Chiswick House, London
Maison Dieu, Faversham
Liverpool School for the Indigent Blind, Liverpool
Langdon Down Museum of Learning Disability, Teddington
The Royal School for Deaf Children, Margate
Guild of the Brave Poor Things, Bristol
St Saviour’s Deaf Church, Acton
Grove Road Housing Scheme, Sutton-in-Ashfield
We found 1803 regulations in the archives, which give an idea of what life was like. It explains pupils were expected to rise at 6.30am (with the exception of Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday) and be in bed by 9.30pm. All pupils followed the schedule which set out times for various meals, work and prayers.
Back in Liverpool, Rushton was appalled by the treatment of poor blind people and founded the School for the Indigent Blind, so that blind people could learn skills and live with dignity. It opened in two lodging houses on Commutation Row.
By age eighteen Rushton was aboard his first, and last, ship transporting slaves from Africa. Aboard the ship Rushton opposed the poor treatment and conditions of the people held in slavery and was accused by his Captain of a mutiny. Rushton also became blind from ophthalmia.
Edward Rushton was born in 1756 in Liverpool and was apprenticed as a seaman to a firm of West India merchants aged eleven.