Ben Purse
Benjamin Ormond Purse (29 August 187431 March 1950) was a British trade unionist and campaigner for the rights of blind people. Purse, who was completely blind by the age of 13, was a piano tuner. He became a founder-member of the National League of the Blind (NLB) in 1894 and was elected as its first general secretary in 1897. Purse held the position for two years, during which he founded its journal the Blind Advocate. Purse became president of the NLB in 1905 and held the position until 1916. He was regarded as particularly energetic in this role, successfully negotiating concessionary travel for blind people with 37 municipal authorities, attending an international conference and giving evidence to the 1907 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws. The early NLB had been a combative organisation, confronting charities that it claimed exploited blind workers, but Purse put it on more conciliatory footing, that won it support from key political figures. Purse campaigned for neonatal conjunctivitis to become a notifiable disease, which was achieved in 1914 and in the same year joined a government committee that helped influence the bill that became the Blind Persons Act 1920. Purse became a founder-member of the government's