2 10 61 https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/dbce54f5f2e3c7a6e096fbdfb7afd7fd.jpg 0d71c9eb583f97e7432b8c02d8540ae5 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 2100 Height 2843 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading e headline:V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading emboss caption:V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading emboss Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading embossed letters from a book. Lithograph by W. Sharp, 1844, after A. Fisher. 1844 By: Alanson Fisher and BouvÈ & Sharp.after: W. SharpPublished: 1844 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:64:"V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading e";s:8:"headline";s:69:"V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading emboss";s:7:"caption";s:500:"V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading emboss Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading embossed letters from a book. Lithograph by W. Sharp, 1844, after A. Fisher. 1844 By: Alanson Fisher and BouvÈ & Sharp.after: W. SharpPublished: 1844 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource A black and white lithograph shows Laura Bridgman guiding her friend Oliver's hand over an open book with raised print as she teaches him to read. Both children's signatures appear at the bottom of the print as further proof of their literacy. Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman (1844). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and see how free they are from all concealment of what is passing in their thoughts; observing which, a man with eyes may blush to contemplate the mask he wears. Allowing for one shade of anxious expression which is never absent from their countenances, and the like of which we may readily detect in our own faces if we try to feel our way in the dark, every idea, as it rises within them, is expressed with the lightning’s speed, and nature’s truth. If the company at a rout, or drawing –room at court, could only for one time be as unconscious of the eyes upon them as blind men and women are, what secrets would come out, and what a worker of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of which we so much pity, would appear to be! The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another room, before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb; destitute of smell; and nearly so, of taste: before a fair young creature with every human faculty, and hope, and power of goodness and affection, inclosed within her delicate frame, and but one outward sense—the sense of touch. There she was, before me; built up, as it were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or particle of sound; with her poor white hand peeing through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help, that an Immortal soul might be awakened. Long before I looked upon her, the help had come. Her face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own hands, was bound about a head, whose intellectual capacity and development were beautifully expressed in its graceful outline, and its broad open brow; her dress, arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity; the work she had knitted, lay beside her; her writing-book was on the desk she leaned upon.—From the mournful ruin of such bereavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless, grateful hearted being. Like other inmates of that house, she had a green ribbon bound round her eyelids. A doll she had dressed lay near upon the ground. I took it up, and saw that she had made a green fillet such as she wore herself, and fastened it about its mimic eyes. She was seated in a little enclosure, made by school-desks and forms, writing her daily journal. But soon finishing this pursuit, she engaged in an animated conversation with a teacher who sat beside her. This was a favourite mistress with the poor pupil. If she could see the face of her fair instructress, she would not love her less, I am sure. I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of her history, from an account, written by that one man who has made her what she is. It is a very beautiful and touching narrative; and I wish I could present it entire. Her name is Laura Bridgman. ‘She was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the twenty-first of December, 1829. She is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble until she was a year and a half old, that her parents hardly hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond her power of endurance; and life was held by the feeblest tenure: but when a year and a half old, she seemed to rally; the dangerous symptoms subsided; and a twenty months old, she was perfectly well. ‘Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their growth, rapidly developed themselves; and during the four months of health which she enjoyed, she appears (making due allowance for a fond mother’s account) to have displayed a considerable degree of intelligence. ‘But suddenly she sickened again; her disease raged with great violence during five weeks, when her eyes and ears were inflamed, suppurated, and their contents were discharged.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> But though sight and hearing were gone for ever, the poor child’s sufferings were not ended. The fever raged during seven weeks; for five months she was kept in bed in a darkened room; it was a year before she could walk unsupported, and two years before she could sit up all day. It was now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed; and, consequently, that her taste was much blunted. ‘It was not until four years of age that the poor child’s bodily health seemed restored, and she was able to enter upon her apprenticeship of life and the world. ‘But what a situation was hers! The darkness and the silence of the tomb were around her: no mother’s smile called forth her answering smile, no father’s voice taught her to imitate his sounds:--they, brothers and sisters, were but forms of matter which resisted her touch, but which differed not from the furniture of the house, save in warmth, and in the power of locomotion; and not even in these respects from the dog and the cat. ‘But the immortal spirit which had been implanted within her could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated; and though most of its avenues of communication with the world were cut off, it began to manifest itself through the others. As soon as she could walk, she began to explore the room, and then the house; she became familiar with the form, density, weight, and heat, of every article she could lay her hands upon. She followed her mother, and felt her hands and arms, as she was occupied about the house; and her disposition to imitate, led her to repeat everything herself. She even learned to sew a little, and to knit.’ The reader will scarcely need to be told, however, that the opportunities of communicating with her, were very, very limited; and that the moral effects of her wretched state soon began to appear. Those who cannot be enlightened by reason, can only be controlled by force; and this, coupled with her great privations, must soon have reduced her to a worse condition than that of the beasts that perish, but for timely and unhoped-for aid. ‘At this time, I was so fortunate as to hear of the child, and immediately hastened to Hanover to see her. I found her with a well-formed figure; a strongly marked, nervous-sanguine temperament; a large and beautifully shaped head;<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> and the whole system in healthy action. The parents were easily induced to consent to her coming to Boston, and on the 4th of October, 1837, they brought her to the Institution. ‘For a while, she was much bewildered; and after waiting about two weeks, until she became acquainted with her new locality, and somewhat familiar with the inmates, the attempt was made to give her knowledge of arbitrary signs, by which she could interchange thoughts with others. ‘There was one of two ways to be adopted: either go on to build up a language of signs on the basis of the natural language which she had already commenced herself, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language in common use: that is, to give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her a knowledge of letters by combination of which she might express her idea of the existence, and the mode and condition of existence, of any thing. The former would have been easy, but very ineffectual; the latter seemed very difficult, but, if accomplished, very effectual. I determined therefore to try the latter. ‘The first experiments were made by taking articles in common use, such as knives, forks, spoons, keys &c. and pasting upon the labels with their names printed in raised letters. These she felt very carefully, and soon, of course, distinguished that the crooked lines s p o o n, differed as much from the crooked lines k e y ‘Then small detached labels, with the same words printed upon them, were put into her hands; and she soon observed that they were similar to the ones pasted upon the articles. She showed her perception of this similarity by laying the label k e y upon the key, and the label s p o o n upon the spoon. She was encouraged here by the natural sign of approbation, patting on the head. ‘The same process was then repeated with all the articles which she could handle; and she very easily learned to place the proper labels upon them. It was evident, however, that the only intellectual exercise was that of imitation and memory. […] ‘Hitherto, the process had been mechanical, and the success about as great as teaching a very knowing dog a variety of tricks. The poor child had sat in mute amazement, and patiently imitated every thing her teacher did; but now the truth began to flash upon her: her intellect began to work: she perceived that here was a way by which she could herself make a up a sign of any thing that was in her own mind, and show it to another mind; and at once her countenance lighted up with a human expression: it was no longer a dog, or parrot: it was an immortal spirit eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with other spirits! I could almost fix upon the moment when this truth dawned upon her mind, and spread its light to her countenance; I saw that the great obstacle was overcome; and that henceforward nothing but patient and persevering, but plain and straightforward, efforts were to be used. <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Bridgman suffered from scarlet fever. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> In remarking on Bridgman’s “large and beautifully-shaped head” and her “nervous-sanguine temperament”, Howe is drawing on the nineteenth-century science of phrenology which held that the shape of one’s head was a guide to character. See John Van Whye, <a href="http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/">The History of Phrenology on the Web </a>for more information. </div> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource American Notes Description An account of the resource In January of 1842, Charles Dickens paid a visit to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, just outside of Boston, MA, as part of his American tour. There he met Laura Bridgman, whom the director of the institute, Samuel Gridley Howe, touted as the first deaf and blind person to be educated. (That person was arguably Julia Brace, who had been educated at the Hartford Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb using sign language.) On his return home, Dickens published an account of his encounter with Bridgman in American Notes for General Circulation, comprised partly of his own reflections on Bridgman, and partly of Howe’s widely reprinted 1838 Annual Report for the Perkins Institute of the Blind, which Dickens literally cut and paste directly into his manuscript. The excerpt below focuses on the story of how Bridgman learned to read and write: for Howe, the moment that Bridgman becomes literate is the moment when she becomes human. Howe’s insistence on teaching Bridgman how to spell in English rather than building on the version of home sign that she is already using to communicate through formal instruction in sign language is based on a stereotype that sign language was pictorial, and could only refer to literal objects rather than expressing abstract ideas. Seeing Bridgman write English, then, is proof of her intelligence and ability to process abstract ideas. For Dickens, watching Bridgman write in her diary is akin to seeing her prove that she is a fully conscious human being. At the center of Bridgman’s story, then, is the question of the role of literacy in determining who is fully human and who is not. This question takes on larger significance in the context of Dickens’s American Notes, in which Dickens also visits slaves and factory workers, whose right to literacy was contested. (See Bourrier, “Reading Laura Bridgman”.) <h2> </h2> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Dickens, Charles. American Notes for General Circulation. Ed. Patricia Ingham. New York: Penguin, 2000. Pages 39-44. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1842 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A black and white lithograph shows Laura Bridgman guiding her friend Oliver's hand over an open book with raised print as she teaches him to read. Both children's signatures appear at the bottom of the print as further proof of their literacy. Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman (1844). Lithograph by W. Sharp, 1844, after A. Fisher. Courtesy of the <a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Wellcome Library, London</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Wellcome Library Image" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1174265" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 16376</a>). Relation A related resource <ul><li>Bourrier, Karen. “Reading Laura Bridgman: Literacy and Disability in Dickens’s American Notes.” Dickens Studies Annual 40 (Summer 2009): 37-60.</li> <li>Gitter, Elisabeth. The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001.</li> <li>Freeberg, Ernest. The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001.</li> <li><a title="Perkins Institute" href="http://www.perkinsmuseum.org/." target="_blank">Perkins History Museum</a>. <a href="http://www.perkinsmuseum.org/">http://www.perkinsmuseum.org/</a>. </li> </ul> Blindness Celebrity Charles Dickens Deafness Education Institutions life writing https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/4843e0ea0a11561b558630326e621b1a.jpg 1b0a9d95db9719344154cb2e17c91295 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 800 Height 514 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:L0037241 Artificial left leg headline:L0037241 Artificial left leg caption:L0037241 Artificial left leg Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Artificial left leg with thigh socket for amputation above the knee. Photograph circa 1920 Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:28:"L0037241 Artificial left leg";s:8:"headline";s:28:"L0037241 Artificial left leg";s:7:"caption";s:360:"L0037241 Artificial left leg Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Artificial left leg with thigh socket for amputation above the knee. Photograph circa 1920 Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource An artificial left leg with a thigh socket for amputation above the knee. Photograph (circa 1920). Courtesy of <a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://wellcomeimages.org/" target="_blank">Wellcome Library, London</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://wellcomeimages.org/" target="_blank">Museum No A500465</a>). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. I shall proceed to adduce in favour of a single member, in opposition to what I am forced to confess is the general current opinion, an opinion resulting as I hope to shew [sic.], from inconsiderate habit and the mere accident of birth. Let us glance, then, in the outset, at the numberless miseries and calamities in every shape that lie in wait for the thoughtless bipeds who on two active legs run to-and-fro upon the earth, and, mounted on “Shank’s naggie,”<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> rush headlong to their hurt. Let him number who can the fractures, the maimings, the fatal results that have ensued from these rampant and foolhardy exploits in which a man of single sole would never engage, and could not if he would. How many enterprising youths have broken their necks through having one leg too much? How many have jumped at all, had they, instead of elastic flesh and sinew, possessed good wooden substitutes? How many have sunk in the fateful flood who would never have dreamed of swimming with a timber-toe? and how many have followed their heedless noses into irretrievable mischief, who would have remained safe from all harm upon a single foot? Then look at the double risks of the double-footed, even in calamities that come unsought. The gout, that horrible visitant, has but half a victim in a one-legged man; of corns, also, he has but half a crop; his bunions never mar his quiet pilgrimage; and, come what may, he cannot by any possibility suffer from damp feet. [. . .] Then the man of one leg, it must not be forgotten, is the possessor of certain physical advantages to which the biped is for ever a stranger. He is exempt by law from all personal participation in the turmoils and brutalities of war. A man of peace by Act of Parliament,<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> he never incurs the disgrace of running away, or is laughed at for avoiding a combat by shewing what he has not got “a fair pair of heels”—though if by any aggression he is driven to his shifts, he can, upon an emergency, find a footing where the greatest hero upon two legs could not make a stand. Or he may cross a steam dry-shot where another would get up to his knee in water, simply by plunging his insensible substitute in the middle, and transferring the natural limb to the opposite bank. [. . .] Moreover, in cases of emergency, when it becomes necessary to put the best foot foremost, he is never hesitating and at a loss, like your bipeds, being at no pains on deciding between the leg which cost him nothing, and that which has cost him perhaps from ten shillings to ten pounds,<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> as taste or circumstances may have led him to the adoption of the convenient cork, the patent spring, or the unsophisticated but manly stump, in the choice of a pedestal. I might enumerate many other advantages which contribute to his exclusive enjoyment, were I so disposed, but I scorn to accumulate evidence in favour of a truth which the reader must by this time be ready to admit, and shall proceed, as in fairness bound, to notice the objections that may be urged by prejudiced bipeds against his fortunate condition. <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> A Scottish phrase literally meaning “to ride on Shank’s mare”. To “shank” is “To set off smartly, to walk away with expedition” (Jamieson 342). In this context, then, Smith means merely to walk with great haste. See Jamieson, John. Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. Vol. 2. Edinburgh, 1825. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Like nowadays, men wishing to enlist in the British Army faced a medical screening. If an applicant did not match certain physical requirements, he was not offered an enlistment (which were typically for ten or twelve years). For more on British Army enlistment, see Skelley, Alan Ramsay. The Victorian Army at Home: The Recruitment and Terms and Conditions of the British Regular, 1859-1899. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> There was in fact a huge difference in price between top-of-the-range artificial legs (such as those made by British prosthetist Frederick Gray and the Americans Frank Palmer and A. A. Marks) and peg legs, which were produced by carpenters, cabinet makers and doctors as well as by prosthesis specialists. Mexican political leader Antonio López de Santa Anna, who lost his leg fighting the French in 1839, is said to have purchased two high-tech wooden legs from an American cabinet maker for a staggering $1,300 a piece. By contrast, in 1888 A. A. Marks charged just $10 a piece for his cheapest peg legs. For more on nineteenth-century British currency, see Marje Bloy’s “<a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/currency.html">British Currency before 1971</a>” on The Victorian Web. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An Essay on Wooden Legs, with Some Account of Herr Von Holtzbein Description An account of the resource Charles Manby Smith (1804–80) was a writer fascinated by and deeply concerned with the position of “cripples” in Victorian society. In the second edition of his most famous work <a href="http://archive.org/stream/curiositiesoflon00smit#page/16/mode/2up">Curiosities of London Life: Or, Phases, Physiological and Social, of the Great Metropolis</a> (1857), a study of London street life that has been compared to Charles Dickens’s <a href="http://archive.org/details/sketchesbyboz00dick">Sketches by Boz</a>(1833–36) and Henry Mayhew’s <a href="http://archive.org/stream/londonlabourlond01mayhrich#page/n7/mode/2up">London Labour and the London Poor</a> (1851), he expresses particular anxiety for those maimed by “commerce” (referring to labourers injured by industrial machinery), who, according to him, were given little support and “left to fight the battle of life at fearful odds” (17). The “tale of adventure” “<a href="http://archive.org/stream/deadlockalsotal00smitgoog#page/n6/mode/2up">An Essay on Wooden Legs, with Some Account of Herr Von Holtzbein</a>” (first printed in the April 1854 edition of Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine and later published in a volume with Smith’s novel The Dead Lockin 1863), on the other hand, presents the amputee as curios whilst playfully gesturing toward the enabling potential of human prosthesis. In a perspicuously ironic manner, the narrator of “An Essay on Wooden Legs” goes beyond identifying prostheses as devices that can enable amputees to live normal lives, suggesting instead that such technologies are capable of enhancing a user beyond the limits of normalcy. As the narrator explains, “it is my present purpose to reconsider a question which I fear has been too summarily settled, without duly weighing the arguments which have been, or might be, adduced on both sides—the question being, whether TWO legs are better than ONE” (emphasis original; 247). According to the narrator, the use of an artificial leg not only lessens the chances of the user contracting illnesses or defects, such as gout, corns, and bunions, but also prevents damp feet and the risk of sustaining injuries as a result of doing things too quickly. It also, according to the narrator, provides some physical advantages, such as providing a better footing on soft ground. To exemplify his argument, the narrator also tells the story of Herr Von Holtzbein—the name in German literally means “wooden leg”—, a Berlin-based war veteran, who after losing his leg to a bullet-wound in the Napoleonic war, “cured the ills that fighting flesh is heir to by applications of wood and steel, and leather and whalebone and cork, all so elaborately made and so perfectly simulating nature's handy-work, that his reputation, amateur though he was, surpassed that of the first professors of the day” (254). After Von Holtzbein’s daughter gets engaged to a fellow veteran’s son, the prosthesis maker breaks off the engagement because of an off-hand comment made by the young suitor regarding the inferiority of prosthetic limbs to their organic equivalents. Only after the suitor has an accident himself—resulting in amputation and the chartable offering of an artificial leg by Von Holtzbein—is the relationship between father and son-in-law-to-be restored. Herr Doppelschank, the suitor, is thus only enabled to marry the successful prosthetist’s daughter (thus raising his status and, presumably, his finances) once he is himself adorned with a prosthetic limb. While the tone of Smith’s “tale of adventure” is obviously ironic, what is significant is that at no point are inorganic-looking prostheses privileged over human legs. Indeed, Von Holtzbein’s legs are described as being so impressive exactly because they “so perfectly simulat[e] nature's handy-work” (254). In this sense, then, while the author light-heartedly champions the durability of wood as a replacement for “elastic flesh and sinew” (248), he resists advocating a prosthetic device that looks mechanical or inhuman. The tale is therefore comical, rather than radical. The artificial limb is suggested to be more durable and resilient than the organic, but quietly nature’s design goes unquestioned. While the author is happy to mock the material flaws of the organic leg and also the supposed ingeniousness of contemporary artificial legs, he nonetheless privileges the appearance of the natural limb. This restraint reflects a wider Victorian acceptance of prosthetic technology on the condition that it resembles human form and masks the disability of its user. Indeed, as Vanessa Warne and others have identified, artificial legs (like the one displayed in the image above and those produced by Von Holtzbein) were seen as distinct from and were privileged over peg legs (worn predominantly by lower class characters such as Silas Wegg from Dickens’s <a href="http://archive.org/stream/ourmutualfriend00883gut/old/mfrnd10.txt">Our Mutual Friend</a>) in the Victorian period since they possessed superior mimetic capabilities and better disguised middle-class and aristocratic users from appearing maimed. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Smith, Charles Manby Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1854 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ryan Sweet Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource An artificial left leg with a thigh socket for amputation above the knee. Photograph (circa 1920). Courtesy of <a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://wellcomeimages.org/" target="_blank">Wellcome Library, London</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://wellcomeimages.org/" target="_blank">Museum No A500465</a>). Relation A related resource <ul><li>Gray, Frederick. Automatic Mechanism, as Applied in the Construction of Artificial Limbs, in Cases of Amputation. London, 1855. Available <a href="http://archive.org/details/automaticmechani00gray">online</a> at archive.org.</li> <li>Mihm, Stephen. “A Limb Which Shall Be Presentable In Polite Society: Prosthetic Technologies in the Nineteenth Century”. eds. Katherine Ott, David Serlin and Stephen Mihm. Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics. New York: New York University Press, 2002. 282–299. Print.</li> <li>Warne, Vanessa. “‘To Invest a Cripple with Peculiar Interest’: Artificial Legs and Upper-Class Amputees at Mid-Century”. Victorian Review 35.2 (2009): 83–100.</li> </ul> Language A language of the resource English Medicine Mobility Prosthesis Technology https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/681c4799c738f2a09e88e9334bc7738c.jpg 9e3c71dfb90abb524079ee9eb15a8d32 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. 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Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887. 1887 By: Eadweard Muybridge and University of Pennsylvania.Published: 1887 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:64:"V0048744 An amputee on crutches. Photogravure after Eadweard Muy";s:8:"headline";s:69:"V0048744 An amputee on crutches. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridg";s:7:"caption";s:439:"V0048744 An amputee on crutches. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridg Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk An amputee on crutches. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887. 1887 By: Eadweard Muybridge and University of Pennsylvania.Published: 1887 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In a series of photographs presented in a table with three columns and twelve rows, a naked man who is missing one foot walks on crutches. https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/0b12d75567f6e0ba28e58a1a8d2ede97.jpg ec9ad0500e9c4448cadf23fc46e2f63d Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 788 Height 286 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:V0048745 A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending fro headline:V0048745 A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending from a c caption:V0048745 A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending from a c Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending from a chair and moving. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887. 1887 By: Eadweard Muybridge and University of Pennsylvania.Published: 1887 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:64:"V0048745 A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending fro";s:8:"headline";s:69:"V0048745 A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending from a c";s:7:"caption";s:492:"V0048745 A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending from a c Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending from a chair and moving. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887. 1887 By: Eadweard Muybridge and University of Pennsylvania.Published: 1887 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In a series of black and white photographs presented in a table with three rows and four columns, a disabled child crawls on and off a chair. https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/256b4df7d4b118277568f467a48e5455.jpg d101bfd0e729b8a45e2f2956efa01e40 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 778 Height 475 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:L0015804 Muybridge "Animal locomotion"; deformed child headline:L0015804 Muybridge "Animal locomotion"; deformed child caption:L0015804 Muybridge "Animal locomotion"; deformed child Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Deformed child walking on arms and legs. 1887 By: University of Pennsylvania. and Eadweard MuybridgeAnimal locomotion Eadweard James Muybridge Published: 1887 Printed: 1887) Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:54:"L0015804 Muybridge "Animal locomotion"; deformed child";s:8:"headline";s:54:"L0015804 Muybridge "Animal locomotion"; deformed child";s:7:"caption";s:454:"L0015804 Muybridge "Animal locomotion"; deformed child Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Deformed child walking on arms and legs. 1887 By: University of Pennsylvania. and Eadweard MuybridgeAnimal locomotion Eadweard James Muybridge Published: 1887 Printed: 1887) Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In a series of photographs with three rows and four columns, a disabled child crawls. His ribs are visible and he crawls on his feet rather than on his knees. In some of the photographs he smiles. https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/f59c80a96337e730fa87f0ada60f8c82.jpg 41033c53a1844abb8a296378b2240955 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 635 Height 375 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:L0050336 A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking headline:L0050336 A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking with caption:L0050336 A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking with Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking with a nurse. Collotype after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887. One of 781 collotypes which form Eadweard Muybridge\'s magnum opus, Animal locomotion, 1887. This work originated in an attempt to settle the argument which arose in 1871 between Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific Railroad, and Robert Bonner, owner of the New York Ledger, as to whether a trotting horse ever had all four feet off the ground at once. Both men were prepared to enter the controversy fully and to contribute ideas and practical means to prove his side of the argument. Muybridge\'s solution was to photograph each stage in the trot of a horse called Occident owned by Stanford. Some of Muybridge\'s photographs did appear to show Occident with all four of his feet lifted at the same time clear of the ground. The research and photography for Animal Locomotion was carried out for the University of Pennsylvania in 1884-1885, using and improving the techniques developed in the 1870s. Of the 781 plates, 95 were devoted to the horse and 124 to other animals. The other 562 are devoted to men, women, and children, nude, semi-nude, and draped, walking, running, dancing, getting up and lying down, wrestling, boxing, leaping, etc. For further information see G. Hendricks, Eadweard Muybrige, London 1975, and R.B. Haas, Muybridge: man in motion, Berkeley 1976 Plate to: E. Muybridge, Animal locomotion, Philadelphia 1887, plate 541 1887 By: University of Pennsylvania. and Eadweard MuybridgePublished: 1887 Printed: 1887) Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:64:"L0050336 A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking ";s:8:"headline";s:68:"L0050336 A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking with";s:7:"caption";s:1860:"L0050336 A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking with Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking with a nurse. Collotype after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887. One of 781 collotypes which form Eadweard Muybridge\'s magnum opus, Animal locomotion, 1887. This work originated in an attempt to settle the argument which arose in 1871 between Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific Railroad, and Robert Bonner, owner of the New York Ledger, as to whether a trotting horse ever had all four feet off the ground at once. Both men were prepared to enter the controversy fully and to contribute ideas and practical means to prove his side of the argument. Muybridge\'s solution was to photograph each stage in the trot of a horse called Occident owned by Stanford. Some of Muybridge\'s photographs did appear to show Occident with all four of his feet lifted at the same time clear of the ground. The research and photography for Animal Locomotion was carried out for the University of Pennsylvania in 1884-1885, using and improving the techniques developed in the 1870s. Of the 781 plates, 95 were devoted to the horse and 124 to other animals. The other 562 are devoted to men, women, and children, nude, semi-nude, and draped, walking, running, dancing, getting up and lying down, wrestling, boxing, leaping, etc. For further information see G. Hendricks, Eadweard Muybrige, London 1975, and R.B. Haas, Muybridge: man in motion, Berkeley 1976 Plate to: E. Muybridge, Animal locomotion, Philadelphia 1887, plate 541 1887 By: University of Pennsylvania. and Eadweard MuybridgePublished: 1887 Printed: 1887) Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In a series of black and white photographs, a naked woman with an orthopaedic disability walks with the aid of a clothed attendant. The photographs are presented in a table with three rows and twelve columns. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1880 to 1901 Description An account of the resource Still Image A static visual representation. Examples of still images are: paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type "text" to images of textual materials. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Animal Locomotion Description An account of the resource In 1887, <a title="Wikipedia Muybridge Entry" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge" target="_blank">Eadweard Muybridge</a> (1830-1904), the American photographer, published Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movement, an eleven-volume collection of photographs of instantaneous or consecutive movement. It features photographs of ‘abnormal movement,’ including: An amputee on crutches, <a title="Wellcome Catalogue" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1185959" target="_blank">plate 537</a>; A double amputee climbing on to a chair, descending from a chair and moving, <a title="Wellcome Catalogue" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1185960" target="_blank">plate 538</a>; Deformed child walking on arms and legs,<a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1658436" target="_blank"> plate 539</a>; A girl with multiple cerebral-spinal sclerosis walking with a nurse, <a title="Wellcome Library Catalogue" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1185962" target="_blank">plate 541</a>. Figures were photographed without clothes, allowing for the unobstructed scrutiny of their bodies, and in front of grids, which invited viewers to treat the pictures as scientific studies. In Animal Locomotion, Muybridge arranged his photographs according to a hierarchy, with male and female nudes presented in the first volumes, followed by draped males and females, then children. Volume 8, which was devoted to the abnormal movements of males, females and children, appeared ahead of photographs of animals, domestic and wild. By arranging the photographs in this way, Muybridge positioned those with disabilities lower than those with ‘healthy’ bodies and just above animals. He also included photographs of athletes, which juxtaposed his photographs of the disabled, in turn reflecting late nineteenth-century conceptions of health and beauty, which proved especially relevant for artists and scientists of the day. Muybridge is considered to be an important figure in the history of photography and cinema. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Muybridge, Eadweard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Keren Hammerschlag Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Four series of photographs, each with between twelve and forty five frames, show people with disabilities, naked, in various stages of locomotion.  There is a man on crutches walking, a man with no legs getting on and off a chair, a disabled child crawling, and a woman with an orthopaedic disability walking with the aid of a clothed attendant.  Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements.  Courtesy of the <a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Wellcome Library, London</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Wellcome Library Catalogue" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1185959" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 28116</a>i; <a title="Wellcome Library Catalogue" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1185960" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 28117i</a>; <a title="Wellcome Library Catalogue" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1185961" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 28118i</a>; and <a title="Wellcome Library Catalogue" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1185962" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 28119i</a>). Relation A related resource <ul> <li>Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. 1872-1885. 11 vols., 781 plates. Philadelphia: University of Pennslyvania, 1887.</li> <li>Philip Brookman, with contributions by Martha Braun, Andy Grundberg, Corey Keller, Rebecca Solnit, Eadweard Muybridge, exhibition catalogue, London: Tate Publishing, 2010.</li> <li>Eadweard Muybridge:  Defining Modernities. Kingston University and Kingston Museum, UK.  <a title="Eadweard Muybridge Site" href="http://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/</a></li> </ul> Childhood Eadweard Muybridge Invalidism Mobility Photography Visual Culture https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/145eea89916fbad772e9418fb8ae923f.jpg ecb1ed3f15257f9d554a70913a4d24b1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource "It was a sight to see, a deed to record." Black and white illustration of Slope bending over Signora Neroni, who lies on her invalid couch. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. She had fallen, she said, in ascending a ruin, and had fatally injured the sinews of her knee; so fatally, that when she stood she lost eight inches of her accustomed height; so fatally that when she assayed to move, she could only drag herself painfully along, with protruded hip and extended foot in a manner less graceful than that of a hunchback. She had consequently made up her mind, once and for ever, that she would never stand, and never attempt to move herself. Stories were not slow to follow her, averring that she had been cruelly ill-used by Neroni, and that to his violence she owed her accident. Be that as it may, little had been said about her husband, but that little had made it clearly intelligible to the family that Signor Neroni was to be seen and heard of no more. […] Madeline Neroni, though forced to give up all motion in the world, had no attention whatever of giving up the world itself. The beauty of her face was uninjured, and that beauty was of a peculiar kind. Her copious brown hair was worn in Grecian bandeaux<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> round her head, displaying as much as possible of her forehead and cheeks. Her forehead, though rather low, was very beautiful from its perfect contour and pearly whiteness. Her eyes were long and large, and marvelously bright; might I venture to say, bright as Lucifer’s<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a>, I should perhaps best express the depth of their brilliancy. They were dreadful eyes to look at, such as would absolutely deter any man of quiet mind and easy spirit from attempting a passage of arms with such foes. There was talent in them, and the fire of passion and the play of wit, but there was no love. Cruelty was there instead, and courage, a desire of masterhood, cunning, and a wish for mischief. And yet, as eyes, they were very beautiful. The eyelashes were long and perfect, and the long steady unabashed gaze, with which she would look into the face of her admirer, fascinated while it frightened him. She was a basilisk<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> from whom an ardent lover of beauty could make no escape. Her nose and mouth and teeth and chin and neck and bust were perfect, much more so at twenty-eight than they had been at eighteen. What wonder that with such charms still glowing in her face, and with such deformity destroying her figure, she should resolve to be seen, but only to be seen reclining on a sofa. Her resolve had not been carried out without difficulty. She had still frequented the opera at Milan; she had still been seen occasionally in the saloons of the noblesse<a title="" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a>; she had caused herself to be carried in and out from her carriage, and that in such a manner as in no wise to disturb her charms, disarrange her dress, or expose her deformities. (75-76) <h3>Notes</h3> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> A bandeaux refers to a narrow band of ribbon worn around the head, as a kind of headdress. Especially popular in Regency fashion, the ribbon could be made from a variety of materials, such as velvet or silk, and might be worn both formally and informally. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Lucifer is the name given to the rebellious archangel who falls from heaven and becomes known as Satan. Here Trollope plays on the notion of the Signora’s literal and figurative “fall” from beauty and grace. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> Ancient writers describe the basilisk as a reptilian creature with a loud, frightening hiss and fatal breath. Like Medusa, the basilisk’s very look had the power to destroy its viewer. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[4]</a> Of noble birth or rank. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Barchester Towers Description An account of the resource Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers (1857), the second novel in his “Chronicles of Barsetshire” series, details the public ecclesiastic conflicts between the newly powerful Evangelicals of the Church and the reigning Tory conservatives. However, the private realm of the novel’s accompanying domestic plot offers a fascinating depiction of a physically disabled woman who captivates men with her beauty and sensuality. Signora Madeline Neroni, Trollope’s crippled seductress, forms a stark contrast to Trollope’s chaste and comparatively dull heroine, Eleanor Bold. As with many disabled women in nineteenth century novels, Madeline’s physical defect is linked to her transgressive sexuality—a physical manifestation of dubious morality. Her legs are irreparably damaged as a result of the violence of a husband who has abandoned her, and the novel seems to frame the injury as due punishment for succumbing to pre-marital sex. Like the many disabled female figures of sexual excess Martha Stoddard Holmes describes, Madeline functions only as a catalyst to the able-bodied heroine’s romance plot before disappearing from view in order to alleviate the anxiety her body generates. Yet, as modern feminist critics note, the spectacle of Madeline’s damaged body makes Trollope’s text a key site for tracing historical links between domestic abuse, sexuality, and disability. As Kate Lawson suggests, Madeline “keep[s] the image of the maimed body before us, the tantalizing yet repellent reminder of a—perhaps–grotesque act of domestic violence. Her disfigurement is both a source of continual fascination, of curiousity, and…repulsion” (57). Trollope describes Madeline’s defective body in shocking detail, making the reality of her damaged body visible for the reader. Yet, paradoxically, her meticulous construction of herself as beautiful, elaborately adorned, and sexually desirable depends upon her careful concealment of her crippled limbs. This consistent tension between grotesque display and mysterious veiling haunts Madeline’s character throughout the novel. Suzanne Rintoul notes that her “always only partially visible disability marks a break-down in representation and interpretation for those who work to circumscribe their identities through her abnormal body,” arguing that this “indecipherability” exposes the flaws of the community that surrounds her (7). Ultimately, the spectacle of the Signora’s body, always simultaneously hidden and revealed, invites a complex reading of female disability, agency, and the politics of display, as well as the notion of the mutilated woman’s body as evidence of unspoken violence between men and women. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Trollope, Anthony Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1857 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Melina Moore Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource "It was a sight to see, a deed to record." Black and white illustration of Slope bending over Signora Neroni, who lies on her invalid couch. Illustrated by Hugh M. Eaton (New York: the Century Co, 1902): 252. Image courtesy<a title="Wikimedia Barchester Towers" href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barchester_Towers"> Wikimedia Commons</a> under a Creative Commons license. Relation A related resource <ul><li> Holmes, Martha Stoddard. Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture, The Corporealities Series (Ann Arbour: U of Michigan P, 2004). </li> <li> Lawson, Kate. “Abject and Defiled: Signora Neroni’s Body and the Question of Domestic Violence in Barchester Towers,” Victorian Review 21:1 (1995) 53-68. </li> <li> Rintoul, Suzanne. “The Mysterious Woman and Her Legs: Scrutinizing the Disabled Body in Barchester Towers,” Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 7.1 (2011). Available <a href="http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue71/rintoul.htm">online.</a> </li> </ul> Anthony Trollope Gender Invalidism Literature Mobility Novel https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/06f5b1577456228044d43531780df354.jpg 03315ef06120b10c195a07432d8be15f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Druck von Leo Krause & Ewerlien “Maximo und Bartolo die leßten lebenden Azteken,” a 1909 postcard of siblings Bartola and Maximo, most likely from their final engagement in Germany. Image from author’s collection. Description An account of the resource The front of this black and white postcard shows the siblings sitting cross-legged. https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/da2709afa118b3b1b303e3d3c3ba675b.jpg da3256faf98e55ba86751fda32347a86 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource The back of the postcard shows a faded address and stamp. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1860 to 1880 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. The place of residence assigned to our travelers was the vacant wing of a sumptuous and spacious structure, at the western extremity of the city, which had been appropriated, from time immemorial, to the surviving remnant of an ancient and singular order of priesthood called Kaanas, which it was distinctly asserted in their annals and traditions, had accompanied the first migration of this people from the Assyrian plains. Their peculiar and strongly-distinctive lineaments, it is now perfectly well ascertained, are to be traced in many of the sculptured monuments of the Central American ruins, and were found still more abundantly in Iximaya. Forbidden, inviolably sacred laws, from intermarrying with any persons but those of their own caste, they had here dwindled down, in the course of many centuries, to a few insignificant individuals, diminutive in stature. They were, nevertheless, held in high veneration and affection by the whole Iximayan community, probably as living specimens of an antique race nearly extinct. [ … ] Such is the marvelous story detailed by Velasquez. Containing all elements which can well stimulate curiosity, it also lays claim to a credence which further inquiry must either substantiate or withdraw. The Aztec Children stand independently as the most wonderful members of the human race, whatever their origin or descent; yet at the same time, all testimony professing to throw light on this is worthy of calm and considerate attention. To view these children is less to inquire whence they came, than to regard them as they are; to watch the progressive dawn of intelligence and continually stronger development of individual characteristics. To see them is an event in the life of the beholder, which will never be forgotten. Were they deformities, without proper lineage or name, excrescences or mere freaks of nature, their history would little merit the inquiry or examination now courted. They are here—the descendants of a people probably passed over to the Américan continent at a period too remote to be ascertained, members of a race kept preserved in rocky fastness, and now discovered on the eve of physical decline and disappearance. [ … ] It might be considered just, with great propriety, to class these remarkable specimens of humanity with fabulous existences, if the truth of their being rested on mere individual assertion—BUT HERE THEY ARE! LIVING!—and open to public examination—not merely imaginary creatures, like the strange men of Africa mentioned by Herodotus, the phoenix or the mermaid. Not a fictitious people, like the dryads of the Arcadian vales—not the moonlight fairies; the little grey men of Norse legends—not nymph, sprite, nor elf—but human beings of flesh and blood—the remnant of strange and wonderful race—the greatest marvel of a land of wonders, and of the nineteenth century—more strange than the vast skeletons of the Mastodon, which have been exhumed in the same region—but, like the black swan of New Holland formerly regarded as a myth, but now a well-established existence. In short, as curious and as well substantiated as the singular sightless fish of the mammoth cave of Kentucky. In brief, these Aztec Children present the most extraordinary phenomenon in the human race ever witnessed by the modern world: let their origin be what it may – let their history and their country’s history be every so vague and traditionary—doubt the truth of Velasquez’s narrative or believe it wholly—these children present in themselves the eighth wonder of the world. They are, without exception, the most remarkable and intensely interesting objects that were ever presented to the European public. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Druck von Leo Krause & Ewerlien “Maximo und Bartolo die leßten lebenden Azteken,” a 1909 postcard of siblings Bartola and Maximo, most likely from their final engagement in Germany. Image from author’s collection. Description An account of the resource Pedro Velasquez’s gripping 1851 Illustrated Memoir of an Expedition into Central America chronicles the enterprising Hammond expedition that absconded with a pair of native children after discovering Iximaya, a fabled city hidden in deep in the jungles of untouched Central America. These, however, were not just any children, but the two last living members of a pureblood priestly caste: Bartola and Maximo, “The Aztec Children.” Diminutive in stature and well beloved by the otherwise war-like Iximayans, after their “rescue,” the siblings became two of the most sought-after freak show performers of the nineteenth century. However, Bartola and Maximo were not Aztecs; and neither Pedro Velasquez nor Iximaya actually existed. Their life story pamphlet was actually a doctored up version of American lawyer and explorer John Lloyd Stephens’ travelogue, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841), a text that revitalized interest in Mayan antiquity during the nineteenth century. The wild romance of the “Aztec Children” was nothing more than freak show fabrication. Bartola and Maximo’s actual origins are unknown, but they were most likely born in San Salvador. They were both born with microcephaly, a neurodevelopmental disorder that impaired physical and cognitive development, earning them the nicknames the “Aztec Children” and “Aztec Lilliputians.” They first appeared with their impresario J. Morris in Boston, MA in the early 1850s. After catching the attention of Horace Greeley and President Millard Fillmore, they travelled to London in 1853 to meet Queen Victoria. For the next fifty years, they were continuously exhibited in London, Europe, and the US. They even briefly worked with P.T. Barnum, one of the most famous nineteenth-century showmen, which testified to just how popular the “Aztecs” were. Eventually interest in the siblings faded, and their last known sighting was around 1901. The postcard is a souvenir from one of their final performance engagements in Germany. Throughout their career, Bartola and Maximo sparked hot debates over the nature of physical, cultural, and racial difference. The conclusion of the “Aztec Children’s” pamphlet reveals how disability, science, and colonialism supported each other during the nineteenth century. On the one hand, they were routinely used as medical, ethnological, and anthropological evidence of the existence of degenerate species. But, Bartola and Maximo were also deemed imposters: they were little more than imperfect Aztec knockoffs, much like their fraudulent life story pamphlet. The twists and turns of their long career represent the freak show’s signature “artful deception,” a clever interweaving of truth and fiction, authenticity and fabrication, cover ups and exposé.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> The freak show does not just calm anxieties and uncertainties that accompany physical difference, but also incites energetic debate that complicates cultural standards of normalcy. <h3>Note</h3> <div><a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Including the freak show, automatons, stage magic, and trompe l’oeil, James W. Cook maps out the modern form of trickery he refers to as “artful deception “ in The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) </div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Illustrated Memoir of an Eventful Expedition into Central America Resulting in the Discovery of the Idolatrous City of Iximaya in an Unexplored Region; and the Possession of Two Remarkable Aztec Children Maximo (the Boy) and Bartola (the Girl,) Descendants and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste (now Nearly Extinct), of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of That Country. Edited by John L. Stephens and Other Travelers. Translated by Pedro Velasquez. New York: Wynkoop, Hallendeck, and Thomas, 1860. Pages 30 to 34. Available at: <a href="https://archive.org/details/101188943.nlm.nih.gov">https://archive.org/details/101188943.nlm.nih.gov</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1860 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ann McKenzie Garascia Relation A related resource <ul><li>Aguirre, Robert D. Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture. Minneapolis: Minnesota, 2005. </li> </ul><ul><li>Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988.</li> <li> Durbach, Nadja. Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. </li> </ul> Title A name given to the resource Bartola and Maximo, “The Aztec Children” https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/4cd50619512b935cd2e56ad46ac87159.jpg 0a6119d4f0f4af87e16fcfa70628613b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. “Yes, commander, I took the business [of being a tinker]. Such as it was. It wasn’t much of a beat—round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld, and there—poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till they’re past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master’s earnings. But they didn’t come to me. I warn’t like [my master]. He could sing ’em a good song. I couldn’t! He could play ’em a tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it was iron or block tin. I never could do nothing with a pot but mend it or bile it—never had a note of music in me. Besides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me.” “They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd, Phil!” says the trooper with a pleasant smile. “No, guv’ner,” returns Phil, shaking his head. “No, I shouldn’t. I was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and swallering the smoke; and what with being nat’rally unfort’nate in the way of running against hot metal, and marking myself by sich means; and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older, almost whenever he was too far gone in drink—which was almost always—my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. As to since; what with a dozen years in a dark forge, where the men was given to larking; and what with being scorched in a accident at a gas-works; and what with being blowed out of winder, case-filling at the firework business; I am ugly enough to be made a show on!” Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking it, he says, “It was after the case-filling blow-up when I first see you, commander. You remember?” “I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun.” “Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall—” “True, Phil—shouldering your way on—” “In a night-cap!” exclaims Phil, excited. “In a night-cap—” “And hobbling with a couple of sticks!” cries Phil, still more excited. “With a couple of sticks. When—” “When you stops, you know,” cries Phil, putting down his cup and saucer, and hastily removing his plate from his knees, “and says to me, ‘What, comrade! You have been in the wars!’ I didn’t say much to you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so strong and healthy and bold as you was, should stop to speak to such a limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you, delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was like a glass of something hot, ‘What accident have you met with? You have been badly hurt. What’s amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us about it!’ Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!” cries Phil, who has started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. “If a mark’s wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take aim at me. They can’t spoil my beauty. I’m all right. Come on! If they want a man to box at, let ’em box at me. Let ’em knock me well about the head. I don’t mind. If they want a light-weight to be throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> let ’em throw me. They won’t hurt me. I have been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!” With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered, and accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to clear away the breakfast. <div> <h3>Note</h3> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> These refer to “codes of rules for wrestling,” differing in from county to county (961). </div> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource While many of Charles Dickens’s novels and nonfiction works depicted people with disabilities, his novel Bleak House, published serially over 1852-1853 and in volume form in 1853, is veritably full of characters with bodies and minds deemed disabled due to deafness, illness, epilepsy, senility, invalidism, asthma, gout, paralysis, injuries, and disfigurations. Interestingly, Dickens’s treatment of disability in the novel is neither wholly realistic nor wholly caricaturized: at times the novel reduces disabilities to symbols of a broken social system—as is the case with Grandfather Smallweed’s deafness and paralysis and his wife’s senility—while at others it exposes how the social environment of the person with disability produces the meaning of disability—as is often the case with Phil Squod and Esther Summerson’s respective disfigurements. The selection below depicts one of the latter instances. In it, Phil Squod, who requires the support of the wall for getting around the room, describes the various injuries and events that gave him his many scars and mobility impairment. While the scarring and altered mobility originate in his working-class occupations, which might suggest symbolism of the exploitation of the working class, Phil’s description of his experience emphasizes the social interpretations of, and prejudices against, his disability, as well as his own delights in the abilities and appearance of his supposedly deficient body. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Ed. Norman Page. London: Penguin, 1971. 422-23. Print. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1853 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kylee-Anne Hingston Relation A related resource <ul><li> Burgan, Mary. “Contagion and Culture: A View from Victorian Studies.” American Literary History. 14.4 (2002): 837-844. Web. </li> <li> Gurney, Michael S. “Disease as Device: The Role of Smallpox in Bleak House.” Literature and Medicine. 9 (1990): 79-92. Web. </li> <li> Michie, Helena. “‘Who is This in Pain?’: Scarring, Disfigurment, and Female Identity in Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend.” Novel 22.2 (1989): 199-213. Print. </li> <li> Montwieler, Katherine. “Reading, Sympathy, and the Bodies of Bleak House.” Dickens Studies Annual. 41 (2010): 237-263 Print. </li> </ul> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The illustration shows Grandfather Smallweed being carried in to a gallery, where he is met by Trooper George and his friend Phil Squod. “Visitors to the Shooting Gallery” by Hablot K. Browne. From Bleak House. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853. Title A name given to the resource Bleak House Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Language A language of the resource English Charles Dickens Literature Mobility Novel https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/851adf33366a97e044b9fba10341e9c8.jpg 130ae5f28852cb9b0c9d70c70b5edd8e Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 781 Height 538 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:V0013623 School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to headline:V0013623 School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read, caption:V0013623 School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read, Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read, Avenue Road, London: seen from the road. Coloured lithograph by E. T. Dolby, n.d., after H. E. Kendall, 1838. after: Edwin Thomas Dolby and Henry Edward KendallPublished: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:64:"V0013623 School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to ";s:8:"headline";s:69:"V0013623 School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read,";s:7:"caption";s:531:"V0013623 School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read, Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read, Avenue Road, London: seen from the road. Coloured lithograph by E. T. Dolby, n.d., after H. E. Kendall, 1838. after: Edwin Thomas Dolby and Henry Edward KendallPublished: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource A coloured lithograph shows the School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read from the road, as passerbys hurry past. The school is a stately brick building surrounded by foliage. Coloured lithograph by E. T. Dolby, n.d., after H. E. Kendall, 1838. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1860 to 1880 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Poor Guy! He is burning as he has burnt any time since that fifth of November on which he attempted to “blow Scotchmen back to Scotland.” He is blazing in the midst of tar-barrels and brushwood. The great bonfire pouring out masses of flame and sparks—careful officer of the Fire Brigade keeping watch meanwhile—lights up an odd scene.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> We are in a great square on a November night, dim walls enclosing it. Rockets are shooting far into the wintry sky, Roman candles are jetting out starts of many-coloured flame. Catherine-wheels whizz round on tree trunks; squibs are spurting our their short but sparkling life; crackers banging and barking on the ground, noisy, demonstrative, and soon extinct, like fussy politicians; and, besides all theses, there is plenty of high pyrotechnic art from Mr. Brock’s<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> famous laboratory—set-pieces, Chinese trees, fiery fountains and the like. Plenty of noise, plenty of fire, and plenty of light. Round the bonfire dance merry figures –rushing hurriedly now and then to the window whence the fireworks are liberally dealt out—exulting in the noise, the crackle, the fun generally; glorying in Guy Fawkes and his sublime cremation. They are “knowing,” these shadowy forms of boys and half-grown men. They keep the fire at a respectful distance, save when one, bolder than the rest, gives a tar-barrel a kick to bring out the sparks in golden showers. They never light their fireworks at the wrong end, as has happened to philosophers before now, but manage them deftly and skillfully. They are enjoying themselves immensely; and, as they last glorious wheel dies out, the last cracker and the last maroon explode, they open their throats with a hearty cheer—a three times three- in honour of, it may be supposed, the Protestant succession. They have thoroughly enjoyed the festival of St. Guy; and, when the embers on the fire sink low, go indoors to bed, satisfied, but not satiated, with the fun of the evening. The odd part of this fête is that the celebrants are blind—many of them wholly unconscious of the light of the day, people to whom life is one long Arctic night, unillumined by lamp or heavenly or earthly make. There are others who, although their blindness is unhappily complete enough to prevent them from distinguishing objects, yet they are dimly conscious of sunrise and sunset. The latter enjoy the fireworks keenly, perhaps more keenly than those who see perfectly; but it is difficult to understand the fun of fireworks to the utterly blind. That they produce no effect on some people, is proved by the demeanour of the industrious man, who has retreated out of the noise and bustle into a quiet corner in the dark, and is working away at basket-making as if his life depended upon getting that pretty basket, with the white and red stripes, done this very night. The glare of the bonfire, when the flames shoot up on this side, just reveals the pattern of the work on which he is busied; but he is otherwise so completely in the dark, that ordinary people can barely make out his figure in the corner. He is absorbed in his task. Great wheels spin round unheeded by the basket-maker; maroons thunder out their warning in vain. One perpetually moves his busy fingers among the osier-meshes, woven with strips red or white, selected with unerring accuracy but this one solitary man who cares not for Guy Fawkes or his fête. Alas, poor fellow! He cannot “remember the Fifth of November,”<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> for he has never heard of that or anything else. He is not only blind, but absolutely stone deaf; yet is he a capital basket-maker; and an honest and good-honoured fellow, if you only know how to talk to him by taking one of his hands, and touching it rapidly in various parts, as Miss Quarman is now doing. He is not absolutely dumb, but articulates a few words—a very limited vocabulary—and then goes back to work with a will, ignoring the high jinks going on around him utterly and completely. But the boys who are only blind are as “jolly” as those proverbial youths whose birth or occupation is associated with “sand.”<a title="" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a> Miss Quarman and Mr. Sander have as much as they can do to distribute Roman candles, squibs, and crackers to the numerous applicants, who appear singularly well acquainted with the properties of various kinds of fireworks. It is difficult to realize that these boys are blind. When hurrying towards the window they never miss it, and, what is stranger still, never blunder over one another; and they have the keenest appreciation of the difference between a squib and a cracker. The Roman candle and the Jack-in-the-box are the prime favorites, next comes the cracker, and lastly squibs and golden rain. The triumphs of pyrotechny—set-pieces, wheels, and coloured rockets—are comparatively unheeded, a single maroon being worth a boxful of them. The boys—and, in a quiet way, the girls—of the institution in the Avenue-road, under the care of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read,<a title="" href="#_ftn5">[5]</a> have had a glorious holiday on this Fifth of November. There has been much fun over the dressing of the guy, and carrying him round. It was curious to see those little ones, who has not assisted in the “make up,” approach, one by one, to “look at,” as they call it—in ordinary literal English to “feel”—the guy. These young blind folk, when they touch anything, always “look at” it, and, if they have met and touched persons, say, “I saw him to-day,” in the most offhand and matter-of-course way. On the subject of blindness they are extraordinarily sensitive, and express their dislike to any questioning concerning their infirmity. Blind is, in fact, among the blind, an expression of contempt. As a rule they find their way about with remarkable skill; but should some poor awkward fellow blunder by accident over a chair or up against one of his schoolfellows, the reproof generally takes the form: “You must be blind.” Perhaps the strangest and most interesting time to see any institution for the blind is at dusk. While others are blundering and floundering about, the blind people move hither and thither noiselessly and accurately. An odd effect is felt on entering the printing-office of the school in Avenue-road, late on a winter afternoon. The house is dark, the passage is dark, the office is darker still, but there are the printers, setting up type and pulling proofs with all possible celerity and exactitude. The master printer courteously proposes to light a candle for the sake of visitors, who perhaps “cannot see very well.” […] Some odd stories are told of the basket-makers, who evince a marked preference for very sharp knives, to trim and split their osiers withal, and have a marked objection to being stared at by Philistines—that is, people who can see. At one time they were greatly annoyed, as they were in the act of soaking their osier-twigs in a tank, specially provided for that purpose, to find that there was a stranger among them, an enterprising loafer, who had climbed over the tall fence in order to have a closer view. He repented of his audacity, for the blind youths pounced on him, and ducked him in the tank till he was half-drowned. Many more curious tales are told of the blind, one of which they refuse to believe themselves—viz., the story of the girl whose fingers, having been so hardened by manual labour that she could not learn to write on the Lucasian system, learnt to read with her lips.<a title="" href="#_ftn6">[6]</a> Others they assert to be absolutely correct and trustworthy, especially a wonderful instance of sagacity in a fellow-pupil who, since she left the school—having mastered every accomplishment taught there—has married a blind husband, is an excellent housekeeper, cooks her husband’s dinner, makes and actually “cuts out,” and fits her children’s clothes, washes, starches, and irons her husband’s shirts, and plays piano like an angel. I am a person of facile faith, hating the trouble of doubting things, and therefore believe implicitly in the existence of this accomplished lady; but I feel obliged to mention, after the excellent example set by Herodotus, and followed by Sir John Maundevile, “Verilie I have not see hir.”<a title="" href="#_ftn7">[7]</a> <h2>Notes</h2> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> For more information on Victorian Britain’s sometimes violent celebration of Guy Fawkes day and on attempts to suppress these celebrations, see J.A. Sharpe’s Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day (London: Harvard UP, 2005). <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Founded in the early 18th-century, Brock’s Fireworks, later known as C.T. Brock & Co.’s Crystal Palace Fireworks, was a fireworks manufactory located in the south of London. It was known both for the accidental explosion of its Whitechapel factory in 1825 and for holding successful fireworks displays for the public, known as Brock’s Benefits. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> The phrase is common in popular songs about Guy Fawkes, many of which include the refrain “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, / Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.” <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[4]</a> Sand boys transported and sold sand used for flooring and for other domestic purposes. The reference to jolly sand boys is in part a reference to Charles Dickens’ 1840 novel Old Curiosity Shop which features an inn called “The Jolly Sandboys.” <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[5]</a> The Society for Teaching the Blind to Read was founded in 1838 and was located at 1 Avenue Road, Regent’s Park, London. A Guide to the Institutions and Charities for the Blind in the United Kingdom, published in 1884, explains that the Society’s goal was “to provide instruction for the Blind in ordinary branches of Education, with music, in a resident school; also to teach them trades” (31). At the time the Guide was published, the Society had 26 females and 30 male student boarders. In “The Blind of London,” an essay published in The Times in 1860, Edmund Johnson noted that the primary object of the Society was “to teach the blind to read, with an especial view to their eventually reading the Holy Scriptures” (16). He goes on to explain that no student, no matter how eager he or she might be to “acquire knowledge of an art of a more material advantage” is permitted to “learn any of the additional branches of instruction until he or she can read tolerably well in one of the Gospels, an acquirement generally made within three months of his or her admission.” (16). The Guide to the Institutions and Charities for the Blind in the United Kingdom notes that female students were taught to knit, while male students learnt how to print books in the Lucas embossed script. Boys also learnt chair caning and basket making. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[6]</a> The “Lucasian” system referred to here is one of many raised-print script systems developed and used in the course of the nineteenth-century to print text to be finger read by blind readers. It takes its name from its inventor, Thomas Lucas. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[7]</a> The author uses references to <a title="Wikipedia Entry on Herodotus" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus" target="_blank">Herodotus</a>, the famously cautious ancient Greek historian, and to <a title="John Mandeville Wikipedia Entry" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mandeville" target="_blank">John Maundeville</a>, the 14th-century world traveler, who is believed to be as mythical as the ‘facts’ about foreign places attributed to him, to express skepticism about the housekeeping and parenting abilities of a visually disabled woman. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Blind Guy Fawkes Description An account of the resource “Blind Guy Fawkes” is noteworthy for how it both participates in and diverges from a representational pattern. The introduction into Britain of raised-print books in the first decades of the nineteenth century and the proliferation of finger reading skills that followed resulted in both the founding of new schools and charities dedicated to the education of blind people and extensive press coverage of the accomplishments of this newly literate group. This article, which was published anonymously in Charles Dickens’ weekly family magazine All The Year Round, describes an evening visit to the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read, a boarding school for young people with visual disabilities founded in 1839. While its author describes both the academic and vocational training provided by the Society, he or she chooses to open with and focus on the students’ rowdy celebration of Guy Fawkes’ day. Portraying a group of blind students as playful, pleasure-seeking, and energetic, the article’s author eschews the highlighting of difference, common in articles of this kind, in favor of an emphasis on experiences, aptitudes and interests that this group of blind children hold in common with sighted children. While many articles on the education of people with visual disabilities published in the period portray blind students as industrious, serious, devout and suffering, this article offers a more nuanced portrait, in large part by withholding information about the disabilities of the children being described. Information about the location of this celebration and the children’s visual disabilities is withheld for several paragraphs. It is only after describing the rowdy behavior of the children and their agility and pleasure that the author identifies them as having visual disabilities. While the article opens with an expression of pity, “Poor Guy!,” the pity expressed is for the effigy of Guy Fawkes and not for the children, who mark the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ treason in the same spirit and in the same way as sighted children: by preparing a Guy for burning and by setting off fireworks. The result is a progressive, straightforward and positive portrait of blind children and of the everydayness of their lives. This is not to suggest that this article avoids all of the pitfalls common to the Victorian press’ handling of the experience of visual disability. The author describes visually disabled people as “people to whom life is one long Arctic night, unillumined by lamp of heavenly or earthly make,” a poetic lament of a kind common to reporting on disability. Similarly, the author’s discussion of blind people’s use of the word “see” to describe experiences of perception has a regrettable ethnographic feel. While the reporter is eager to share an anecdote that demonstrates the capabilities of a group of blind boys (a story about how they detect and punish an unwelcome sighted boy who spies on them by dunking him in a trough), he or she doubts a story that the students share about the existence of a highly successful blind housewife. While the author focuses on the experiences of students with visual disabilities, the article also caters to public fascination with the experiences of people with multiple sensory disabilities, fascination well documented by the century’s extensive press coverage of the education and lives of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller. In this article, the author portrays a blind and deaf basket maker as a skilled and diligent workman but dwells on his isolation from fellow students and on his exclusion from the night’s celebrations. This representation of a blind and deaf person links the article to a section from American Notes (1842) in which Charles Dickens described his visit to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, both celebrating the accomplishments of the rapidly developing field of blind education and lamenting the presumed suffering and isolation of Laura Bridgman, the school’s star pupil. While both “Blind Guy Fawkes” and Dickens’ American Notes expressed and catered to public interest in the education of people with disabilities, they differ in their portrayal of blind children. “Blind Guy Fawkes,” with its lively descriptions of bold and boisterous children, is a reminder to modern readers that press reports on educational institutions for people with disabilities are far from homogenous in their approach to their shared subject matter. They document different facets of the lives of people with disabilities and, in doing so, they communicate different ideas about disability. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anonymous Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived “Blind Guy Fawkes.” All the Year Round (November 25, 1876): 255-258. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 25 November 1876 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Vanessa Warne Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A coloured lithograph shows the School of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read from the road, as passerbys hurry past. The school is a stately brick building surrounded by foliage. Coloured lithograph by E. T. Dolby, n.d., after H. E. Kendall, 1838. Courtesy of the <a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Wellcome Library, London</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Wellcome Library Catalogue" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1196471" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 38645i</a>). Relation A related resource <ul><li>Bourrier, Karen. “Reading Laura Bridgman: Literacy and Disability in Dickens’s American Notes.” Dickens Studies Annual 40 (Summer 2009): 37-60.</li> <li>Drew, John and Tony Williams. <a title="Dickens Journal Online" href="http://www.djo.org.uk/" target="_blank">Dickens Journal Online</a>. University of Buckingham. <http://www.djo.org.uk/> [Contains digitized versions of Household Words and All the Year Round.]</li> <li>Gitter, Elisabeth. The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl. New York: Farrar, 2001.</li> <li>Johnson, Edmund C. The Blind of London. London: John Mitchell, 1860.</li> <li>Oliphant, John. Early Education of the Blind in Britain, ca. 1790-1900: Institutional Experience in England and Scotland. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2007.</li> <li>Turner, Mansfield and William Harris. A Guide to the Institutions and Charities for the Blind in the United Kingdom. London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1884.</li> <li>Warne, Vanessa. “‘So that the sense of touch may supply the want of sight’: Blind Reading in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Media, Technology, and Literature in the Nineteenth Century: Image, Sound, Touch. Colette Colligan and Margaret Linley eds. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011. 43-64.</li> </ul> Language A language of the resource English All the Year Round Blindness Charles Dickens Institutions Journalism life writing https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/b8adb47826a9c84dcd49d446641781df.png 7a9c61fe960cf7039aaee49f26e01bc1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1880 to 1901 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Tom was born blind, and, learning nothing from sight, manifested in his early infancy so entire a want of intellect as to induce the belief that he was idiotic as well as blind. His imbecility and helplessness secured for him the sympathy and care of the family in his infancy; when he began to walk and run about the yard, his amusing peculiarities made him a pet. His first manifestation of interest in anything was his fondness for sounds; the first indication of capacity, his power of imitating them. Musical sounds exerted a controlling influence over him; but all sounds, from the soft breathings of the flute to the harsh grating of the corn-sheller, appeared to afford him exquisite enjoyment […] The first effort to teach him was made one evening when the family was at supper, (Tom, as usual at meals times, being present,) when his owner, upon being informed that his mother, as an excuse for not teaching him something, had said he had not sense enough to learn anything, replied, “That is a mistake. A horse or a dog may be taught almost anything, provided you always use precisely the same terms to express the same idea. Show him what you mean, and have the patience to repeat it often enough. Tom has as much sense as a horse or a dog, and I will show you that he can be taught.” He thereupon arose from the table, and approaching Tom, said to him, “Tom, sit down,” Tom, of course as was expected stood still and repeated the words. He repeated the order and sat him upon the floor. He then said to him, “Tom, get up.” Tom sat still and repeated the order. He then repeated the order and lifted Tom to his feet. He then ordered Tom to sit down, which he did promptly—to get up, and he sprang to his feet […] He was perfectly delighted by cries of pain. When his mother whipped any of the older children he would laugh and caper, and rub his hands in an ecstasy of enjoyment, and soon would be found whipping himself, and repeating the words of the mother and the cries of the child. He enjoyed so highly the crying of children that he would inflict pain upon them, for the pleasure of hearing them cry; and a constant watch had to be kept on him when he was about younger children. He once choked a younger brother nearly to death, and at another time burnt an infant sister so badly as to produce fears of a fatal result. To this day any exclamation or expression indicative of pain gives him great pleasure; and though he will express sympathy for the suffered, and prescribe remedies for his relief, he cannot restrain his expressions of pleasure. Doubtless it is the strength and the intensity of expression given to sounds produced by pain, that afford the enjoyment. […] When he was three or four years of age, it was observed that he passed most of his time with his face upturned to the sun, as if gazing intently upon it, occasionally passing his hands back and forth with rapid motion before his eyes; that was soon followed by thrusting his fingers into his eyes with a force which appeared to be almost sufficient to expel the eye-balls from their sockets; from this he proceeded to digging into one of them with sticks, until the blood would run down his face. All this must have been pleasant to him, or he would not have done it; and there is no doubt that he is indebted to the stimulus thus applied to his eyes, for the measure of sight he now enjoys. […] The mere technicalities of music Tom learns without difficulty. Its substance he seems to comprehend intuitively. To teach him the notes, it was necessary only to sound them, and tell him their names. With the elements and principles of music he seems to be familiar, long before he knew any on the names by which they were indicated […] Considering that in early life he learned nothing, and later but little from sight, that he is possessed by an overmastering passion, which so pervades his whole nature as to leave little room for interest in anything else, and the gratification of which has been indulged to the largest extent, it is not surprising that, to the outside world, he should exhibit but few manifestations of intellect as applicable to any of the ordinary affairs of life, or that those who see him only under its influence should conclude that his is idiotic. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Thomas Greene Wiggins, better known as “Blind Tom,” was an autistic savant with an encyclopedic memory. He is known for his mind-boggling ability to replicate music and other sounds after only one hearing. Wiggins was born into slavery in Columbus, Georgia in 1848. His master, Wiley Jones, was reluctant to care for a blind infant slave and sold Wiggins to his neighbor, General Bethune. By six Wiggins had found the Bethune piano and managed to replay exactly songs performed by his white master’s family. By eight Wiggins was contracted to a traveling showman named Perry Oliver who promoted him as a “freak.” With Oliver he performed all over the United States and Europe. His extraordinary talent for imitation, music and memory earned him an invitation to play before President James Buchanan at the White House. He was the first African American musician to officially perform in the White House. Unfortunately, emancipation failed to deliver Wiggins from the shackles of slavery. His enormous fame sullied by the deep-rooted racism of the period. Audiences often confused Wiggins’s autism with “idiocy,” and reinforced the widespread belief that people of African descent were mentally inferior to whites and incapable of caring for themselves. Through “Blind Tom” we learn just how easily misinformation about autism allowed antebellum Americans to continue to conflate race with disability. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Marvelous Musical Prodigy, Blind Tom: The Negro Boy Pianist, Whose Performances at the Great St. James and Egyptian Halls, London, and Salle Hertz, Paris, Have Created Such a Profound Sensation : Anecdotes, Songs, Sketches of the Life, Testimonials of Musicians and Savans, and Opinions of the American and English Press, of "Blind Tom." Sun Book and Job Printing Establishment, 1867. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1867 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource George Gordon-Smith Relation A related resource <ul><li> Davis, Rebecca Harding. “Blind Tom,” Selected Writing From the Borderlands: Stories of the Civil War Era. Eds. Sharon M. Harris and Robin Cadwallader. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 2010 </li> </ul><ul><li> O’Connell, Dierdre. The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist: America’s Last Musical Genius. New York: The Overlook Press, 2009. </li> <li> Southall, Geneva Handy. Blind Tom, Black Pianist-Composer, Continually Enslaved. London: Scarecrow Press, 2002. </li> </ul> Title A name given to the resource Blind Tom Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Head and shoulders photograph of Blind Tom by John J. Bethune, 1880. Image courtesy <a title="Blind Tom Wikimedia Commons" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blind_Tom_Wiggins.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a> under a Creative Commons License. Blindness Celebrity Cognition https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/ff3ff4b6d69ad75c393097ccbd3e94cb.jpg 0db76012c44426486226dec3a696c6ec Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 337 Height 549 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource This black and white photograph shows <a title="Wikipedia for Elizabeth Gilbert" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Margaretta_Maria_Gilbert" target="_blank">Elizabeth Gilbert</a> wearing a cape and shaded glasses.  From the Frontispiece of the book Elizabeth Gilbert and her Work for the Blind, Frances Martin, 1887 [available at <a href="http://archive.org/details/cu31924031232493">http://archive.org/details/cu31924031232493</a>]  Elizabeth Gilbert, the founder of the Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind, lost her sight in early childhood as a result of scarlet fever. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1860 to 1880 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. I was walking along a rather lonely road, humming a tune to myself – a most indefensible habit, which I only name as it accounted for my being suddenly stopped by a civil voice – “Ma’am, if you please” I turned, and now first noticed a young man who had just passed me by, stepping out quickly and decisively, with a stick in his hand and a bundle on his shoulder. “Ma’am, if you please, would you direct me to …?” naming a gentleman’s house close by, which I was proceeding to point out to him, when I perceived he had no eyes. It was a well-featured and highly intelligent countenance, with that peculiarly peaceful expression that one often sees on the faces of the blind; but of his calamity there could be no doubt: the eyes, as I said, were gone: the eyelids closed tightly over nothing.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> Yet his step was firm, and his general appearance so active and bright, that a careless passenger would scarcely have detected that he was blind. Of course I went back with him to the door he named – in spite of his polite protestations that there was not the least necessity – “he could find it easily” – how, Heaven knows: also, I had the curiosity to lies in wait a few minutes, until I watched him come cheerily out, shoulder his big bundle, plant his stick on the ground and walk briskly back – whistling a lively tune, and marching as fast and fearlessly as though he saw every step of the road. “Have you done your business?” My friend started, but immediately recognised the voice. “Oh yes thank you, Ma’am. I’m all right. Very much obliged. Good Morning.” He recommenced his stopped tune, and pursued his way with such determined independence, that I felt as if more notice of him would be taking an unwarrantable liberty with his misfortune. But his cheerful face quite haunted me, and I speculated for a long time what ‘business’ he could be about, and how he dared trust himself alone, in the great wilderness of London and its environs, with no guide except his stick. At last I remembered he might be one of the ‘travellers’ belonging to an institution I had heard of (and the foundress of which, by coincidence, I was going that day to meet) – the ‘Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind.’<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> <h2>Notes</h2> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Sealing the eyelids over the sockets suggests this man may have lost his eyesight as a result of an ophthalmic infection which caused the eyeballs to rupture. See Mary Wilson Carpenter, Health, Medicine and Society in Victorian England (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2010): 128-148 for further information on blindness. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> The Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind continues today under the name ‘Clarity’. A video clip, made by Clarity, to celebrate the 200-year anniversary of Charles Dickens is available at <a href="http://www.claritymatters.org/blog/charles-dickens-and-clarity/">www.claritymatters.org/blog/charles-dickens-and-clarity/</a>. Here Clarity staff members discuss Dickens’ essay and the degree to which things have changed or remained the same since the nineteenth century. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Blind! Description An account of the resource When Dinah Mulock Craik, the author of John Halifax, Gentleman and The Little Lame Prince, wrote her essay, ‘Blind’, about the Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind, in 1861, she was engaging in an active discussion about the education of the visually impaired in the mid-nineteenth-century. Charles Dickens had written an essay in 1859 entitled ‘At Work in the Dark’ and Craik’s friend and flatmate, Francis Martin, published another in 1864 for Cornhill Magazine entitled ‘Blind Workers and Blind Helpers’. Each essay promotes the valuable work of the association, in providing education and retraining for the visually impaired, and explains how readers can help and support the association, and by extension the people who work there, through the purchase of brushes, baskets and mats etc made by the pupils and workers at the association. In the following extract, which opens Craik’s essay, we are told of a chance encounter between a sighted person (Craik) and a young visually impaired man. Craik portrays the man as being at ease and confident in his movement and remarks on his firm step and active appearance, walking as if he ‘saw every step of the road’. Whilst Craik presents a more personal encounter with the man than Dickens does in his essay, nineteenth-century attitudes to blindness are evident. Craik expresses surprise at the man’s ability to walk through the city independently, a common view as it was widely believed that the blind were incapable of living productive lives and were often treated as children in need of protection. Craik’s insistence that she accompany the man to the door, despite his protestations, reveals how the sighted struggled to understand how the blind could manage without their help. The extract also highlights the way in which the blind were seen as a curiosity or spectacle by the sighted as Craik lies in wait, virtually spying on the man, in order to observe how he found his way without assistance. In addition to this we can see how blindness was considered to be a tragedy or ‘misfortune’ as the face of the young man continued to ‘haunt’ Craik long after their meeting has ended. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dinah Craik   Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Dinah Mulock Craik, The Unkind Word and Other Stories, Volume II (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1870): 1-12.  Available at: <a href="http://archive.org/stream/unkindwordothers02crai#page/n7/mode/2up">http://archive.org/stream/unkindwordothers02crai#page/n7/mode/2up</a>  Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1861 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Theresa Miller Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This black and white photograph shows <a title="Wikipedia for Elizabeth Gilbert" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Margaretta_Maria_Gilbert" target="_blank">Elizabeth Gilbert</a> wearing a cape and shaded glasses.  From the Frontispiece of the book Elizabeth Gilbert and her Work for the Blind, Frances Martin, 1887 [available at <a href="http://archive.org/details/cu31924031232493">http://archive.org/details/cu31924031232493</a>]  Elizabeth Gilbert, the founder of the Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind, lost her sight in early childhood as a result of scarlet fever. Relation A related resource <ul> <li>Carpenter, Mary Wilson. Health, Medicine and Society in Victorian England. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2010. </li> <li>Frances Martin, Elizabeth Gilbert and her Work for the Blind, 1887. Available at: <a href="http://archive.org/details/cu31924031232493">http://archive.org/details/cu31924031232493</a></li> <li>Stoddard Holmes, Martha.  Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009 [2004].</li> </ul> Language A language of the resource English Blindness Dinah Mulock Craik Institutions Journalism life writing https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/71af39c7eaade68d3cb6a52f4078158b.jpg a6f335910de598c2e2360988ce543a57 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 353 Height 515 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:L0040536 \'Comfort for Invalids\' advice page headline:L0040536 \'Comfort for Invalids\' advice page caption:L0040536 \'Comfort for Invalids\' advice page Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Advice on comfort for invalides from The Lancet March 22nd, 1856. Shows various beds, chairs and wheelchairs to make a invalid\'s life easier and more comfortable. 1856 Ephemera Collection By her majesty\'s letters patent : J. Alderman Published: 1856. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:45:"L0040536 \'Comfort for Invalids\' advice page";s:8:"headline";s:45:"L0040536 \'Comfort for Invalids\' advice page";s:7:"caption";s:524:"L0040536 \'Comfort for Invalids\' advice page Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Advice on comfort for invalides from The Lancet March 22nd, 1856. Shows various beds, chairs and wheelchairs to make a invalid\'s life easier and more comfortable. 1856 Ephemera Collection By her majesty\'s letters patent : J. Alderman Published: 1856. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In 12 sketches, this advertisement showcases how the invalid chair can be reclined in various poses, used in the bedroom, outdoors, and even up staircases. "Comfort for Invalids" from the Lancet General Advertiser. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. [Text of Advertisement] The Lancet,]  THE LANCET CENTRAL ADVERTISER.  [March 22, 1856. By Her Majesty’s Letters Patent Comfort for Invalids 8 Denmark St. Soho London. J. ALDERMAN, Nephew and Successor to Mr. CHAPMAN, begs most respectfully to inform his Friends and the Medical Profession, that after many years’ experience in the manufacture of all kinds of Invalid Beds, Couches, Chairs, Carriages, &c., and more especially the well-known Earle’s Fracture Bed,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> he has obtained Her Majesty’s Letters Patent<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> for his imperceptibly Graduating, Mechanical, and Elastic Adjustments, which he has invented for the comfort and convenience of Invalids; he has also made them applicable to all kinds of Operating Couches and Chairs, for surgical and dental purposes.  Earle’s Bed, a few years ago, was used principally for Fractures, it being too hard, and its movements too coarse, for general use; but by carefully studying the properties of this Bed, or Couch, the Patentee saw hat by proper mechanical and elastic adjustments it might be made the most perfect, useful, and elaborate piece of Furniture extant.  To accomplish this would be a work of time and expense, and could only be attained by being constantly working for Invalids, and making careful experiments to alleviate the sufferings of various patients, so as to render the Bed or Couch suitable for every case. The Pantentee is now happy to say, that after many years’ experience in trying every mechanical action and elastic adjustment that could be thought of, to alleviate the sufferings by every possible change of position, and that imperceptibly to the patient, at the same time avoiding all pressure by his elastic adjusting foundation and mattress, to prevent bed-sores, so as to supersede the use of water, he has at length succeeded in making his mechanical and elastic adjustments so simple and perfect as to be able to apply them to all sorts of Invalid Furniture.  Earle’s Bed, or Couch, can now be safely said to be the most perfect, useful, and elaborate piece of furniture in use, and will be found the greatest boon to all those who are suffering from Spinal Affections [sic], Hip Complaints, Paralysis, Fractures, and in all cases where perfect rest is required.  Ladies, who require complete rest before and after their Confinements, will find this Couch a great luxury.  The Illustrations—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7—will show the various ways and positions in which this Couch can be fitted-up and used. These Beds, or Couches, are also fitted-up for Hospital use, and with every necessary arrangement to prevent the patient being removed.  The Patentee would particularly recommend them for the use of our Military Hospitals,<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> where they would be found of the greatest comfort and convenience, both to the surgeon and patient. Nos. 6, 6, 6, is an illustration of J. Alderman’s Patent Portable Equilibrium Carrying Chair, by which a patient can be carried up- or down-stairs with perfect ease and safety, the Chair always adjusting itself, which enables the two persons who carry to walk up- or down-stairs in the usual way and quite erect, with their arms down, so as to avoid any strain upon the muscles; it has also a shifting stand upon very easy Castors, so that it can be used as an easy Chair to prevent the patient being disturbed. Nos. 8, 8, is the Patent self-adjusting Invalid Chair, which is adjusted by Graduating Imperceptible Mechanism.  This Chair, like the Couch, has been a work of time, the Patentee having followed Nature in every part of it: for instance, when the back is depressed, the arms, the seat, and the leg-rest all work together imperceptibly, so that not a muscle of the patient is disturbed.  In order that the patient may get on and off from either side while the leg-rest is up, either of the arms can be taken off. No. 9 is a self-propelling Chair, which renders a patient quite independent, being able to go from room to room without any assistance. No. 10 is a four-wheeled Brighton chair, suitable for either hand or Pony. No. 11 and 12 are three-wheeled Garden or Bath Chairs, with and without a hood. No. 12 is J. Alderman’s Improved Spinal or Sofa Carriage, mounted upon C and under-springs; also the patent noiseless wheels, if required.  The couch being made to slide on and off the carriage, and having a stand upon easy castors for the room, prevents the necessity for the patient’s removal from the couch. J.A. begs to state that, in order to bring these general comforts within the reach of all those who do not wish to purchase, he intends Lending them on Hire, and where the hirer wishes to become a purchaser within the third month, the hire will be deducted. N.B. Inclined Planes, Prone Couches, Bed Chairs, and every other article required by Invalids. <h3> Notes</h3> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> London surgeon <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Earle">Henry Earle</a> (1789–1838) invented this bed for leg fractures. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_patent">letters patent</a> is an open document from a monarch (in this case Queen Victoria) or a government issuing a patent or right. <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> Military Hospitals:  Alderman is trying to appeal to the great number of disabled soldiers who were coming out of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War">Crimean war</a>, which was in full force when this advertisement was published on 22 March 1856. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Comfort for Invalids Description An account of the resource In this advertisement for a variety of what we would now call “wheelchairs” or “lounge chairs,” J. Alderman offers “comfort for invalids” in his newly patented “Imperceptibly Graduating, Mechanical, and Elastic Adjustments” available in a variety of couches and chairs. Credit for the “first wheelchair” most often goes to John Dawson of Bath, a town that attracted many invalids seeking its healing waters in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Around 1798, Dawson called himself a “Wheel-chair maker” and hired out his chairs to the invalids who flocked to the spa town. These "Bath Chairs" typically had two large wheels in the back and a smaller wheel on the front; they were pushed by an attendant, but directed by the passenger by means of a rod attached to the front wheel. Yet, as Herman L. Kamenetz points out, there was a long global history of carrying invalids in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_(vehicle)">litters</a>, pushing them in wheelbarrows, or later, carrying them in sedan chairs.  (Sedan chairs were also used by the upper classes.) Furthermore, wheeled chairs certainly existed before the late eighteenth century.  Louis XIV, for example, was one of many historical figures who had a wheeled chair (his was known as the roulette) to accommodate immobilizing health issues such as gout.  It would thus be oversimplifying to give the credit of “inventing” the wheelchair to Dawson alone. Yet, as Alderman’s advertisement demonstrates, there was certainly a thriving industry catering to the many self-professed invalids of the nineteenth century (who included figures such as Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Barrett Browning). Alderman’s couches and chairs are above all a product, to be sold or hired to some of the same invalids who spent winters in <a title="San Remo" href="http://www.nineteenthcenturydisability.org/items/show/13" target="_self">San Remo</a> due to diseases of the chest, or who sought cures at expensive hydrotherapy establishments such as <a title="Ben Rhydding" href="http://www.nineteenthcenturydisability.org/items/show/1" target="_self">Ben Rhydding</a>. One important difference between the chairs and couches that Alderman advertises and the contemporary wheelchair is that most of Alderman’s products are either stationary, reclining chairs, or would require an attendant to push them. No. 9 alone is self-propelling.  By contrast, contemporary wheelchairs are assumed to be self-propelling using either a motor or the user’s two arms. Alderman’s products thus highlight interdependence rather than independence, and the places to be found for invalids within the home.  Another possible reading of Alderman’s many stationary chairs is that comfortable reclining chairs were no longer the province of invalids alone by the twentieth century; indeed, one can still buy “Earl” or “Earle” lounge chairs or chaises today, whose name may well come from Alderman’s patent.   Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alderman, J. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived "Comfort for Invalids." The Lancet (22 March 1856): 330. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 22 March 1856 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In 12 sketches, this advertisement showcases how the invalid chair can be reclined in various poses, used in the bedroom, outdoors, and even up staircases. "Comfort for Invalids" from the Lancet General Advertiser.  Courtesy of the <a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine</a> under a Creative Commons License (Call no <a title="Wellcome Library Catalogue " href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1658436" target="_blank"> EPH448:7</a>). Relation A related resource <ul> <li>Kamenetz, Herman L. “A Brief History of the Wheelchair.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 24.2 (1969): 205-210. </li> <li>Frawley, Maria. Invalidism and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.</li> <li>“<a title="wheelchair wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelchair" target="_blank">Wheelchair</a>” and “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_(vehicle)" target="_blank">Litter</a>” on Wikipedia.org.</li> </ul> Language A language of the resource English Advertisement Invalidism Medicine Mobility Technology Visual Culture