ad
proved a successful and remunerative occupation for the blind.
Encouraged by this success, the making of bass brooms was now added to
the work carried on in the Euston Road. The coarse fibre used for this
purpose has to be dipped in boiling pitch, and then inserted and fixed
into holes in the wooden back of the broom. By an ingenious contrivance
of the teacher, the hand of the blind man follows a little bridge across
the boiling pitch, reaches a guide, at which he stops and dips his
bristles into the shallow pan. He then withdraws his hand along the same
bridge, kneads the pitch, and fixes the fibre in its hole. Several men
sit round a table, and are thus enabled to work without risk of a burn
at a trade which requires no skill.

The blind carpenter Farrow, who had made the fittings for the Holborn
cellar, had been from that time permanently employed in the Institution.

In 1858 he was the teacher of thirteen blind men and women who were
learning a trade. Levy had visited Norwich and Bath during the year
1858. In the latter city a Blind Home was formed for the employment of
women instructed in the Bath Blind School. This was done in consequence
of a Report of Bessie's institution which had been sent to the Committee
at Bath. The School for the Indigent Blind, St. George's Fields,
Southwark, had also opened departments for instructing and employing the
adult blind, but we have no sheaf of old letters to give the history of
this further development.

The Committee of the Association might well look back with pleasure, and
forward with hope. They well knew on whom the success of the work mainly
depended; and in spite of Bessie's objection to the introduction of her
name, the following paragraph closes the Annual Report issued in May
1858:

Your Committee feel that their report would be very imperfect if
they did not allude to the great services which have been rendered
to this society, during the last year, by Miss Gilbert, the
foundress of the Association. Whenever pecuniary embarrassment has
threatened the efficiency of the Institution, her active zeal has
soon replenished the funds; and when the Association has been
unable to relieve the most distressing cases that have been pressed
on their notice, the sufferers have found her ever ready to afford
them timely help; and that, too, in a way which has shown such
sympathising interest in their privations, as well a