It would be wrong to pass over Germany without stating that much persevering and successful work has been accomplished by Herr Sägert and others. We were more struck with the results he obtained, when we visited his school in Berlin in 1853, than with anything we witnessed elsewhere on the Continent.
In Switzerland there are training schools at Basle, Berne, Zurich, Lausanne (two), and Etoy. They provide for about eighty cases.[224]
In our own country[225] we believe we must signalize Bath as the first town in which a school, or rather a home, for idiots was opened. Established on a very small scale (only four cases in the first instance) by the Misses White in 1846, it has flourished to the present day. Two years later, an idiot asylum was established at Park House, Highgate, whose founders, however, did not know of the home at Bath. It had its branch at Colchester, and eventually developed into the great institution at Earlswood, near Redhill, opened in 1855. The Earlswood report for the past year states that there are altogether 561 inmates, of whom 400 are supported gratuitously, and of the remainder upwards of 70 pay less than the actual cost of their maintenance. One of the inmates discharged in May had since held the situation of nurse in a family; another was becoming an expert shoemaker; and a former female inmate was employed as a teacher in an elementary school. Earlswood is under the efficient charge of Dr. Grabham. In connection with Earlswood, we ought to recognize the considerable influence which a continental institution exerted in helping to excite that interest in the education of idiots which, among other influences, induced the Rev. Andrew Reed, D.D., to urge the erection of a large building for the training of idiots. We refer to Dr. Guggenbühl's institution for cretins, on the Abendberg, near Interlachen, which undoubtedly did more good in this indirect way than by curing the cretins placed there. At any rate, there was a certain mystery connected with the work done at this school, which left an unsatisfactory impression on ourselves when we visited it in 1862, and which struck many others in the same way. At his death, in 1863, the institution was closed. Essex Hall, Colchester, in the first instance a branch of the Highgate Asylum, ultimately (1859) became the institution for the eastern counties. Mr. Millard, who has devoted himself to the arduous work of training idiots for many years, is the superintendent, and had the original charge (with a matron) of the idiots when first placed at Park House, Highgate. The inmates number ninety-seven. In 1864 an institution was opened at Starcross, near Exeter, through the efforts of the Earl of Devon, for the idiotic class in the western counties. There are now eighty pupils there.