She was pledged, however, to a more ambitious attempt, and felt herself bound in honour to show what the blind can do alone and unaided. A proposal was made in January 1859 to employ a "sighted" accountant, but as this was opposed by Bessie it was not carried. And yet at this very time the incessant and anxious work of past years was beginning to tell upon her, and she had urgent need of rest.
She was mainly responsible for the funds necessary to carry on the business. Being familiar with every detail of the business, she was called upon to explain its intricacies to her Committee. She had often to justify and secure the carrying out of arrangements which did not meet with general approval. Every scheme, proposal, experiment, rested ultimately upon her; upon this one blind lady, whose health had never been good, but whose strenuous energy and strong sense of duty forbade her to say no to any appeal on behalf of fellow-sufferers.
Museum, boarding-house, sick fund, musicians' association, with its classes for vocal and instrumental music, endowment fund, fund for establishing a West-end shop, fund in aid of tradesmen who had lost their sight; all these are the outcome of a single year's work. There are also letters innumerable to be written and answered, appeals to be made, applications to be replied to. She threw herself with fervid zeal into all her work, and a day was accounted lost if she had not accomplished in it something for the Association.
Two sisters were married in 1858, but the diary contains no other record of such important events than "unavoidably nothing done." Her heart beat warm and true as ever, home and friends were dear as ever, but for a time her horizon was bounded by the narrow walls of one small dark house in the Euston Road.
Herr Hirzel, director of the blind institution at Lausanne, who had visited the Association during the summer, was so well pleased with all he saw that he decided on his return to Switzerland to open workshops for the blind. At different times some six institutions had also applied for teachers or blind superintendents, but no workmen had been trained or were qualified to fill such posts. Bessie saw that this was an omission in her scheme, and at once resolved that special facilities for the training of intelligent blind men ought to be provided.