Thomas Armitage
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- For the English cricketer, see Tom Armitage
Thomas Rhodes Armitage (1824-1890) was a British physician, founder of the Royal National Institute of the Blind.
He was born on 2 April 1824 at Tilgate in Sussex into a family of wealthy Yorkshire industrialists, the son of James Armitage (1793-1872) and Anne Elizabeth Armitage née Rhodes (1788-1833), of Farnley Hall, just south of Leeds, Yorkshire. His great-grandfather James (1730-1803) bought Farnley Hall from Sir Thomas Danby in 1799, and in 1844 four Armitage brothers, including his father, founded the Farnley Ironworks, utilising the coal, iron and fireclay on their estate. His brother Edward Armitage was a member of the Royal Academy.
He was raised on the continent, first at Avranches, and later at Frankfurt and Offenbach. He attended the Sorbonne and later King's College, London. He became a physician, practising at the Marylebone Dispensary, in the Crimean War, and as a private consultant in London. He was forced to abandon his medical career because of declining vision, eventually becoming blind.
Armitage decided to help solve the problem of making literature available to the blind through embossed type: in Britain this had become complicated by the proliferation of different standards. He formed the "British and Foreign Society for Improving the Embossed Literature of the Blind", later the "British and Foreign Blind Association for Promoting the Education and Employment of the Blind" and (after his death) the "National Institute for the Blind". This group decided to adopt the system of Louis Braille, and Armitage worked tirelessly both for its adoption and for the production of literature in Braille.
He was married to Harriett Black, and he died on 23 October 1890 at Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland, following a riding accident.
