History
It was founded in 1834 by Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Ebury to visit and aid the blind poor in their own homes, to provide them with religious instruction and Bibles, and to conduct them to church services (Gordon Phillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity, State and Community, c. 1780–1930, 2004)
Lord Shaftesbury chaired the annual meetings in the early years, when the Society was flourishing financially (The Times, 17 May 1839)
It provided education and assistance in reading (using Frere type and other printing systems) to the blind, and increasingly distributed money to the blind poor (Gordon Phillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity, State and Community, c. 1780–1930, 2004)
In 1841 its Secretaries were Charles Harman, based at the Society’s office at 20 Red Lion Square, and John S. Clark of 15 Doughty Street (The Times, 13 February 1841)
Charles Ambrose Harman died aged 37 in 1847 (The Times, 14 December 1847) and William Colmer later became Secretary at the new address, 27 Red Lion Square (The Times, 27 December 1867)
William Colmer was himself blind (The Times, 7 September 1868)
The Society visited 200 people and gave £212 in aid in 1866; by 1885, this had increased to 875 people visited and £2720 in aid (Gordon Phillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity, State and Community, c. 1780–1930, 2004)
In 1879 its former printer, James Colmer (also called Joseph Colmer in The Times), was prosecuted for libel by the Society; he had alleged malaversion of funds
He had also set up his own rival society, the Blind Poor Relief Society, of 48 Hunter Street and 253 Gray’s Inn Road, both in Bloomsbury (The Times, 18 August 1879)
His co-accused was his brother, William Colmer, whom The Times understandably confused with the Indigent Blind Visiting Society’s secretary, William Colmer; the Society’s Chairman, Dr Thomas Rhodes Armitage, wrote in to correct them on 25 October (The Times, 27 October 1879)
Dr Armitage was a physician who had been forced to retire due to blindness, and who instead threw his energies into the Society and other blind charities until he died in his sixties following a fall from his horse (The Times obituary, 27 October 1890; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
The Secretary in the 1880s was W. C. Lester, the office being still at 27 Red Lion Square, and there were then about a thousand recipients of the Society’s charity (The Times, 23 November 1880, 6 November 1888)
The Society celebrated its centenary in 1934 (The Times, 15 June 1934) and, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Society for the Blind, opened the Armitage Residential and Recuperative Home at Worthing in the 1950s (The Times, 13 June 1950), but it no longer exists
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What was reforming about it?
It was the first society in the country established for the home visiting of the blind (Gordon Phillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity, State and Community, c. 1780–1930, 2004)
It was also interested in teaching the blind to read
It was the only charity for the blind which condoned begging, at least tacitly, and which was willing to compromise its religious principles in order to help the objects of its charity (Gordon Phillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity, State and Community, c. 1780–1930, 2004)
Where in Bloomsbury
In the 1840s its office was at 20 Red Lion Square; this later changed to 27 Red Lion Square, where the office remained until at least the 1880s (The Times, 27 December 1867; 6 November 1888)
The Society’s tenth anniversary meeting was held at the Music Hall in Store Street (The Times, 16 May 1844)
The Society also opened three free libraries in 1884, one of them at 8 Red Lion Square (W. H. Illingworth, History of the Education of the Blind, 1910)
By 1917 it had moved its headquarters to 8 Red Lion Square (Herbert Fry, Guide to the London Charities, 1917)
Website of current institution
It no longer exists
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Books about it
Mildred Hope Edwards, ‘A History of the Indigent Blind Visiting Society, 1834–1960’ (unpublished; typescript in Metropolitan Blind Association)
There is a short account of the Society in Henry Wagg’s Chronological Survey of Work for the Blind (1932) and W. H. Illingworth’s History of the Education of the Blind (1910), both available online via the RNIB website (opens in new window)
It is also discussed in Gordon Phillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity, State and Community, c. 1780–1930 (2004)
Archives
There are records of the twentieth-century Armitage Home, Worthing, in London Metropolitan Archives, ref. A/KE/724/4; details are available via Access to Archives (opens in new window); no nineteenth-century records have been found
The Society also published Annual Reports, but copies are rare
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