Scottish and English Institutions for the Blind, 1792–1860

Abstract

To this urbane English expatriate, moreover, the changing expression of benevolence recognised no particular frontiers. It conformed to the demands of a rational, humane and expansive civilisation, which could easily transcend the Anglo-Scottish, and perhaps many other, borders.1 Historical writing on the subject of charity has sometimes questioned this sanguine view of giving, but it has not, on the whole, doubted its broad, geographical embrace. It is true that very few charitable organisations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries aimed to cover the whole of Britain. For this reason, David Owen's magisterial study of post-Restoration philanthropy confined itself to England, while Olive Checkland's equally thorough account of Victorian charity did not venture beyond Scotland.2 Neither work, however, treated the frontier as signifi cant; in each, there is an underlying assumption that a similar pattern of benevolence prevailed in both members of the Union. Dr Checkland's concluding remarks make this belief explicit: 'The Scots, though they achieved much, did so largely on an imitative and emulative basis, rather than by invention and innovation. Time and again the story is one of borrowing ideas from the larger world, especially from England.'3