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mallowstep · 3 years

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visual impairment in the uk in the early 20th century preliminary research

so it's july, disabilities pride month, i'm researching for watlcitf (1910s ireland au), and i figured i should share what i'm looking at.

(the title for this post is so incredibly specific but that's because most research is. my previous post for watlcitf was like, 2k words exclusively going through census data for one census and one county in ireland. i named maybe twenty characters.)

anyway, disclaimers out of the way, tagging @foxstride because i think they'll be interested in this, let's get started.

unlike last time, i have a specific research goal: to determine what jay's life, as a blind person, would be in the uk (specifically, ireland) in the early 20th century (specifcally, 1900-1914), given that he's from a well-off family.

so i have the benefit of being a bit more focused.

unfortunately, i don't have a great backlog of information. i can't just pull up the national archives and start going through census data. that's alright, what else is research for?

i'm going to try to keep to things that are broadly accessible, but if i can't find things on the internet, i will be turning to my university's library resources.

getting my footing

so after checking that the obvious search (various combinations of the keywords form the title) didn't pull up anything particularly useful, i started going after disabilities in general in early 20th century england.

(i know i'm not set in england, but i also know that i can find broad coverage of information about the uk by starting my research in england.)

before i do that, thoough, we did have britannica's history of the blind, something i found fairly unhelpful. i already know braille was around by the 1910s, and then for some reason it tailspins into the us, which is exceptionally unhelpful.

(an interesting story might be sending jay abroad for a better education, but this is not that particular historical au.)

anyway, as per usual, britannica told me a lot of what i already knew and didn't offer any good leads to new information. (i draw the line at buying books for a fanfic. this is a one-shot. i am going to have written more about my research for it than the actual fic. sigh.)

so next up: historical england's a history of disability, which covers a wonderfully long time range, making it good for anyone from the middle ages to the recent past.

i jumped straight to disability in the 19th century, because their 20th century starts covering 1914 and on.

for those following along at home, the 4 headings in the sidebar are clickable links to articles with more information.

i know jay is going to be living at home, so while i did skim through the section on asylums and workhouses, neither of those are applicable here. we're skipping straight to the daily life of disabled people.

since about 50 years pass between the main time period of this article and my time period, i'm not sure how much i can rely on the attitudes section, but jumping off places.

some key quotes:

"These were the ambivalent Victorian attitudes towards disability - a combination of fear, pity, discomfort and an idea of divine judgement."

"Henry Fawcett (1833-1884), blinded as a young man, became Postmaster-General in 1880; he introduced the parcel post and the postal order."

"In 1838 the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read was formed and in 1866 the Worcester College for the Blind ('for the blind sons of gentlemen') became the world's first further education provision for disabled people."

"In 1868 the British and Foreign Blind Association was formed by Dr Thomas Armitage, initially to promote the use of braille. It was to become the Royal National Institute for the Blind."

"In 1894 the first branch of the Guild of the Brave Poor Things (motto: 'Happy in My Lot') was formed as a self-help group for people with physical disabilities. They described themselves as a group to "make life sweet for the blind and crippled folk of all ages"."

so great! that gives me a good number of jumping off places. nothing ideal, but it's a start.

henry fawcett

seems like a good enough start. researching attitudes won't help me entirely, here, mostly in that i'll be better off starting with other things and seeing what i pick up.

well according to wikipedia, he was blinded as an adult while he was already in education.

that's incredibly frustrating.

moving on.

royal national institude for the blind

as i know this exists, i figured it's as good a place to start as any.

sticking with wikipedia, because frankly, sticking with wikipedia is as good a place to start as any, we're on the wikipedia page for royal national institute of blind people

wikipedia's history summary was saddening.

moving on.

rnib's history page is next up on the list.

well, the first key takeaway is the adoptation of a braille magazine ("progress") and braille contractions. i'm not doing an overview of braille here, because these research posts are primarly for my own benefit, and i'm comfortable with my understanding of braille as it stands.

alright, i'm frustratingly limited in what i've learned, but i'm making progress.

the white cane

i took a bit of a change of course. we went back to the drawing board: literally just googling "history of blind people" in vain hope but lo! i actually stumbled upon something.

a list of facts about the white cane lead me to the wikipedia page for the white cane lead me to an archived web link about the history of orientation and mobility and good lord! have i finally started getting somewhere.

this is entirely focused around the us, and i'm not going to type up a summary here as it's quite long.

that said, it's alltogether helpful. the biggest takeaway is that mobility was taught by individual teachers going home to home. exceptionally helpful tidbit, that is.

the thing with historical research is that there are things that feel like reasonable assumptions to make often aren't, so i feel quite happy in that knowledge.

to the specifics: ireland

alright, while i'm mostly unsatisfied with what i've done, i want to move on. i have a feeling that i'm going to need to revisit this. i actually just changed the title to preliminary research to account for this.

sigh.

so we've moved to the history of ncbi, the national council for the blind of ireland.

they were founded in 1931, meaning that my instinct to start in england was correct, but still. their history page confirms that home teaching is the big thing at the start.

summary and moving on

okay so i went to do some research into the history of education in the england (the status of ireland vs england is at the moment Complex, but suffice to say that for most purposes i'm searching for english history) to see if i could find any sort of wrap-up about home tutors vs schools, and.

lo.

i found something fairly useful. it's an elemetary education act for blind and deaf children, which, like, god. so useful.

laws are just. good ways of establishing the general outlook of a time period.

so.

unfortunately.

it does not apply to ireland and scotland, and yes, i do have to do research into the history of education in ireland, but i feel i have hit some kind of nebulous conclusion.

because this is half research notes and half helpful information for others (if anyone else needs this kind of specific information), i'll try to summarize here

schools were possibly able to handle blind students. by "handle" i mostly mean "provide a seat and something resembling education", but that's better than nothing.

most mobility, braille, etc., skills seem to be taught by instructors going home to home

thanks to the relatively low traffic, population density, etc., blind people seem to have a decent amount of mobility

that's all for now. my skills in research are not historical research, so i can't promise that like. i have the best critical thinking skills here. etc. etc.

#mine #txt #6th #July #2021 #July 6th 2021 #research #masterpost #ref #watlcitf #i gotta like sit down and start digging through primary sources next #the thing is because jay is his Brother it's like #annoying to do a lot of work because jay isn't pov #but he's also too important to brush it aside #anyway

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