The rules recapitulate the object and set forth the work of the Association. They were submitted to a general meeting of the subscribers, held on the 19th December 1856.
The meeting having first resolved itself into the Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind, unanimously approved of the rules, and adopted them as the laws of the Association. They are interesting as the outcome of Bessie's endeavours to ameliorate the condition of the blind, and are therefore given at the end of the chapter.
A Committee was appointed on the 1st of January 1857, and in May of the same year a report was issued, with a balance-sheet, showing subscriptions and donations to the amount of £435, £75 of which had been contributed by Bessie herself. Interesting tables were appended, giving the age, address, cause of blindness, family, income, to what amount employed by the institution, and nature of trade of all men working for the Euston Road shop, together with similar lists of men and women desiring employment, of applicants at the institution, and of members of the circulating library.
The three months' report was a preliminary to a meeting held in Willis's Rooms on the 26th of May 1857. The Bishop of London was in the chair, the Bishop of Oxford spoke, and afterwards wrote to Mrs. Gilbert:
Lavington House, Petworth, 30th May 1857.
My dear Mrs. Gilbert—I must tell you with many thanks what pleasure your kind letter gave me, and how glad I was to be able to take part in that meeting. I did not at all please myself in what I said, because I wanted to show in the instance of your own daughter how God brought good out of such suffering; how the inward character, intensifying and become sanctified by grace, made the sufferers as an angel in the house, do what otherwise they never would have done, by the example of her becoming the foundress of this institution—but she was present, and I could not trust myself to say all I felt. May God's blessing rest abundantly on this good work.—I am ever, most sincerely yours,
S. Oxon.
Mrs. Gilbert.
We have now the result of Bessie's three years of arduous labour. Her institution was fairly afloat. The Bishop of London had consented to act as president, and the Rev. Thomas Dale, Canon of St. Paul's, was the vice-president. Notices of the meeting appeared in the London papers, and were copied in provincial papers. Donations, inquiries, and orders increased, and so did applications for employment from blind men and women. The Bishop of Chichester had written a prayer to be read before Committee meetings, and this prayer was used by Bessie until the last day of her life. She looked upon it as a solemn sign of her father's approval, and as sanctifying all her efforts on behalf of the blind.[6]
No period of her life was so rich and full as the few years that followed the first development of her scheme. She was surrounded by friends who were enthusiastic in the cause, ready to serve her, and willing that she should guide and control the work which she had initiated. Some of those who gathered round her in 1857 are still working for the institution. Captain, afterwards Colonel Fyers, who for a time filled the part of honorary secretary, was a faithful and generous friend to the blind from 1857 until his death in July 1886. Mr. Summers still sits on the Committee.
One of the first things done by the Committee was to take a lease of the house occupied by Levy, then known as 21 South Row, and subsequently as 127 Euston Road. It was prepared as a factory for the blind. Rooms were set apart for the various trades, and the requisite fittings and tools were supplied. A large front room on the first floor was assigned to women.
Many informalities and irregularities which had sprung up insensibly whilst the undertaking was small and private had now to be abolished. The Committee directed that subscriptions and donations should no longer pass through the trade cash book, and we may assume that a strict method of book-keeping was adopted.
An initial difficulty there was, and always will be, in the management, by amateurs, of business which involves the purchase of material from foreign markets. Prices rise and fall, quality is open to deception, wages have also to be adjusted, and manufactured goods must be sold wholesale as well as retail. This is taken in hand by a Committee consisting of ladies and gentlemen, many of whom could probably not dispose of a basket of oranges on advantageous terms.