Guilly d'Herbemont

Biography

Guilly d'Herbemont (25 June 1888 – 28 February 1980) was the inventor of the white cane for blind people. Guilly was the daughter of a Belgian and a Frenchman. She was born in Brussels as a child, she lived alternately in Brussels and Paris. She later moved to Paris as a musician and writer. It occurred to her that blind people on the streets of Paris were increasingly endangered by the motorization of transport. The police in France used white signal sticks to regulate traffic and stop cars. d'Herbemont had the idea of putting the color white on sticks for visually impaired and blind transporters in order to draw attention to themselves.

In 1930, d'Herbemont wrote a letter to the director of the national daily newspaper L'Écho de Paris. This letter was published leading to much consternation. After the letter was published, the World Blind Union recommended this innovation to be used globally to governments, and the white cane officially became the symbol of the blind.

On 7 February 1931 d'Herbemont symbolically presented, in the presence of several ministers, the first two white canes. These were given to a blind soldier and a blind civilian. These were followed by the distribution of 5000 white canes to blind French veterans from World War I and blind civilians.