Short abstract
40 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ
Rating: ★★★★
Stigma, separation, segregation, and loss—the Foundling Museum, which opened in London's Bloomsbury last month, tells a sad tale. How could it be otherwise? Among the most affecting objects are the small tokens mothers attached to their babies when they left them to the care of the Foundling Hospital, hoping one day to reclaim the children they could not support.
Between its inception in 1741 and its closure in 1953 the hospital, founded by the childless philanthropist Thomas Coram, looked after 27 000 deserted children. Admitted when they were under a year, babies were baptised by the hospital, given a new name, put out to a wet nurse or foster mother, and then readmitted between the ages of three and six and cared for until they were 21. Only a few were ever reclaimed by their mothers.
Figure 1.
Boys march out of the hospital for the last time before relocation to Surrey, 1926
Credit: FOUNDLING MUSEUM/CORAM FAMILY
Criteria for admission drawn up in 1801 specified: “illegitimacy, first child, healthy baby under one, mother of good character.” Admission days were held when mothers drew balls out of a bag. A white ball meant their baby would be examined and admitted if healthy, red meant the waiting list, and a black ball meant rejection. In the early years about two-thirds of applicants were turned away.
And admission did not guarantee a healthy future. Developmental defects resulting from malnutrition were common, and, the museum catalogue notes, “a general lack of protein meant most foundlings grew up to be noticeably shorter than average.”
The hospital had its own school, dispensary, and medical service—Dr Richard Mead, physician to King George II, was an early patron who gave his services free—and contact with the outside world was discouraged. Children were told to keep at least 12 feet (3.7 metres) from the gates. They wore uniform, had uniform haircuts, slept in large dormitories known as wards, and walked everywhere crocodile fashion. “Boys and girls only met once a year at the Twelfth Night dance. And we were never told the facts of life,” recalls one former resident in a taped account.
Admitted to the hospital in March 1926, when the hospital had moved from its original site in Bloomsbury to Redhill, Mary Bentley describes being stripped of all her clothes, having her head shaved, and being put in a bath which, in retrospect, she finds “rather demeaning.” But she says, “I loved school and had many friends I have kept in touch with and the medical care was excellent.” Mary traced her birth mother and kept in touch with her until her death. “I didn't like her but I did look after her.”
In another taped account, Harold Tarrant, now 92, who was admitted to the Foundling Hospital in winter 1912, recalls terrible food, bullying, canings, complete segregation, a brutal headmaster, and inspection by the Duke of Connaught, a vice president of the hospital. When he was 10 he developed an abscess on his shoulder and was treated in St Bartholomew's Hospital for a month, and remembers a nurse bringing him a Christmas parcel. It was the first he had had.
He made lifelong friends at the Foundling Hospital and became an engineering apprentice but he says, “It was not a life I would have wished on anyone else.”
Figure 2.
Foundling Girls at Prayer in the Chapel by Sophie Anderson (18th century)
Credit: FOUNDLING MUSEUM/CORAM FAMILY
John Caldicott was admitted in 1936 after his mother lost her job in a laundry and could not face bringing up her baby in a workhouse. He was still there when the hospital closed in 1953 and the remaining 50 children were fostered. He remembers “an almost Victorian regime” which did not allow children to forget their origins. “You were made to understand you were very much second class citizens, born out of wedlock, and that our mothers had been given a chance to repair their lives.” He left with no qualifications, was apprenticed to a radio company, had his own family and traced his birth mother and five half brothers.
“They [the hospital] did give me enough education to get me by and retire a relatively happy man,” he says. “But there is a sadness about my life in the Foundling Hospital and without doubt there are scars. I am never able to show affection to my sons,” he says. “I regret my lost childhood and theirs.”