THOMAS

See also:

• THOMAS BRAIDWOOD (1715-1806)

BRAIDWOOD (1715-1806)  , British teacher of the deaf and dumb, was born in Scotland in 1715, and educated at Edinburgh University . He became a school teacher, and in 176o opened in Edinburgh, with one pupil, the first school in Great Britain for the deaf and dumb, following the system of Dr John Wallis, described in Philosophical Transactions suffix in Baluchi, and Men or Min occurs on the lists of the Behistun inscriptions as the name of one of the Scythian tribes deported by Darius, the Achaemenian, for their turbulence (see Kalat, A Memoir on the County and Family of the Ahmadzai Khans of Kalat, by G . P . Tate) . Sajdi, another Brahui tribal name, is Scythian, the principal clan of which tribe is the Saga, both names being identifiable with the Sagetae and Saki of ancient writers . Thus there seems some reason for believing that the former occupants of at least some portions of the Brahui domain were of Scythianblood . nearly a hundred years before . This school was the model for all of the early English institutions of the kind . Dr Johnson visited it in 1773, and describes it as " a subject of philosophical curiosity . . . which no other city has to show," and Braid-wood's dozen pupils as able " to hear with the eye." In 1783 Braidwood moved to Hackney, where he died on the 24th of October 18o6 .