Families
Alice Betteridge meets Helen Keller
In 1948, two women whose release from a dark and silent void brought enduring hope to thousands of special children met for the first time at the Wahroonga Blind School in Sydney�s north.
Alice Betteridge meets Helen Keller One was Helen Keller, the legendary deaf and blind American writer and lecturer, who proved through her own remarkable experience that children with multiple disabilities could communicate, learn and inspire.
The other was Alice Betteridge, a highly intelligent former country girl from the Hunter Valley described by many as "Australia's Helen Keller".
Visiting Australia to raise funds for the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind, Keller was only too pleased to meet her Australian counterpart.
And Alice was just as delighted to meet the woman who had done much to wipe out the widespread ignorance that had sentenced so many other similarly disabled children to a life of misery.
While the two women had grown up worlds and decades apart, their courageous lives had followed remarkably similar paths. Both could see and hear at birth only to be robbed of sight and sound by the age of two from suspected meningitis.
In each case it was a dedicated teacher who held the key that enabled Helen Keller and Alice Betteridge to learn to communicate, in the process turning conventional thinking on its head.
Theirs was a breakthrough of enormous significance. Until Helen Keller and, a few years later, Alice Betteridge proved otherwise, people who were deaf and blind were often considered mentally incapable of communication, let alone being educated.
It was commonplace for children with multiple disabilities � plus the wild behaviour accompanying their frustration - to be committed to grotesque Dickensian institutions. Good fortune spared Alice Betteridge such a fate.
Alice Betteridge's story
Illness had left Alice Betteridge both deaf and blind Alice was born in 1901 at Sawyers Gully, near Maitland, to caring and, as it would prove, enlightened parents, George and Emily Betteridge. It was Emily who made the shattering discovery that illness had left their bright and bubbly daughter deaf and blind � a beautiful mind locked in a seemingly impenetrable void.
Emily�s quest to free Alice led to the little girl becoming the first child with such severe sensory loss to be educated in Australia. Her journey from the void began in 1905 with a visit to what is now the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children.
By the standards of the day, the centre was a place of enlightenment. Its superintendent, Samuel Watson, had been in charge of the school since 1870 and was a visionary, considered by some a "renaissance man".
In a refreshing approach to children with disabilities, he decreed that they should be treated like other children and, in a distinctly Australian way, "average naughtiness" on their part ought to be tolerated.
Samuel Watson Fortunately for Alice, Watson and his board were aware of the Helen Keller "miracle" in America some years earlier. They kept Alice for three months and, though their first attempt was unsuccessful, they asked Emily to send Alice back when she was a little older and vowed to educate her "just like Helen Keller". Alice returned in 1908 � although Watson knew it would be no easy task to educate her. Indeed, he was honest enough to say in his annual report at the end of 1907 that they dreaded embarking on the journey ahead.
But like Keller, whose world was opened by her devoted teacher Anne Sullivan, it would be a newly-graduated Australian teacher who held the key to Alice�s dark and silent world.
With an arts degree from The University of Sydney, Roberta Reid, the daughter of a Sydney Evening News typesetter, was hired by Samuel Watson to take charge of a class of 13 blind children.
Alice Betteridge, a frustrated and wild seven-year-old, could not have asked for a more dedicated teacher who daily demonstrated boundless patience as she made Alice a personal mission � on top of her already huge work schedule.
When the communication breakthrough finally came it was amazingly similar to Helen Keller�s experience. With infinite patience, Anne Sullivan had used "finger spelling" in an attempt to show young Keller that objects had names.
After many failed attempts, the connection was made thanks to a stream of water from a standpipe. As the water flowed over Keller�s hand, Sullivan finger spelled water onto the child�s other hand.
Recalling the great day, Keller wrote: "Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me."
Roberta Reid teaching typewriting (1906)Alice�s breakthrough came with a shoe of all things. Time and time again, Roberta Reid had placed various objects in Alice�s hand and finger spelled their names, always to no avail.
Brought up in the country, Alice had been used to running around barefoot. Now, for reasons she could not understand, unseen hands persisted in putting shoes on her feet � which she took off just as quickly. One day, Reid put a shoe in Alice�s hand and dutifully finger spelled "shoe". This time, Alice replied, tentatively finger-spelling shoe onto Roberta's own hand before reaching out to touch an object so mundane but, on this day, a life-changing revelation.
With the connection between names and objects made, nothing would hold Alice back ever again. Her natural intelligence and burning curiosity now obvious to all, Alice�s appetite for more words and information became voracious.
The frustrated seven-year-old was soon being described by staff as a "winsome, lovable human being".
She mastered reading and writing braille and before long had read most of the books in the school library. By 1920 Alice was the dux of the school. It was no surprise when the school�s engaging star pupil was invited to stay on to help others.
Unlike Helen Keller, a best-selling author and the subject of films and a Broadway play, Alice Betteridge�s life was relatively low key, but this in no way diminished the significance of her achievements.
Again unlike Keller, who, with teacher Anne Sullivan had to resort to appearances on vaudeville where they recreated the "water" breakthrough, Alice was spared the indignity of having to "perform" to earn a living.
By the time she met Keller in Sydney, Alice had been happily married for nine years to a blind penfriend, Will Chapman, of Melbourne. Tragically, just three weeks after the women�s historic meeting, Alice lost Will to a massive heart attack.
True to form, Alice emerged from her grief and continued to amaze with her adventurous spirit and insatiable curiosity, touring New Zealand and enduring four days marooned at Maitland Railway Station in the great flood of 1955.
When Alice Betteridge died from cancer in 1966 aged 65, she was living at the appropriately named Helen Keller House at Woollahra.
The Alice Betteridge School
Today, Alice�s legacy continues to inspire through the work of the centre named in her honour, the Alice Betteridge School at the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children at North Rocks. Principal Julie Shylan says Alice and her dedicated teacher Roberta Reid will never be forgotten in Australia as long as there are special children who need special care.
"Just as it was with Alice, communication is still one of the most important elements in beginning the education process for our students," Julie said. "Building a trusting relationship between teacher, therapist and student is crucial to achieving that first breakthrough."
The Alice Betteridge School is recognised internationally for its outstanding curriculum and staff who are employed in the education of children aged between 4� and 18 years who have sensory disability as well as an intellectual disability. Some of the children also have physical disabilities.
Today, it is hard to imagine deaf and blind children being committed to soulless institutions where, had things followed their normal course, the sparkling minds of Alice Betteridge and Helen Keller could have been imprisoned.