Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    X865
  • Title
    Records of Sight Concern (North Bedfordshire)
  • Date free text
    1920-2006
  • Production date
    From: 1920 To: 2006
  • Admin/biog history
    A comprehensive history of Sight Concern was compiled by Joan Stuart in 1995 to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society and a copy is held in this archive (X 865/1/1). Consequently only the main points in the Society's history are mentioned here. In September 1918, Miss Emery, secretary of the Eastern Counties Association of the Blind, visited Bedford in the hope of encouraging the formation of a local society. She met Miss Dorothy Hipwell, a member of the Guild of Brave Poor Things, a charity which helped those with physical disabilities of all kinds, including the blind. Miss Hipwell promised that the Guild would do what it could and during the next eighteen months the numbers of people identified as blind in Bedford increased from 15 to between 40 and 50. They were invited to the meetings of the Guild. From these beginnings it was only a short step to the formation of the Bedford Blind Aid Society which first met on 9 February 1920. An added impetus was given by the Blind Persons Act, 1920, which laid a duty on County Councils to help local people who were blind by providing workshops, homes and hostels. The County Council accordingly appointed members of the Luton Society (formed 1919) and the recently formed Bedford Society as agents. A County Association for the Blind was also formed, but as its role was advisory only and attracted no grants, it seems to have lasted only a few years. Bedford Blind Aid Society was re-named Bedford and District Society for the Welfare of the Blind in November 1920, a title it retained until 1927 when it was changed to North Bedfordshire Society for the Welfare of the Blind on the demise of the mid-Beds Society and the division of the County into two areas covering north and south Beds.In 1991 the name of the Society was changed to Sight Concern (North Bedfordshire)p The records give a detailed view of work of the Society over the years, particularly in helping individual people and in raising funds at charity events and through the sale of work under the Home Workers' Scheme.
  • Archival history
    Deposited on 2 June 1998.
  • Level of description
    fonds
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