Omaha daily bee., 1889-05-25
DEATH OF LAURA BRIDGMAN.
The Nineteenth Century Marvel Inn
mortalized by Dickens.

Boston, May A.-fSpecial Telegram TO
The BEE. Laura Bridgman died rather
suddenly of heart failure to-day at the Per-
kins Institute for the Blind In South Boston,
which has been her homo for the past fifty
years. The heart failure was accelerated by
congestion OF the lungs both superinduced
by severe attack of erysipilas
last summer. This was not her
original sickness, for she never
really recovered from the effect of the death.
in 1876, of DIR. Howe, her famous instructor.
She has naturally been an invalid ever since.
Last summer her condition became so bad
that she was sent away TO Lebanon, N. H.,
to recuperate. Instead of so dong she be-
came violently homesick, her usual fate
when away from the asylum for any length
OF time and erysipelas ensued. She was
brought back to Boston, and by strict
attention to her on the part of DIR. Anangas,
the superintendent, and j. ID. Brdgam, the
surgeon, she rallied sufficiently to be con-
sidered out OF all danger.
She began, a month ag o, to steadily weaken,
the erysipelas having seemingly caused such
an aspect to her system that her vitality
lessencd, and, week ago, her heart failed
her so that 1T was apparent that
her end was very near. A num-
ber Of her friends and relatives
were summoned from New Hampshire and
attended her bedside. These she seemed
delighted to know were about her, and this
morning she was believed to be greatly i'm
proved She suffered none and her faculties
were perfectly clear. She seemed fully to
realize her situation, but conducted herself
with amazing coolness and Indifference as If
she considered death q boon to her poor,
long-imprisoned soul.
Shortly before noon a sudden change
alarmed the doctors, and an examination
showed that dissolution was imminent. All
her friends and attendants were summoned
to her bedside, but she seemed to enter into
q swoon, from which she never recovered
dying at the time stated. The details of her
funeral have not yet been completed, but it
will take place at $3.50 p m. next Sunday
from the asylum and promises to be large
When Charles Dickeus visited this coun-
try, in 1S41, he saw Laura Bridgman in Bos-
ton, and In his american Notes" wrote
about her one of the most beautiful sketches
to be found in all his works. BY a severe
sight and hearing, and, consequently, her
speech. The sense of smell was destro Dyed
and the sense of taste IMPAIRED. She recov-
cred her health gradually but none of her
lost senses were restored.
At the age of eight she became an inmate
of the Perkins institute for the blind, in Bos-
ton. BY the exercise of wonderful patience
and skill. DR.. S. G. Howe taught her so that
Sn6 COulu wander ABOUT tne various apart
ments of the building unattended, and then
instructed her in the use of the manual
alphabet, used by the blind so that she could
spell out the names of the various objects,
such as spoons and forks, with which she
was familiar.
All this was accomplished in three months.
Then she was taught to write, and her first
effort was to write letter, unassisted, to
her mother. She subsequently acquired the
rudiments of arithmetic, took lessons on the
piano on which she became q skillful player,
and acquired a practical knowledge of needle
work and of some household duties. She
made much of her own clothing and ran
sewing machine.
She one day asked with the type which
had been prepared for her, this question
"Man made houses and vessels, but who
made the land and the seal" She was told
that it was God who made all things, and
upon his character being described to her.
together with the doctrine of the resurrec-
ton, the fear of death which had formerly
distressed her passed away, and she ex-
pressed the greatest happiness at the thought
of life beyond the graue.
She was born in New Hampshire, DeCem-
81, 1929.