Orphans of empire: the fate of London's foundlings

381 Pages·2019·61.908 MB·English

by  Foundling Hospital, Foundling Hospital (London, England), Berry, Helen

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/01/19, SPi
Orphans of Empire
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/01/19, SPi
ORPHANS
of
EMPIRE
The fate of London’s foundlings
H E L E N B E R R Y
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/01/19, SPi
ORPHANS
of
EMPIRE
The fate of London’s foundlings
H E L E N B E R R Y
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/01/19, SPi
1
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This book is dedicated to
Mary Bamsey
(1914–2014)
and to the mothers of lost children everywhere
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/01/19, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/01/19, SPi
PREFACE
At Russell Square tube station in central London, throngs of tourists
gather daily, straight from their hotel breakfasts or discharged
from long-distance coaches, and move off in packs towards Covent
Garden. If they only took a moment and headed north-east in the
opposite direction, they would find instead a much quieter corner,
a seven-acre park known as Coram’s Fields just a few streets away.
If it is a fine day, there will be the sound of children playing. The
observant eye may spot a curious sign (‘Adults may only enter if
accompanied by a child’). This green playground, with its children’s
centre, nursery, and city farm, was once the site of the London
Foundling Hospital. It was built upon fifty-six acres of land in Lamb’s
Conduit Fields, purchased for the princely sum of £7000 in 1742
from the earl of Salisbury. All that survives today is a small colon-
nade, since the rest of the building was demolished in the 1920s.
Nearby is the Foundling Museum, where the interior of some of
the original Hospital has been preserved, complete with the valu-
able art work that was donated by famous artists of the day. Here
in the Museum it is possible to stand in the reconstructed room,
replete with fine wooden panelling and moulded ceiling, where
poverty-stricken mothers brought their infants in a desperate
attempt to have them admitted to the Hospital. The spectacle of
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Preface
their misery has been imagined by countless visitors, recreating
the public drama that was described by Georgian commentators
in vivid detail.
This book relates the history of what happened to those infants
who gained admission by chance to the London Foundling Hospital,
and who survived long enough to go out into the wider world.
Their stories are set within the context of Britain’s imperial history
from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, exploring
the social, economic, and political forces that were behind the
establishment and funding of the Hospital’s mission during the first
100 years of its existence. This is not a history of empire as told by
military historians, but it explores instead the ways in which British
imperial ambitions abroad shaped society at home. It reveals how
empire shaped the fortunes and life chances of the very poorest
members of society. This book sets out to explore how the dynam-
ics of political, cultural, and economic forces shaped Georgian
society, particularly in relation to maritime trade and warfare, and
the interconnections between the charitable deeds and interests of
the governing elite and the fortunes of the poor. It explores what
living in London, the great metropolis at the centre of what was
rapidly becoming the world’s leading superpower, meant for poor
children at the mercy of charitable institutions. The eighteenth
century witnessed new experiments in social welfare sponsored by
the ruling elite through a combination of charity and direct govern-
ment investment, among which the London Foundling Hospital
was one of the most expensive and ambitious schemes. The
Hospital was a voluntary response to the growing problem of urban
poverty, an unprecedented venture for the English that had conse-
quences, intended and unintended, not just in London but
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Preface
throughout the nation for all concerned in the enterprise. Its
influence extended globally in the pattern of the philanthropy it
modelled among the rich and powerful, and among working com-
munities in the life courses of the children it raised. Understanding
this phenomenon will require a certain amount of openness to
rethinking the motivation on the part of those who sought to ‘do
good’ in their own time, and a nuanced understanding of the com-
plicated motivations for people to engage in charitable works, both
in the eighteenth century and today.
The sources of evidence relating to those whose lives depended
upon charity are extremely difficult to piece together in the archives.
First-hand accounts written by society’s poorest members who
often had little or no literacy are almost non-existent, so the
fragments that document their lives are usually mediated through
others: the accounts of clerks, court scribes, and commentators.
The voices of orphaned and abandoned children are very difficult
to hear in modern times: recovering them from almost 300 years
ago is almost but not quite impossible. The history of George King,
a former foundling who wrote a detailed autobiographical account
of his life, is woven through the narrative of this book, a single, pre-
cious thread. Other foundling voices join his in smaller, broken
whispers. Together, they tell the story of what it was like to be raised
without knowing the name you were given at birth, nor the identity
of your parents, during the century before Queen Victoria came to
the throne.
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