Elizabeth Gilbert and Her Work for the Blind

by Frances Martin

Many friends came forward to offer such help as could be given, and the sale promised to be a success. The list of stall-holders was excellent, and encouraged Bessie to hope for a good attendance and good results.

Lady Constance Grosvenor, Lady Blantyre, Lady Jocelyn, Lady Victoria Wellesley, the Marchioness of Waterford and Lady Anson, the Marchioness of Ormonde, Miss Gilbert, Mrs. Imwood Jones, Mrs. Green, Mrs. King, Mrs. Fox, Mrs. C. Dyke and Lady Geraldine St. Maur held stalls. Gate money and the sale of goods produced £1078. Over £200 was received in donations, and the net result of the sale was more than £1300.

Bessie had good reason to be satisfied, not only with the money but with the influential patrons she had secured for the Institution. The report for the following year gives an imposing list of vice-patrons,—the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Dukes of Rutland and Argyle, the Earls of Abergavenny, Chichester, and Darnley, the Bishops of St. David's, Chichester, Lichfield, Oxford, St. Asaph, and Lincoln, Lord Ebury, Lord Houghton, Mr. Gladstone, Sir Roundell Palmer, the Dean of Westminster, and Professor Fawcett.

The pecuniary result of the sale, though perhaps not all that was expected, seemed to justify the Committee in taking a West-end shop. They secured No. 210 Oxford Street, and decided to keep the old houses in the Euston Road as workshops.

Mr. Levy, in a letter sent to Chichester on the 30th September 1865, announces the completion of the arrangements for a lease on the terms offered by the Committee. He adds that one brushmaker has a shop nine doors off, and another brushmaker has a shop twenty-four doors off, but he thinks their vicinity will not injure the Association. He probably expected that influential patrons and their friends would purchase from the blind, and that no orders would go astray. This expectation was not realised, and in the course of two or three years the vicinity of the two brush shops was found to be a serious disadvantage.

During the early summer of this year Bessie received a letter written on behalf of the Committee of the Blind Asylum at Brighton; asking if their schoolmistress and her assistant, who were not themselves blind, could be received for "a few days" in the "asylum in the Euston Road." They wanted to see the working of it, and more especially to learn the trades taught to women.

Bessie replied that the Institution was not an "asylum," and that no one could be received to live in the house. She expressed her disapproval of the employment of "sighted" teachers, but offered to arrange with the Brighton Committee for the reception of one or two blind persons to be taught brush-making and other trades, with a view to becoming teachers. She explained fully the objects of the Association, and expressed her opinion that an attempt to acquire any trade "in a few days" could only result in misconception and failure.

There were several letters on both sides, but neither yielded. Bessie would not consent to train "sighted" teachers "in a few days," and Brighton would not send blind pupils.

Three years previously the Davenport Institution had applied for a blind teacher. A man trained by the Association had been sent, and had given entire satisfaction. He succeeded a "sighted" teacher, and was said to have done more in six months than his predecessor in two years. Bessie always urged the necessity of employing blind teachers, on the ground that they alone could know all the difficulties of the blind; and it would have been impossible for her to sanction so retrograde a step as the training of "sighted" teachers in an institution full of blind persons, many of whom were quite capable of teaching others.