Home teachers

When Reverend John Punnett proposed to establish a society for the welfare of the blind, he suggested a travelling agency might be preferable to establishing an institution. With William Baker happy to visit blind people in their homes, the committee turned their attention to gaining subscriptions in order to employ Mr Baker on a permanent basis and assist the education of the blind in Cornwall.

By the early 1870s, 369 people were known to be blind in the county and of those, 150 had been taught to read through the Society. The workload become too much for one teacher alone so two teachers were employed.

Tea for the blind

The home teachers would stay in each district for four to six weeks at a time. It became customary to hold an event at the end of their stay where tea was provided and some of the pupils would showcase what they had learned.

The idea of tea for the blind was started in Penzance in the 1860s by the Bolitho family and was taken up in the other districts. In Falmouth it was continued with prominence by Anna Maria Fox and in St Austell by the Coode family, becoming an annual event right up until the 1930s.

On the road

In 1927, the Cornwall County Association for the Blind (as the charity was now known), appointed its first sighted home teacher, Miss Barker. Thanks to a Ministry of Health scheme approved during the same year called the Unification of Voluntary Collections, the charity saw an increase in donations . This allowed them to fund a home teacher with a car, which meant that Miss Barker could reach ‘outlying places’ in Cornwall.

Cornwall Council

In 1965 the Association employed six home teachers. By now Cornwall was the only association in the Western Region and possibly the only one in the whole country which still paid the salaries and expenses of its home teachers. In other counties the teachers were employed by the local council and it was clear that the finances of the Association would be a great deal healthier if Cornwall was brought into line with the other counties.

So from 1 April 1966, Cornwall County Council took over the employment of the home teachers and with that, the register of blind and partially sighted people in Cornwall. The Association became completely independent from the council and therefore stopped receiving grant payments.