The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1887. THE CARE OF THE BLIND.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1492, 25 February 1887, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1887. THE CARE OF THE BLIND.

Though New Zealand has, m many respects, reason to be proud of her public institutions, though almost every town has its hospital and charitable organisations, and the State and the public unite m providing for the relief of the sick, the aged and the indigent, and even the deaf mute is not unregarded, yet, strange to say, there is one marked deficiency — there is no proyision for the blind. And the ©mmission is {til the more remarkable m that blindness is a more common affliction than is deafmutism, the number of deaf mutes m the colony at the census of 1881 (the figures for last census are not yet available) being 114, aud the number of blind ,at the same date 138. Among the blind there are many to whose great deprivation is added the further affliction of poverty. What is to become of ' those who are born blind if their parents are m indigent or even straitened circumstances? Given that with difficulty they can be fed and clothed during the lives of their parents, how are they to fare when they are left without natural protectors, for unless a way can be found to educate them m some method of gaining a livelihood they must eventually be left absolutely without means of support. We are putting no merely hypothetical case. We have m our mind, as we write, the case of a deserving, hardworking, steady artisan, who has five or six children. Work m his particular line has been slack for a long time, and for six months past, owing to the prevailing depression, he has had scarcely any employment, and it has been a hard struggle to provide the necessaries of life for wife and family. And m that family there is a boy of six years who has been blind almost from his birth, and the parents anxiously enquire how are they to provide for his future. They j cannot afford to pay for his education, or for his being taught a trade such as the blind can learn, and they are distressed to think that should the poor little fellow at any time be left fatherless or motherless, or both, it would go hard with him. What is to be done m such a case ?. Really we do not know. There is, we believe, an asylum for the blind m Sydney, but the poor little fellow could only be received into it on payment of a year, which it is utterly beyond the power of his parents to pay, and so far as we know there is no institution of any kind m New Zealand to which he could be sent. We do not know if any provision is made for blind children m any of the convent schools established by the Roman Catholic church — if there .be, possibly there may be some hope m this direction, but if not, then, so far as we are aware, there is absolutely no provision m New Zealand for children so situated. Surely this is not as it should be, and it seems to us to be high time that the question should be taken up by the Government, the Legislature and the public generally, with a view to the establishment of some institution for the reception and care of the indigent blind. — Meanwhile the lack of a blind asylum presents a splendid opportunity to any wealthy colonist or colonists who may be benevolently and patriotically inclined. Are there none among us who will take advantage of it?