Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/211

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Braidley
199
Braidwood

methods by Heidenhain of Breslau, who, however, in his work published in 1880, does not mention the earlier investigator. Several translations of Braid's works have been published in France and Germany, one of the most recent being a German rendering of nearly all his writings, issued by W. Preyer in 1882, under the title 'Der Hypnotismus: ausgewählte Schriften von J. Braid.'

[Med. Times and Gazette. 1860, i. 365, 386; Manchester Courier. 31 March 1860; Encyc. Brit. (9th edit.) xv. 278 Carpenter's Mental Physiology, pp. 160, 548, 601; Carpenter's Mesmerism. &c., p. 16; Nineteenth Century, September 1860, p. 479; P. Janet in Journal Officiel, 6 May 1884; Littré, Dict. de Médecine, 1884, p. 797.]

C. W. S.

BRAIDLEY, BENJAMIN (1792–1845), writer on Sunday schools, the son of Benjamin Braidley, a farmer, was born at Sedgefield, Durham, on 19 Aug. 1792. He was apprenticed to a firm of linen importers in Manchester, and in 1813 first became an active worker in the Bennett Street Sunday schools. In 1815, 1,635 pupils received prizes for regular attendance, and in 1816, 2,020 scholars were on the rolls of the schools. In 1830 Braidley was constable, and in 1831 and 1832 boroughreeve of Manchester. He was also high constable of the hundred of Salford. In 1835 he was twice the unsuccessful candidate in the conservative interest for the parliamentary representation of Manchester. Braidley visited America in 1837, and his diary during his visit shows his great interest in education, the slavery question, and religion, as regarded from an evangelical standpoint. He was a commission agent, and became wealthy; but by the failure of the Northern and Central Bank he lost the greater part of his fortune. Braidley was the author of ‘Sunday School Memorials,’ Manchester, 1831, 12mo, which contains short biographies of persons connected with the Bennett Street Sunday schools. This work, some portions of which first appeared in the ‘Christian Guardian,’ has passed through four editions, the last of which, greatly enlarged, was published in 1880, under the title of ‘Bennett Street Memorials.’ Braidley also contributed to the ‘Shepherd's Voice,’ a religious magazine, and wrote several tracts in a local controversy as to the doctrines of the church of Rome. He died of apoplexy 3 April 1845. He was unmarried.

[Memoir of Benjamin Braidley, Esq. (by William Harper), 1845, 12mo, contains extracts from his diary; Bennett Street Memorials, 1880, containing a portrait of Braidley, with a memoir by the Rev. Henry Taylor.]

E. C. A. A.

BRAIDWOOD, JAMES (1800–1861), superintendent of the London fire-brigade, was born at Edinburgh in the year 1800, and was the son of a respectable tradesman in that city. He was educated at the High School, and afterwards he followed the building trade. In 1824 he joined the police, and, having been appointed superintendent of fire-engines in Edinburgh, he at once set to work to organise efficient fire-brigade.

Nor was it too soon; for in that year Edinburgh was visited by a terrible conflagration, which destroyed a great part of the High Street and the steeple of the Tron Church. At this fire his coolness, determination, and daring were conspicuously shown: an ironmonger's shop was in flames, and Braidwood, hearing there was gunpowder on the premises, entered, and at the utmost personal risk to himself carried out first one and then another barrel of powder.

In 1830 he published a pamphlet 'On the Construction of Fire-engines and Apparatus, the Training of Firemen, and the Method of Proceeding in Cases of Fire.' This little work brought him into more than local notoriety, and eventually led to his appointment, in 1832, as superintendent of the London Fire-engine Establishment, then supported by the different insurance companies. On leaving Edinburgh the firemen gave him a gold watch, and the committee made him a present of a valuable piece of plate.

In London he had but the very small force of 120 men under him; yet, by his activity, energy, and perseverance, he kept the fires which occurred in the metropolis in very fair subjection. He fell a victim to his duty on 22 June 1861, while endeavouring to subdue a huge conflagration at Cotton's Wharf and Depot, Tooley Street, London Bridge, where he was crushed by a falling wall, and buried in the ruins. His body, terribly mutilated, was recovered two days afterwards, and he was buried at Abney Park Cemetery on 29 June.

He was for nearly thirty years an associate of the Institute of Civil Engineers, and to that learned body, as well as to the Society of Arts, be read many papers connected with the prevention and extinction of fires.

[Gent. Mag. 1861. p. 212.]

J. A.

BRAIDWOOD, THOMAS (1715–1806), teacher of the deaf and dumb, was born in Scotland in 1715, and educated at Edinburgh University. He was some time assistant in the grammar school at Hamilton, and afterwards opened a mathematical school in Edinburgh. In 1760, a boy named Charles Sherriff, born deaf, and hence mute, was placed with