Thomas “Tom” Braidwood (1715–1806) was a Scottish educator, significant in the history ofdeaf education. He was the founder of Britain's first school for the deaf.[1]
The fourth child of Thomas Braidwood and Agnes Meek, Braidwood was born in 1715 at Hillhead Farm, Covington,South Lanarkshire, Scotland.[2]
Braidwood originally established himself as a writing teacher, instructing the children of the wealthy at his home in theCanongate inEdinburgh.
In 1760, he accepted his first deaf pupil,Charles Shirreff (1749–1829), who later became known as a painter ofportrait miniatures. Shirreff, then ten years old, was the son of Alexander Shirreff, a wealthy wine merchant based at the port ofLeith, who convinced Braidwood to undertake to teach thedeaf-mute child to write.
Braidwood changed his vocation from teaching hearing pupils to teaching the deaf, and renamed his buildingBraidwood's Academy for the Deaf and Dumb, the first school of its kind in Britain. Braidwood developed a combined system for educating deaf students, which included a form ofsign language and the study ofarticulation andlip reading.[3]: 151 This early use of sign language was the forerunner ofBritish Sign Language, recognized as a language in its own right in 2003.
In October 1773, Dr.Samuel Johnson visited the school while traveling through Scotland, and wrote:[4]
There is one subject of philosophical curiosity in Edinburgh which no other city has to show; a College for the Deaf and Dumb, who are taught to speak, to read and to write, and to practise arithmetic, by a gentleman whose name is Braidwood. It was pleasing to see one of the most desperate of human calamities capable of so much help: whatever enlarges hope will exalt courage. After having seen the deaf taught arithmetic, who would be afraid to cultivate the Hebrides.
In 1783 Thomas Braidwood moved with his family toHackney in what is now theEast End of London, but then was a rural village with easy connections to the capital.[3]: 150 [4] There he established the Braidwood Academy for the Deaf and Dumb in Grove House, offMare Street. A block of flats now stands where the Academy once was, adorned with a plaque describing its existence.[5] Hackney in the 18th century was known for its experimental educational establishments such as theDissenting Academies.
Joseph Watson, a nephew of Braidwood, began working with him in 1784. In 1792, Dr. Watson went on to become the first head teacher of theAsylum for the Deaf and Dumb, which was established on Old Kent Road inBermondsey.[3]: 109–110 Watson's pupils included England's first deaf barrister, John William Lowe.
Braidwood died in 1806, in the parish ofHackney.
In addition to the painterCharles Shirreff, Braidwood's pupils included:
Braidwood married Margaret Pearson on 1 October 1752. The couple had three daughters, all born in Edinburgh: Margaret, born 4 September 1755; Elizabeth born 1757; and Isabella, born 27 January 1758.
All three daughters followed Braidwood in becoming teachers of the deaf, and Isabella continued the running of the school after Braidwood's death in 1806. Little is known about Margaret, and there is no mention or record of her having moved south of the Scottish border with her family in 1783. Elizabeth married early to a Durham surgeon and went to live in his city.
A grandson, John Braidwood, began tutoring deaf students in Virginia in 1812, and ran the short-livedCobbs School for the deaf from its founding in 1815 until its demise in the fall of 1816.[7]
Braidwood was a distant cousin ofThomas Braidwood Wilson (1792–1843), after whom the Australian town ofBraidwood, New South Wales is named.
On 6 September 2017Google celebrated the British Sign Language and the Braidwood Academy with aGoogle Doodle.[8]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: "Braidwood, Thomas".Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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