Foundling Hospital

The Foundling Hospital is a foundling hospital in London founded by former Captain Thomas Coram in 1739 and opened in 1741 . Its main purpose was to accommodate foundlings and orphans as well as infants from poor, often single mothers who could not provide for their offspring's livelihood.

history

Thomas Coram had to wait 17 years before King George II gave him permission to found the hospital. The project was countered by moral concerns. It was feared that morals would collapse if mothers gave birth to children at will without having to look after them. The facility was financed by donations and gifts from wealthy citizens and nobles. The infants could either be deposited anonymously in a box at the entrance to the institution or given to the hospital staff by their mothers. Eighteen boys and 12 girls were the first to enter the Foundling Hospital. In the period that followed, the rush was huge. The mothers were asked to hand over their children personally. The lot decided on the admission. Those who were unlucky had to go back to the streets. The mothers were no longer allowed to contact the abandoned child, even if they had a lifelong remorse. The admitted children were provided with clothes, distributed as infants to wet nurses in and outside the city, brought up in the Christian faith and schooled to the point that they could later complete an apprenticeship. For many children that was the salvation. Others, however, experienced hell, be it with the foster parents or in the apprenticeship. Numerous deaths are documented.

Although it is repeatedly emphasized that the care for the children was exemplary for the circumstances at the time, only around half of the children admitted survived in the first fifteen years after the establishment of the institution. By comparison, the infant mortality rate from erratic blocks in the normal poor and workhouses was almost 99%. When parliament decreed that all infants offered to the institution had to be admitted, and as a result the Foundling Hospital overflowed with small children, the number of deaths rose dramatically: of around 15,000 children, more than 10,000 died in three years. Parliament then withdrew its edition.

Founding Hospital's founding members and board of directors included famous men of the time including Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough , Francis Godolphin, 2nd Earl of Godolphin , the composer George Frideric Handel, and the painter William Hogarth .

Chapel of the Foundling Hospital

Connection to the artist scene

The asylum's assembly room was also used for exhibitions of contemporary English art, and concerts were held in the chapel, making the hospital a cultural center. In 1746, for example, Hogarth and other English artists donated several paintings with biblical scenes to the institution, showing, for example, the finding of little Moses in a basket, the boy Moses in front of the Pharaoh's daughter or poor children before Christ . In the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Handel gave a three-part concert in the chapel on May 27, 1749, composed of earlier and newly composed works with the famous Anthem "Blessed are they that consider the Poor and Needy". In 1750 the composer donated an organ for the chapel and started the tradition of performing his " Messiah " there every year .

The institution later became the " Thomas Coram Foundation for Children ". and the foundation's art treasures can be seen today in the "Foundling Museum".

literature

The Foundling Museum Guide Book. The Foundling Museum, London 2004.
Ruth McClure: Coram's Children. The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century. New Haven and London 1981.
RH Nichols and FA Wray: The History of the Foundling Hospital. London 1935.
H. Berry: Orphans of Empire. The Fate of London's Foundlings . Oxford University Press 2019

Web links

Commons : Foundling Hospital - collection of pictures, videos and audio files