Back to index of Nerve 11 - Winter 2007 | Merseyside Resistance Calendar January

10th January 1791: Liverpool School for the Blind opens, initiated by Edward Rushton (see also July 1796)

Rushton was one of the prime movers in bringing about the Blind School, which opened in two houses in Commutation Row, Liverpool, in 1791. Possibly, the greatest reason for the number of blind people at the time was the small pox epidemics. It has to be remembered that the project of a blind school at this time would meet a great deal of prejudice. Blind people were dependent upon charity or eking out a miserable living, playing a musical instrument. Many of the god-fearing population believed that blindness was an affliction that came from the sins of the fathers.

From: Forgotten Hero, Liverpool's Blind Poet, Revolutionary Republican & Anti-Slavery Fighter, The Life and times of Edward Rushton 1756-1815, by Bill Hunter www.billhunterweb.org.uk/books/forgottenhero.htm
See also: Pioneers and Perseverance, A history of the royal school for the Blind, Liverpool by Michael W. Royden