Bridgman, Laura Dewey (1829-1889)

US first blind deaf-mute to be successfully educated. She became world famous as an object of public interest and pedagogical study. However, she never learned to talk, she did not progress beyond basic literacy, and she did not venture outside the Perkins Institution, where she died.

She was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. Scarlet fever left her blind and deaf at age two. She was rescued from total isolation by a handyman, Asa Tenney, who communicated with her by his own system of touch signs. Starting in 1837, Samuel Gridley Howe taught her to read and write, using an alphabetic method that prefigured Anne Sullivan's work with Helen Keller.