Betteridge, Alice

First deaf-blind person to be educated in Australia; called the "Australian Helen Keller". Became deaf and blind at age 2 from meningitis; entered the New South Wales Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind in 1905, where she was placed in the care of Roberta Sinclair Reid of the school's department for the blind; Reid's role was similar to that of Anne Sullivan with Helen Keller. Betteridge married Will Chapman, also deaf-blind, in 1939, but lost him to a heart attack in 1944. Both lived at the Blackburn Institution for the Deaf. She died of cancer. Biography is A Girl like Alice (1990).