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"Home page" for images from papers creating Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital

The details of an amazing man's achievement



Have a quick look at what follows, by all means. But if you have never visited the parent page, with "scene setting", I hope you will visit it one day. It tries to explain what an amazing achievement Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital was, which may not be clear to you. And goes into the story of how long the road he traveled was. And gives Mr Handel's Messiah credit, for its part in the story.

Broadly speaking, if a child did not obtain a place in the hospital before he or she was two months old, that child's chance was gone.

Remember: The term "hospital" meant "a place of hospitality", not "a place where advanced medical care is provided".

Very strict rules and procedures were laid down for the determination of whether a child would be accepted.

Then the children, babies, were sent off to be cared for by wet nurses until they were about four years old. Even in the harsh time of the 1700s, a big institution was not seen as the right place for the babies and toddlers. In any case, there were practical considerations, and the governors of the Foundling Hospital were practical men, thank heavens, to a large extent unencumbered by the various concerns of people who weren't actually providing the desperately scare care and education of the needy children.

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But, as the last sentence of the extract on the left, concerning when the child's time with the wet nurse would end illustrates, I hope, the men who made the rules were not martinets, and the welfare of a child sometimes "trumped" a "rule". But note that the child's cloths... probably pretty minimal, still had to be returned from the wet nurse, and proper accounts kept along the way.

Note also the mention that the children would be inoculated against smallpox. In 1735. Jenner did not do his great work about smallpox vaccination until the late 1700s. In 1735, the inoculation available was very much better than nothing, but still a high risk procedure. (At the excellent Foundling Hospital Museum, on the site of the hospital, one of the exhibits is of the "account books", recording the consequences of the inoculation program. If you live in the happy belief that smallpox is just sort of a very bad measles, read Richard Preston's excellent "Demon in the Freezer". Especially as it is possible that stocks of smallpox virus still exist, for possible use as bio-weapons.

(In passing: Just as our study of the Foundling Hospital reveals certain differences to attitudes, Jenner expecting to be allowed to test his smallpox vaccine on his gardener's son, and then expose him to something which otherwise should have brought on full fledged smallpox might be said to be "from a different age", do you think?)




More pages concerning Thomas Coram and his Foundling Hospital

For my broader introduction to Thomas Coram and his Foundling Hospital.

For more pages with images from the book I saw with the Royal Charter, the Act of Parliament, and the 1735 Bylaws....

The children's daily routine.
What was the plan for the children when they were grown?
The procedures for a child's discharge. Also the charity's accounts for its first three years.
How a child might gain a place at the hospital. This is a long extract from the bylaws, involving a 625kb graphic... but I think it will repay the time it takes to load.


(More pages are in the works)





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