Mel Colton-Dyer, chair of trustees with Ian McCormick, vice-chair
Making a Difference iSightCornwall celebrates 165 years of helping Cornwall’s blind and partially sighted In 1856, an association was founded to support Cornish miners who had lost their sight due to hazardous working conditions and accidents. Now named iSightCornwall, the organisation is currently celebrating 165 years of helping Cornwall’s blind and partially sighted, in increasingly innovative and effective ways. In the mid-1800s, Cornwall was the most active mining district in the world and the largest producer of copper, employing up to 30% of the male workforce at its peak. Miners rarely exceeded the age of 40 with many succumbing to consumption. Other lives were claimed by accidents, while those who survived might be left injured and unable to earn a living, leading to n 6 |
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severe hardship. Sight loss was common as miners would use gunpowder to blast through rock; unexpected explosions would occur, even after the invention of a safety fuse. Plans for an association for the blind were first put forward at the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society’s Annual Exhibition of 1856. The following year saw the launch of the Itinerant Teaching of the Blind in the County of Cornwall to Read the Sacred Scriptures and to Write. As its cumbersome name suggests, its chief purpose was that of visiting blind people at home and teaching them to read the Bible using Moon type (a precursor to Braille). The founding committee comprised the great and good of the day: clergy, solicitors, bankers, magistrates, MPs, mayors and health care professionals; and featured names still common in Cornwall today - Fox, Bolitho, Coode. St Austell teacher William Baker, himself visually impaired, taught 61 blind people to read across Cornwall. One claimed
| Volume 2 Issue 69 | December 2021 - January 2022
he “could not find language to express his gratitude to those who had... given back his eyes again”. Another, Thomas James, emigrated from St Just to Victoria, Australia, and spent the next 40 years teaching hundreds of blind people from the Moon type books he took with him. By the late 19th century, pupils were learning to type on Braille typewriters grant-funded by the Society. Mining was on the decline in Cornwall, but the First World War saw an increase in injuries from a different source. The end of the war coincided with Cornwall’s first “register” of 250 blind people, while the introduction of the Ministry of Health Act in 1919 saw council-funded teachers making home visits
throughout
Cornwall,
teaching
music, rug making, knitting, chair caning and basket making in addition to reading. Association funds went towards hospital transport, library subscriptions, typewriters, knitting machines and welfare payments. In 1920, the Blind Persons Act became the first disability specific legislation
