Colour blindness and defective eyesight in the personnel of the Mercantile Marine : evidence of Mr. Bickerton (Liverpool) given before the President of the Board of Trade, Feb. 1, 1895, on the Board of Trade tests and regulations for eyesight and colour blindness.

  • Thomas Herbert Bickerton
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Colour blindness and defective eyesight in the personnel of the Mercantile Marine : evidence of Mr. Bickerton (Liverpool) given before the President of the Board of Trade, Feb. 1, 1895, on the Board of Trade tests and regulations for eyesight and colour blindness. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by the Board of Trade as colour-perfect, are now, on the institution of further tests, found to be colour-blind, with the result of being at once deprived of the highest and most respon¬ sible and lucrative positions in the Mercantile Marine Service ? Such a deprivation, it can readily be understood, means in most cases not only the sudden collapse of ambition in life, but ruin and sometimes starvation to themselves and families. The case of a seaman named John Smith will serve for illustration. Having been 20 years at sea, and having successfully passed in turn the examinations for second mate, first mate and captain, under some of the best shipping companies, he found himself, at the age of 33, under the necessity of being re-tested at the instance of his employer, whose activity in this direction had been aroused by public atten¬ tion being so much attracted to the subject. The result was that the officer was declared to be colour-blind and that he could no longer hold his position. Though he had previously hardly ever suffered a day’s illness, his dismissal so preyed upon his mind that he died shortly after¬ wards. Another case which might be cited is that of a gentleman, aged 40, who had spent twenty-six and a half years of his life at sea, and who, in the service of some of the leading steam¬ ship companies in England, had held the post of first officer. On his employer insisting on a re-examination he was found to be colour-blind and was immediately reduced from a position of affluence on one of the finest passenger steamers sailing out of the port of Liverpool to a condition of penury. The best shipowners in such cases provide shore duty of some kind which, though
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