The charity began over 150 years ago, when Thomas Pocock created The Protestant Blind Society, a charity to make small grants to blind and partially sighted people in need. It continued to make small grants up to the 1960s.

In 1884, the charity was renamed The Blind Pension Society, and three years later, in her Golden Jubilee Year, Queen Victoria became patron of the Society and the charity became The Royal Blind Pension Society. As the role of the charity developed, it began to provide specialist holidays, running over 19,000 of them for blind and partially sighted people until 2014.

In 2000, the charity’s name changed again, this time to the Royal Blind Society for the UK, which reflected the wider scope of its work. A subsequent merger with the Eyeless Trust in 2013 saw the charity develop a new focus on supporting vision impaired children and their families, through a national Family Support Service.

Reflecting this change, the charity changed its name for the final time in 2015, becoming the Royal Society for Blind Children (RSBC).