Miss Christian Ann Elizabeth Cruickshank lived in the Aberdeen area in the early nineteenth century. When she died in 1818, her will bequeathed that money she'd made from interests in tin mines and other properties should be spent to benefit impoverished blind people in and around Aberdeen, Kincardine and Banff. The value of her bequest came to £7962 18s 4d, which is around £350 000.00 in today’s money.
Miss Cruickshank appointed three trustees: William Gordon Esq., Alexander Crombie Esq., and Rev. Dr. George Glennie. The trustees determined to build “an institution for the education and support of the blind”. They further decided that the best way to do this was to let the money first grow by accumulating interest.
Only Rev. Dr. George Glennie lived to see the money reach its target value and in 1833 he appointed a board of trustees, which in turn appointed a committee to research all they needed to know to get the institution up and running.
In 1838, with the trust fund at around £16 000, the trustees bought the land on which they would build. The site was on the east side of Huntly Street. Today this is in the centre of Aberdeen and is a tree-lined home to St Mary’s Cathedral and the offices of solicitors and accountants. In the mid-nineteenth century however, the granite tenements along the west side of Huntly Street were new and overcrowded with the families of labourers living in slum conditions. Across the city open sewers were common, three quarters of the population got water from public wells and medical science had yet to determine the cause of a fever that raged in all inner-cities.
Eight architectural firms were asked to submit proposals for the new building, including the city’s famous Archibald Simpson.
While the architects were deliberating, the trustees were approached by Mr James Brebner, who had been made a trustee of the will of Miss Janet Walker. Miss Walker bequeathed that the lands and property of Little Kilblean, should also be used to improve the lives of the areaÂ’s impoverished blind inhabitants. The two trust funds were united.
The architect John Smith’s design was accepted. On Monday the 4th of October, 1841, Aberdeen’s Lord Provost, Thomas Blaikie Esq., laid the building’s foundation stone. The building was designed to hold classrooms for 40 children, workshops for 40 adults, accommodation for the adults and children, a hospital unit, staff accommodation, offices and a long space for rope work. The trustees offered proprietors of the houses in Huntly Street the chance to buy drains that would lead into a new sewer being constructed. A manager and matron were hired and the building opened on the 5th of October 1843.
As Lys Wyness points out in ‘A Short History of the Grampian Society for the Blind’, while life in Aberdeen at this time was hard and some blind people probably had to resort to begging or be admitted to the Poor House, others were successful, highly regarded members of society. Many worked as musicians, David Frost made egg cups, punch ladles and snuff boxes; Sandy McWilliam, accompanied by one of his daughters, busked around the UK; Jock Ross grew and sold plants, and Duncan Mackinlay was one of Aberdeen’s first newspaper publishers.
