Thomas Braidwood

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Thomas Braidwood (1715-1806, christened on 28 April 1717) was born at Hillhead Farm, Covington, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the fourth child of Thomas Braidwood and Agnes Meek. Braidwood originally established himself as a writing master instructing the children of the wealthy at his private building based in Canongate in Edinburgh. In 1760 he changed his vocation from teaching the hearing to teaching the deaf and renamed his building 'Braidwood's Academy for the Deaf and Dumb' which is recognised as the first school for the Deaf in Britain. His first pupil was Charles Sheriff, the son of a wealthy wine merchant based at the Port of Leith, Alexander Sheriff. Some of Braidwood's pupils were John Goodricke, the famed astronomer; Francis Humberstone Mackenzie (Lord Seaforth) who became a Member of Parliament and later the governor of Barbados; John Philp Wood, who went on to become a famed author, genealogist, editor and Over Deputy of the Scottish Excise Office; Jane Poole; Sarah Dashwood; Ann Walcott; Thomas Arrowsmith, an artist, and John Creasy who inspired the Rev. John Townsend to found the first ever public school for the Deaf in England in 1792.

Braidwood had two daughters, Margaret (b. 4 Sept. 1755, Edinburgh) and Isabella (b. 27 Jan 1758, Edinburgh). His wife was Margaret (nee Pearson) whom he married on 1 October 1752. His daughters were to join Thomas in becoming teachers of the deaf. Very little is known about his daughter Margaret and there is no mention or record of Margaret having moved south of the border with her family in 1783.

In 1783 Thomas Braidwood moved with his family to Hackney on the eastern outskirt of 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, recognized 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; 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 ran a school for the deaf in America at Cobb, Virginia, in 1812 but was short-lived.

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