OBITUARY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1229, 11 September 1911, Page 5

OBITUARY.

« A BENEFACTOR OF THE CHINESE BLIND. Br Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Peking, September 8. The Rev. William Hill Murray, inventor of the numeral' type, is dead, aged liS. - By means of Mr. Murray's numeral typo blind and illiterate Chinese can learn to read and write wen m tinei; months, using ouiy 30 syuipois, whereas the average Chinaman takes sis years t'o master the 101)0 ideographs essential . to simple reading, and only 5 per cent ever learn. Mr. Murray was tne son of a blacksmith and when a young man went out to Cliina as a colporteur for the National Bible Society of Scotland. In 1879 he adopted Braille's symbols for the blind to represent numbers, and under Lhe 108 sounds in use at Peking (which are the standard for all Mandarin dialects). Seeing the facility with which the blind acquired tho power of reading and writing, illiterate Chineso Christians craved his help, and by substituting black lines for the raised dots he produced a simple set of geometrical forms. These are the printing type with whicli tho blind at Mr. Murray's school in Peking now print books for sighted persons. During the Boxer revolt his blind women were all martyred, and he himself was so severely injured that he became totally blind of ono eyo and half blind of the other. With tho aid of his wife and children ho reorganised the school and printing works, and there are on an average some fifty blind students receiving instruction. MRS. RAMSAY MACDONALD. London, September 8. The death has occurred of Mrs. Ramsay Macdonald, wife of tho Chairman of tho Parliamentary Labour parly. Mrs. Macdonald was a (laughter of Dr. J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S. She married Mr. Macdonald in ISOG.