learned in five minutes but takes about three months to become proficient. Honigman had a patent and a copyright on the language.

 Several New York City-area newspapers reported on the project in articles that were reprinted across the continent.

 Honigman spent 14 days training some Montreal police officers and Chief P. Belanger and Mayor Mederic Martin even offered a testimonial to its usefulness. He offered a display with his daughters  at the Imperial Theatre on Bleury Street but the language never became widespread in Montreal, although a grocer apparently employed it to inform clerks to refuse credit for certain customers and a bank manager also used it to dictate a letter to his secretary while in the presence of an unwanted guest. 

 He also taught some members of the New York police force and at least four New York officers were eventually able to communicate with his system, according to an article published a few months later. 

Honigman in 1949

  In spite of the newspaper hype, Honigman's language didn't stick. At least one later article gently later mocked the force for wasting money on the training.

  Honigman made news one last time, at the age of 78, in May 1949 when he announced his invention of a skin cream to combat aging that he called Fountain of Youth.He was retired and living at the Hebrew Old People's Home in Montreal. He declined to identify what he put in the cream but assured a reporter that it battles wrinkles and crows feet.

  His death was noted in a 1961 article by Al Palmer.