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Transcribing Sounds
by Michael Madesker, RDP, FRPSC
BRAILLE ALPHABET: EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES (part I of III)
A July 28, 1853 folded letter from Rockaway,
L.I., N.Y., paying the 3c rate with an orange/
brown imperforate Washington stamp of the 1851-
56 definitive series is illustrated below. It was
postmarked at Jamaica, N.Y. on July 29. The letter
was written by John King of Rockaway and
addressed to Theodore D. Camp, Superintendent
of the Manufacturing Department of the New
York Institution for the Blind. This school’s Board
of Managers considered it as their mandate to prepare
its pupils to lead an independent life through
teaching them trades in addition to scholastic
subjects appropriate to their age. The school was
tuition free.
The New York Institution for the Blind was
incorporated in 1831 as a learning establishment.
Its first classes commenced on March 15, 1832 with
three pupils. The school’s curriculum was identical
to that of sighted children with the
addition of learning communication skills,
verbal and environmental. Older children
were also taught daily living skills, much
like those in residential schools for the
general population. An innovation, added
later, was preparing the young pupils for
independent living and some skills needed
to earn a living. This grew into a manufacturing
division which included a mattress
production and repair shop. The above
letter was an order for a specialty mattress
for an obviously tall person. The dimensions
of the mattress are given as 6'3" long,
4'7" wide. It had to have the best white
hair and a palliasse straw mattress, for an
underbed. Palliasse is derived from the Italian
word paglia, straw.
The sponsors of the New York Institution for
the Blind in 1870 directed the Board of Managers
to scale down the Manufacturing Department in
favour of greater scholastic training. This was followed
by a court order, 20 years later, in 1896 to
bring the school under the State Board of Charities
based on the fact that neither the pupils nor their
parents or guardians paid towards the upkeep of
the children. The Board of Managers, headed by
Superintendent William Bell Wait, took exception
to their children being castigated paupers and filed
an appeal. The lower courts reversed the decision
and in 1897 the case was heard in the High Court.
This Court decided that the school, though educational
in character, was indeed dependant on the
charity of the State. The Solomonic decision of the
Court was that the Institution would henceforth
come under the aegis of the State Department of
Education with the State Department of Social
Welfare limiting its activities there to providing
physical care.
In 1912 the Board of Regents of the University
of the State of New York, on petition by the
Board of Managers, changed the school’s name to
The New York Institute for the Education of the
Blind. The chief executive’s title was changed from
Superintendent to Principal, in keeping with the
school’s new status.
The mattress production and repair shop, its
main enterprise, was closed in 1916, thus effectively
eliminating the industrial division of the
school.
JF06 • the CP / le PC • 39