Thomas Braidwood

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Thomas Braidwood was born in 1717 at Hillhead Farm, Covington, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

He was the son of Thomas Braidwood and Agnes Meek. In 1760 he opened 'Braidwoods Academy' in Edinburgh, the first school for the Deaf in Britain. In 1783 he move with his family to London and established the Braidwood Academy for the Deaf and Dumb in Grove House, off Mare Street, Hackney. His early use of a form of sign language, the combined system, was the forerunner of British Sign Language, recognised as a language in its own right in 2003. Braidwood's combined system is known among British Deaf historians as the Braidwoodian Method.

Thomas died at Hackney, London in 1806, and his daughter Isabella continued running the school. Braidwood's kinsman, Joseph Watson was trained as a teacher of the Deaf under Thomas Braidwood and he eventually left in 1792 to become the first headmaster of the first public school for the Deaf in Britain, the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Bermondsey. Watson was the teacher of the first deaf barrister, John William Lowe. Thomas's grandson John Braidwood tried to initiate a deaf school in America at Cobb, Virginia in 1812, but was unsuccessful and the school closed.

Thomas Braidwood was a distant cousin of Thomas Braidwood Wilson 1792-1843, after whom the Town of Braidwood, NSW is named.