In 1912 Wakefield made ophthalmic neonatorum, an infection of the newborn eye that leads to blindness, a notifiable disease. This took place three years after the Potteries declared it so and two years before the government, having finally listened to evidence, followed suit.
The people responsible for this local, regional and national change were women from Wakefield, influencing national policy then, as now. Wakefield District Sight Aid, the roots of which were established in 1869, was also heavily involved in the creation of Visionary’s Sight Loss Charter created during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the UK government passes its welfare bill, which promises that any changes to personal independence payments – vital to cover the extra costs of having a disability – will be done in consultation and coproduction with disability groups, the story of how such powerful advocacy for the blind began is a vital reminder of how women took the lead in social change.
‘Help them to help themselves, teach them to read’
According to The Wakefield Journal and Examiner, in March 1869 two young women, 21-year-old Emily Esther Fennell (1848–1935) and 13-year-old Edith Wright (1856–1935) attended the inaugural meeting of the “newly instituted Wakefield Blind Society” which took place in the barristers’ room in Wakefield’s Courthouse.
There they met William Moon and heard him speak. Moon, blind himself since the age of 21, had developed a system to enable the blind to read. He spoke passionately about his ‘Moon type’, formed of straight lines, curves, angles and loops, which had been successfully introduced into 38 different languages.
Also at that meeting was Sir Charles Hugh Lowther, third Baronet of Swillington (1803–1894), who had lost his sight during infancy after an attack of scarlet fever. He promised to donate 200 volumes of Moon type books to the newly formed society as long as they pledged, in turn, to continue transcribing and printing books for the blind. Sir Charles had been working with Dr Wright, Edith’s father, to urge Wakefield to follow the example of the York Wilberforce School for the Blind.
Formation of the Wakefield Blind Society
The Wakefield Free Press, 13 March 1869, reported that:
“Sir Charles desired that the Bible, or some portion of it, should be placed in the hands of every blind person in Yorkshire … He made an offer to the meeting that they might have as many books as would form a library, but he did not promise a teacher or any other support.”
The subtext of a journalist’s concern for practicalities was clear. “Well, that’s all very well,” the reader can hear the writer thinking, “But where are we going to house these books and how are they going to be made accessible? What do you mean you want a printing press? Where is that going to go and who is going to teach the blind if we have no one who knows your system and who, Sir, is going to pay for all of this?” The same questions might be applied to the current welfare reforms. All change creates chaos.
The Wakefield Blind Society was formed with a philanthropic agenda. In its inaugural year, 1869, it was supporting 30 people that were known to need help either in Wakefield or ‘in very close proximity in the town’. It’s important to understand that there were no systems in place to register or track people with sight loss at that time so the actual numbers were much higher, as is the case today with those who need real help.
Sight impairment means restricted employment opportunities
According to Sense statistics, more than two million people are living with sight loss. Of these, around 340,000 are registered as sight impaired or severely sight impaired. The same 340,000 who were unable to access Liz Kendall’s green paper on welfare reform for two weeks after sighted people could read it, because an accessible version was not available. As Lib Dem MP Steve Darling, who is registered blind, said, the delay was “nothing short of a disgrace”.
Unlike in 1869, when there were no mechanisms in place to collect quantifiable statistics, in 2025 there is an established register. This was created in 1908 by Edith Wright. Then, there was a legal and moral obligation to be on the register; today individuals have a choice.
To register to obtain a certificate, an individual must go through an assessment with an ophthalmologist who will measure the amount of visual acuity (how good you are at seeing detail) and your field of vision (how much you can see from the side of your eye while looking straight ahead) to decide whether you’re eligible to be registered as sight impaired.
Fight for Sight provides startling statistics which Emily Fennell and Edith Wright would find all too familiar. Some 90% of those with the most severe sight loss are not in work. Twenty-three percent of employers would not be willing to make adaptations to employ a blind or vision impaired person, despite Equality Act obligations. Only 40% of employers are confident that their recruitment processes are accessible to vision impaired people and 90% of employers state it would be ‘difficult’ or ‘impossible’ to employ a vision impaired person.
An information backbone
Statistics providing a vision profile across England are collected and published by the Office for Heath Improvement and Disparities. The latest figures, published on 1 July 2025, show a 23% rise since 2014 in people attending vision outpatient appointments and that now, as in 1869, poorer regions in the north have a higher number of blind and partially sighted people than affluent regions in the south. Such information is the backbone to identifying needs specific to regions, and people.
When she became honorary secretary of Wakefield Blind Society in 1876, Emily Fennell began compiling an informal register of the ages at which people were going blind, the causes and, most specifically, the number of children who were going blind in infancy due to ophthalmia neonatorum. As both she and Edith Wright were working with midwives and health visitors to ensure preventative measures were being taken, infant blindness began to decrease.
In December 1893, The Wakefield and West Riding Herald, reports how pleased Mr Buckle, the secretary of the Wilberforce School for the Blind, was at the increased awareness of cleaning infant’s eyes, giving thanks to the vital role that nurses and midwives played in that when visiting mothers in their homes during and immediately after birth.
The transformational creation of a register of the blind
Unfortunately, this improvement was not sustained and by 1903 the numbers needing support in the Wakefield district had increased from 30 to 70 with “two small boys of three and four years of age, blind from birth” (extract from Edith Wright’s annual report in the Wakefield and West Riding Herald, 21 January 1905).
This galvanised Wright. Having been elected in 1905 as the honorary organising secretary of the newly formed collective of Northern Blind Societies known as the ‘Northern Union’, by 1908 she had “created a complete register of all the names, addresses and other necessary information about the blind living away from the large towns, through the chief constables and their staff”.
This was the first time a quantifiable register of the blind had ever been compiled, and its importance cannot be underestimated. It meant that then, as now, those people who needed help would get it. As a direct result of Wright’s work in establishing Workshops for the Blind in Wakefield, a template of care was rolled out across England. This meant providing an opportunity to work, making baskets and other woven goods to sell, guaranteeing financial independence. It also meant access to a Sick and Benefit fund, education, a library, social events and a community that continued to support the blind in their homes to enable them to be with their families rather than being institutionalised or becoming destitute.
Today, being on the register of the blind means access to blind person’s allowance of £3,130 per year and a range of benefits including a reduction in the TV licence fee, help with NHS costs, help with council tax and tax allowances, reduced fees on public transport and parking concessions. Any other support comes from different charitable foundations.
Prevention of blindness in infancy
Article six of the constitution of the newly formed North Union, ‘Prevention of Blindness in Infancy’, highlighted Wakefield as being in the vanguard of change and brought into sharp focus the inaction of other areas.
Recognised for her groundbreaking work at the 1908 conference, Wright was elected as a member of an international conference committee and a member of a sub-committee dedicated to dealing with the prevention of blindness.
It fell to Wright, gaining confidence from the knowledge that a similar sub-committee at the British Medical Association was independently ‘working on this matter’, to amplify how blindness could be prevented. Together with hundreds of other newspapers, the Staffordshire Sentinel of 27 July 1909 covered the statement of intent from the first committee’s report. It reads:
“1 That in the opinion of this Committee the adoption by the Public Health Authorities of the Early Notification of Births Act is urgent.
2 That in the opinion of this Committee the disease known as ‘Ophthalmia of the Newborn’ should be added to the list of diseases compulsorily notifiable under the powers of the Infectious Diseases (Notification) Act of 1889
3 That in the opinion of this Committee:
(a) More definite teaching should be given to midwives on the seriousness of eye disease in children; and
(b) The Central Midwives’ Board should issue more stringent instructions on the danger of ‘whites’ in lying-in women.
With a view to obtaining more exact knowledge of the incidence of blindness in subsequent census returns.”
The government refused to make ophthalmic neonatorum a notifiable disease despite Wright’s convincing use of statistics at a conference of eminent (male) eye surgeons in Yarmouth in 1909. As she reported, the number of blind people in the north was as follows: Lancashire, 3643; Yorkshire, West Riding, 2519, North Riding, 246; Durham, 636; Cumberland and Westmorland, 243: a total of 8318. Then, as now, those with the power to change things for the better were not, it seemed, listening.
Finally, on 1 April 1914, Wright’s life work was recognised and ophthalmic neonatorum was declared a notifiable disease nationally.
