Laura Bridgman

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Laura Bridgman in 1878

Laura Dewey Bridgman (born December 21, 1829 in Hanover , New Hampshire , † May 24, 1889 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was the first (known) deafblind person since childhood who discovered the language and could be freed from his isolation.

Life

Laura Bridgman was born a healthy child. At the age of two she became seriously ill with scarlet fever and, in addition to her eyesight and hearing, also lost her sense of smell and taste , all she had was touch . Soon after he lost his hearing, Bridgman stopped speaking.

Like another deaf-blind child many years later, the more famous Helen Keller , Bridgman developed characters to communicate with her family. With her, the frustration of not being able to make herself understood led to violent outbursts of anger.

At the age of seven, Bridgman came to the Perkins Institute for the Blind under the care of Samuel Gridley Howe . Howe had recently met the deafblind Julia Brace , who also communicated with a self-developed sign language, and had devised a method to penetrate the minds of deafblind children.

He let the highly intelligent child touch objects on which signs with raised embossed letters - the so-called moon alphabet - were stuck (Howe rejected the then still new Braille script ). Then objects and signs were separated and Bridgman was supposed to bring together what belonged together. Her hands were held to show her what to do. Bridgman had excellent memories and mostly got it right. One day she realized that the raised letters were the name of the object in question and that every thing has a name. The breakthrough came with a key and the word " key ".

Shortly thereafter, Bridgman learned finger alphabet for the deaf by having her finger raised letters with one hand and spelling the finger alphabet in her free hand at the same time. She also learned the square script, a type of block type written in pencil.

When Charles Dickens visited the Perkins Institute on a trip to America, he was so impressed by meeting twelve-year-old Laura Bridgman that he devoted an entire chapter to her in his American Notes . Reading this chapter led Helen Keller's mother, Kate, to the Perkins Institute many years later.

Bridgman spent the rest of her life in school for the blind, working as a handicraft teacher. All students and teachers mastered the finger alphabet in order to be able to communicate with her. Bridgman's favorite student was Anne Sullivan Macy , who would later become Helen Keller's teacher, who made use of Howe's methods.

Laura Bridgman later stood in the shadow of Helen Keller, whose achievements far surpassed her own. There is little doubt, however, that without Laura Bridgman, Helen Keller's life would have been different.

Laura Bridgman died in Boston on May 24, 1889, she was 59 years old.

In 1890 the Austrian philosopher and educator Wilhelm Jerusalem wrote the first biography of Laura Bridgman in the form of a scientific monograph.

Samuel Howe's daughter Laura Richards (named after Laura Bridgman) wrote the Laura Bridgman biography in 1928: The Story of an Opened Door . In 2001, Elizabeth Grid published Laura Bridgman's life story under the title The Imprisoned Guest .

literature

  • Charles Dickens: American Notes. 1842
  • Wilhelm Jerusalem : Laura Bridgman. Education of a deaf-blind person. A psychological study. Vienna 1891
  • Ernest Freeberg: The education of Laura Bridgman: first deaf and blind person to learn language. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2001, ISBN 0-674-00589-9
  • Edith Fisher Hunter: Child of the Silent Night: The Story of Laura Bridgman. Rex, Lucerne, Munich 1965
  • Elizabeth lattice: The imprisoned guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the original deaf-blind girl. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2001, ISBN 0374117381
  • Johann Georg Knie (ed.): Memories of a woman born blind: together with the educational history of the two deaf and dumb blind Laura Bridgman and Eduard Meystre. Grass, Barth, Breslau 1852 (microfiche edition: Wildberg: Belser Wiss. Dienst, 1989–1990, (Edition Corvey), ISBN 3-628-41644-2 )
  • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards: Laura Bridgman; the story of an opened door. D. Appleton & company, New York, London 1928
  • Maud Howe Elliott and Florence Howe Hall: Laura Bridgman, Dr. Howe's Famous Pupil and What He Taught Her. Boston 1908.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bridgman, Laura
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bridgman, Laura Dewey (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION deafblind American woman
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1829
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover , New Hampshire , United States
DATE OF DEATH May 24, 1889
Place of death Boston , Massachusetts , United States