W. Hanks Levy, who called at her request to tell her about the blind poor, was one of whom she had often heard, and with whom she had already corresponded. He was an assistant teacher at the school in Avenue Road, married to the matron of the girls' department.
Levy was of humble origin and blind from early youth. His education, such as it was, had been received at the Avenue Road School, but he was essentially self-taught. Outside of the narrow routine of the school he had worked and striven to obtain knowledge, to find help for himself and others. He was a man of small stature and of slender build, with plentiful dark hair on head and face. He wore darkened spectacles, which covered the sightless eyes. His nose was large and well formed, and the mouth fairly good. All the features were marked by extreme mobility, a sensitive tremulousness often seen in the blind. It is as if they did their thinking outside. Bessie had this same tremulous mobility of feature; her soul fluttered as it were about a thought, and you saw hope, apprehension, joy, fear, or dismay when it was first presented to her.
Levy was a man of eager intelligence and generous heart. He earnestly desired the amelioration of the condition of the blind. Their disabilities had pressed upon him from his youth upwards, and upon all around him.
Living in an institution, and able to measure himself by no higher standard than that which it offered, he had not, however, realised the actual limitations of blindness. It is doubtful whether he ever did realise them. He would, therefore, have been an unsafe guide, but he was an excellent follower. He would have resented interference from those whom he called "the sighted," but he submitted to the blind lady; her nurture, training, and delicate sense of the fitness of things gave her a strong hold over him. He accepted her judgment when it was opposed to his own will, and faithfully carried out her views and wishes.
During this first interview in Queen Anne Street he told her of the various institutions in Great Britain and their work, and especially of the work done in London. At her request he investigated carefully, and obtained dates, facts, and figures that were reliable. Bessie found that the institutions for the blind provided instruction for the young, and for them only. Statistics showed, however, that by far the greater number of blind persons lose their sight as adults, from such causes as fever, smallpox, and accidental injury. They lose sight when others are dependent upon them, and when blindness means either the life of a beggar or life in the workhouse. And again she learnt that the existing institutions dismiss young men and women who have been fairly educated and taught a trade, on the assumption that, as adults, they can practise their trade and earn a living. This conjecture tells cruelly upon the blind. They leave many of the institutions with an adequate stock of clothes, and either with tools or with money to purchase tools; and then begins a hopeless struggle. Private friends diminish in numbers, and are gradually lost. The blind men and women cannot go about from place to place in search of work, cannot work without special contrivances, which are not to be found in ordinary workshops, and have no market for their goods if they work at home.