Book offers insight into world of disabled children 100 years ago
It's 1901, and an 11-year-old boy, born without hands, is staring into the camera and holding a pencil in his toes. "I am learning to use the typewriter with my toes," Frank Gardello wrote. "I can play football, play on a little toy piano, and can ride a bicycle."
Readers will be able to learn more about Gardello and hundreds of other disabled children like him next month, when Arcadia Publishing releases a 128-page volume called "Cotting School."
Founded in Boston in 1893, the day school for disabled children is considered the first of its kind in the country. At its inception, seven students received instruction at the Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children, according to a draft copy of the book. Classes were held in the basement of an Episcopal church on Chambers Street.
By 1903, thanks to a $150,000 fund-raising campaign that involved figures like Isabella Stewart Gardner, the school built a state-of-the-art building on St. Botolph Street. Trustees such as former
Authors David Manzo, the school's president, and Elizabeth Peters, its director of development, said they collected hundreds of photos, scoured archives in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and pored over years of annual reports. The results not only memorialize the school, but also pay respect to the students and teachers who walked its halls and chronicle the history of disability and education in America and of philanthropy in Massachusetts.
A lot of prejudice, doubt, and physical impairment has been overcome since the school began, the authors said. "We as a school helped change attitudes toward kids with disabilities," said Manzo.
JOHN DYER
