London’s Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital

Emotive story of the ‘lost’ children of London in the eighteenth century who found shelter at the first children’s charity, the Foundling Hospital. In 1739 Captain Thomas Coram was dismayed at the sight of children dying on the dung heaps of London. These children, mostly foundlings and orphans, were products of a poverty-stricken society where the attitude towards babies born outside of wedlock meant a life of rejection and inferiority. After seventeen years of campaigning, Coram managed to persuade sufficient ‘persons of quality and distinction’ to support his petition to the king to grant a Royal Charter for the building of the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury. Over the next few years, children were brought to the Foundling Hospital for shelter. There they were provided with excellent healthcare and an education fit for their station in life, before apprenticing the boys to learn a trade and the girls to domestic service. This fascinating history of the first children’s charity charts the rise of this incredible institution, and examines the attitude towards foundlings as illegitimate children over the years. Reliving the experience through the voices of past members of the hospital, this book is a fascinating social history of one of London’s worst cases of poverty.
AUTHOR: Gillian Pugh retired in 2005 after eight years as chief executive of Coram Family. She is currently working as advisor to the government and to local authorities on children’s services and is visiting professor at the Institute of Education in London. She was awarded the DBE in 2005 for services to children and families.