SPECIAL SCHOOLS FOR CHILDREN
Until the 1890s, there was no compulsory state provision for children with physical or mental disabilities. They relied on charities or Poor Law relief (workhouses).
Edward Rushton, a blind poet, founded the first school for the blind at Liverpool in 1791; another one opened at Bristol two years later. Pupils at the School for the Indigent Blind at Southwark (1799) learnt practical skills like basket-weaving to help them earn a living. The Royal National Institute for the Blind ( RNIB) has its own archive and library ( www.rnib.org.uk/ knowledge-and-research-hub-heritageservices/rnib-archive).
The first school for the deaf was founded by Thomas Braidwood in Edinburgh (1760) and the establishment later moved to London. University College London ( UCL) has an online history of deaf education and sign language ( www.ucl.ac.uk/dcal/ bslhistory). The UCL Ear Institute Library collections include The Royal National Institute for the Deaf (Action for Hearing Loss) Collection ( www.ucl.ac.uk/library/sites/ear-institute). The first asylums for children with learning difficulties or mental disabilities appeared in mid-Victorian times, like Earlswood Asylum near Redhill (a voluntary institution for private and charity cases). The asylum’s archives are held at Langdon Down Museum ( langdondownmuseum.org.uk/the- collections). The Elementary Education Act (1893) compelled school boards to educate blind and deaf children; six years later, parents of children with a mental disability were compelled to send them to special schools. Just before the First World War, local education authorities founded more schools, like one at Acre Lane, Brixton, for ‘mentally defective’ children. Records for charities or institutions such as asylums, homes or residential schools will mostly be held locally.