Braidwood, Thomas (I)

Hearing. Graduated Edinburgh University. Assistant in a Hamilton grammar school, then opened a mathematical school at Edinburgh. In 1760, a deaf pupil, Charles Sherrif, was placed with Braidwood, who succeeded in teaching speech to Sherrif. Devoting himself to deaf education, Braidwood developed oral-based methods for teaching the deaf, but kept his methods a family secret. With other family members, he established and controlled a chain of schools for deaf students in the British Isles. His refusal to share his teaching methods with Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet on reasonable terms led Gallaudet to go to France instead and learn about the French system of deaf education through use of sign language.