Samuel Gridley Howe
Samuel Gridley Howe (born November 10, 1801 in Boston , Massachusetts , † January 9, 1876 there ) was an American doctor , civil rights activist , philhellene and founder of the first school for the blind in the United States.
biography
Howe's father Joseph Gridley Howe was a ship owner and rope manufacturer, his mother, who gave him his idealistic worldview, was Patty Gridley Howe. Howe attended the Latin School in Boston and then Brown University in Providence, where he completed his doctorate in 1821. He left the United States in 1824 and traveled to Greece , where he was active as a medic and soldier in the Greek Revolution for the next three years .
In 1827 he returned to Boston where he began to practice. However, he continued to work for the Greeks by collecting donations. He presented this personally when he traveled to Greece a second time. He financed the building of schools, churches and houses near Corinth . In 1830 he returned to the States.
When Howe returned to Boston, he was enthusiastic about the stories of his friend John D. Fisher . He had just returned from Paris and reported on the school for the blind in Paris, founded by Valentin Haüy . In 1831 he finally traveled through Europe to see for himself what was being done for the education of the blind. His first destination was Paris, where he studied novel teaching techniques for the blind. Back in Boston he received the money collected by the America-Polish Committee and the order to distribute it to the Poles who were rebelling against Russia. So at the end of 1831 to 1832 he went to Europe with two projects and met radical Polish revolutionaries in Paris before going to Prussia . In Berlin he attended the school for the blind, but also carried money with him to support the Polish insurgent soldiers who were in East Prussia and who caused great damage to the population. Because of this support for the Polish insurgents Howe was arrested, but before that he managed to destroy or hide the instructions given to the Polish officers by the America-Polish Committee . After six weeks in detention, he was finally allowed to travel to the United States.
In 1832 Howe, inspired by his experiences in Paris, founded the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston . He soon became the leading expert in this field in the United States and initiated other schools for the blind in Ohio , Tennessee , Kentucky and Virginia . Howe's best-known student was the deaf-blind Laura Bridgman , who became known as the “child prodigy”. Extensive literature was created on this. Howe was looking for a successor during his lifetime; he was found in Michael Anagnos .
Howe married Julia Ward in 1843 and had six children. The Samuel Gridley and Julia Ward Howe House in Boston , where they lived together from 1863 to 1866, has been a National Historic Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974 . Howe died in 1876, and in the same year a large memorial service was held in his honor at the Boston Music Hall .
Samuel Howe and Florence Nightingale
The meeting of Florence Nightingale, born in 1820, with Samuel Howe is classified by many biographers as a decisive turning point in the life of Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale became more and more certain in the summer of 1844 that she would devote her life to nursing. Crucial for her decision, however, was the meeting with Samuel Howe and his wife, who were guests at Embley Hall during their honeymoon. Florence Nightingale asked Howe whether he thought it inappropriate for a young woman like her to devote herself to nursing in a similar way as these nuns of the nursing congregations do. Howe replied: “My dear Miss Florence, it would be unusual, and in England the unusual is usually felt to be inappropriate. But I would advise you to go this way if you feel called to do so. Act according to your inspiration and you will find out that there will be nothing inappropriate or unladylike about doing your duty for the benefit of others ... "
However, Mark Bostridge points out an aspect of this episode that he believes underscores how unusual Florence Nightingale's life decision was. Julia Ward, the almost twenty years younger wife of Samuel Howe, developed in the second half of her life into an influential abolitionist , campaigner for women's rights and well-known writer, who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic , among other things . She found no support for this from her husband during the twenty years of marriage. In response to her allegation that Howe had encouraged Florence Nightingale in her decision while he did not even allow her to publish a volume of poetry, he replied that, had he been engaged to Florence Nightingale, he would have broken the engagement as soon as she was engaged would have appeared publicly in any way.
literature
- James Trent: The Manliest Man: Samuel G. Howe and the Contours of Nineteenth-Century American Reform. University of Massachusetts Press, Boston 2012, ISBN 978-1-55849-959-1 .
- Mark Bostridge: Florence Nightingale . Penguin Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-140-26392-3
- Barbara Montgomer Dossey: Florence Nightingale - Mystic, Visionary, Healer , Springhouse Corporation, Springhouse 2000, ISBN 0-87434-984-2
- Alexander Mell: Encyclopedia of the Blind . 1900
Web links
Single receipts
- ↑ The Manliest Man Samuel G Howe S 55-57
- ^ In the original, Howes' answer is: "My dear Miss Florence, it would be unusual, and in England whatever is unusual is apt to be thought unsuitable; but I say to you, go forward if you have a vocation for that way of life; act up to your inspiration, and you will find that there is never anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of others ... ", quoted from Dossey, p. 52
- ^ Bostridge, p. 86
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Howe, Samuel Gridley |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Howe, Samuel G. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Founder of the Perkins School for the Blind |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 10, 1801 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Boston , Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 9, 1876 |
| Place of death | Boston , Massachusetts |