Before long the women are reported to be making fine baskets which please customers, and are bought in preference to the French. They had plenty of employment in executing orders, until, unfortunately for them, fine baskets went out of fashion, and bags came in.
For some time after his visit to France, Levy wrote and printed his name Lévy.
The autumn brought a new scheme. Collecting boxes were to be fixed in different parts of London, and application was made to hotels and other places of resort to receive the boxes, together with specimen cases of the work of the blind. Bessie had, as usual, a busy time with her letters, but she did not forget the Museum.
When she went to town in November she talked to the workpeople about it, and they liked the idea. She had taken "two or three things from the garden" to show them; and in December, when she went to town for the "women's tea-party," she "took the crocodile," and "the women were delighted with it."
She wrote a letter at this time for publication, pleading for the education of blind children in the ordinary schools for the poor. She was also in correspondence with Mrs. Hooper, who was preparing a magazine article on the work of the blind. She records that she urged Mrs. Hooper to attach "more importance to donations and subscriptions, to speak of the Museum, and to tell the educated blind that they ought to assist the blind poor to help themselves." Through a friend she also applied for the custom of Cheltenham College for Ladies.
Bessie had decided to give £2000 to the Association as an endowment fund. The conditions of her gift were brought before the Committee, discussed, and accepted. The money was invested in the names of three trustees, and the Association seemed now to stand upon a sure footing. These conditions will be read with interest.
Conditions.
1. As long as those employed and taught by the Association, or receiving any benefit whatsoever therefrom, shall be admitted by the decision of the Committee, or by some one deputed by themselves, and not by the votes of the subscribers.
2. As long as blindness shall not disqualify any person from holding the office of Superintendent, Traveller, or Porter.
3. As long as it is a fundamental rule of the Association that the immediate objects of this Association shall be to afford employment to those blind persons who for want of work have been compelled to solicit alms, or who may be likely to be tempted to do so; to cause those unacquainted with a trade to be instructed in some industrial art; and to introduce trades hitherto unpractised by the blind; also to support a circulating library consisting of books in various systems of relief printing, to the advantages of which the indigent blind shall be admitted free of charge, and others upon payment of the subscription required by the Committee; to collect and disseminate information relative to the physical, mental, moral, and religious condition of the blind; and to promote among individuals and institutions, seeking to ameliorate the condition of the blind, a friendly interchange of information calculated to advance the common cause among all classes of the blind.
4. As long as the Committee shall consist of both ladies and gentlemen.
5. As long as at least six blind men or women shall be supplied with work at their homes by the Association, each at a sum of not less than six shillings per week; and so long as at least three blind men and three blind women shall be receiving instruction at the cost of the Association.
These conditions deserve the careful consideration of every one interested in the blind, and should be religiously observed in the Institution founded by Bessie Gilbert.
Her work had now greatly increased; a large number of blind persons were regularly employed, and the public had responded to every appeal for funds. A meeting was held in May 1859, with the Bishop of London in the chair, and the time seemed to have come for that further information which Colonel Phipps had intimated might be sent to the Queen.