Lillie Eginton Warren (January 25, 1859 – ?) was an American educator and an author of work upon defective speech. She was the inventor of the Warren Method of Expression Reading and Numerical Cipher. This method was a patented series of pictures of the expressions of the facial muscles produced by articulate speech by which it was possible for a deaf person to understand conversation by the eyes alone. Until the 1890s, deaf education was limited to children, but Warren and her assistant, Edward Nichie, expanded the scope of work to adults. Warren was principal of the Warren School of Articulation and Expression-Reading, in New York City, an institution founded by her and which had branches in Boston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and Chicago. As a teacher of expression-reading to persons growing deaf, Warren achieved some remarkable results. She devoted her life to the work, first taking it up in 1879. She was the inventor of a method of teaching hard-of-hearing adults to enjoy conversation, a system that was styled expression-reading and which was entirely different from any other method yet devised, a patent (#US726484A) being awarded Warren for her discovery by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1903. Early life and education Lillie Eginton Warren was born in Newtonville, Massachusetts, January 25, 1859. Her parents were Asa Coolidge Warren (1819–1904), a steel engraver, and Hannah Hoyt (of Waltham, Massachusetts). The couple had no children of their own and adopted Lillie early in infancy. She came to New York City in childhood. She was educated in Twelfth Street School, New York City, and by private instruction, before attending the Normal College (later Hunter College). Career Teacher She began her life work in 1879, as a teacher of deaf-mute children. Besides teaching them to speak and to understand speech from the speaker's face, she had considerable success in developing a dormant sense of hearing. In 1892, she opened her School of Articulation, not only for deaf children, but for all with defects of speech. The year 1893 was marked by the invention of a method of Expression Reading, the thing that made her name noteworthy. This was a much simplified method of teaching to the adult hard-of-hearing what is commonly called "lip-reading." In her work with the child, Warren found that the forty-odd sounds of the English language were revealed in sixteen outward manifestations. Though the organs of articulation were