← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
Inside the Foundling: London's First Orphanage (Part 2)
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- [00:00]
Anthony Delaney
Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling. And if you would like After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access.
- [00:10]
Maddy Pelling
Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.
- [00:21]
Anthony Delaney
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:29]
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- [01:41]
Maddy Pelling
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- [01:43]
Matt Lewis
It's perfect.
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Dr. Laurie Santos
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Maddy Pelling
Yeah.
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- [02:00]
Matt Lewis
So I'm walking up the original staircase from the Foundling hospital. The original building. This would have been in the boy's wing and it's this huge, vast, grand wooden structure. It's got these really thick banisters and it's this incredibly intimidating architectural space. But it's also one that has this intimate history. You can just imagine as you walk up it, very breathily, I might add, the little feet that would have walked up and down it, that would have rushed up to bed at the dormitory at the top of the building at night, but also rushed down in the morning to have breakfast in the food hall. An amazing survival on this staircase is this metal rod that runs the length all the way down the building. It's a safety feature and it was put in place because, allegedly, so goes the story, one of the foundlings actually slid down the banister and fell to his death, sadly. And we don't necessarily know if that story was true. It's the kind of story that, you know, little boys love to tell up and down schools in the country. But I think it's testament to just what a palpable piece of history this staircase is. You walk it and you can almost reach out and touch the little sticky hands that would have been making their way to bed in the evening. You can feel the lives that lived here that played out in this space.
- [03:16]
Maddy Pelling
You're listening to After Dark Today. It's part two of the story of London's lost children and the foundling hospital.
- [03:44]
Anthony Delaney
Hello and welcome to After Dark. My name is Anthony.
- [03:47]
Maddy Pelling
And I am Maddie.
- [03:49]
Anthony Delaney
And in our first episode on London's Foundling Hospital, we followed the really early history of this institution and the ways mothers might get their children admitted to what they believed was a better life of safety and opportunity. And we learned about the poverty and the danger in the city streets, ideas of charity and suppose virtue signalling, that we talked about in episode one. We talked about Georgian society, some of the key players in Georgian society too, and the systems that were put in place to judge these women as well, particularly as the century goes on and into the 19th century. Down with the Victorians for all sorts of reasons that they could no longer support their children.
- [04:28]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, it's been a difficult and frankly, harrowing history that Anthony and I got quite cross about last episode. One thing that stood out for me, and I don't know if you agree with me, Anthony, was the tokens themselves going to the foundling and standing in front of that glass case, looking at those tokens, those tokens left by mothers who imbued those little objects with so much hope. Those were the means by which they would identify their children if they ever came back for them. That was so powerful and so moving to me. I can see them all in my mind's eye.
- [05:03]
Anthony Delaney
One thing which I just want to add at this point, right. And I mean this with the utmost respect to everybody who has children, but after that narrative that you did at the start of this episode, I'm so glad I don't have children, because that was what you were saying, was all very beautiful and eloquent. Eloquent, oh, my God, I don't do much drag race. Eloquent. And it was, you know, so historically informative and everything. And I was just freaking out because of the chaos. Music that was going on behind it. But then you made it worse because you started talking about sticky hands. And I was like, God, this is just horrendous. I'm not sure what the dark part of this history is anymore, Having children or this foundling museum, I don't know. But I'm just glad I'm not part of the story, that's all I know.
- [05:49]
Maddy Pelling
And she would be the first person to hand over his infants.
- [05:52]
Anthony Delaney
Oh, God, that was so chaotic and so traumatic. Like, you know, there's always this thing when you don't have children. I mean, we're in a same sex couple, so it's a little bit easier for us. But there's always this thing when you don't have children where you get this kind of a, oh, you don't have children. And it's like, babe, I don't have children. I'm so happy about that situation. It's absolutely fine. And just that sticky hand thing made me kind of go.
- [06:15]
Maddy Pelling
I think it is always really important and very helpful to establish at the top of an episode about the history of children that you do not want them or indeed like them. So that's great going forward.
- [06:24]
Anthony Delaney
I don't dislike them. It's not that I dislike them. My nephews, well, one of them's 18 now and the other one's like five. And I like them very, very much. Some might go as far as to say, I love those two, but I wouldn't want any of my own. I can barely keep the dogs alive. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. The dogs are still fine, by the way. If the RSPCA is listening to this, they are very well taken care of.
- [06:43]
Maddy Pelling
And they do not have sticky paws.
- [06:45]
Anthony Delaney
They don't? No, they don't have sticky paws.
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Maddy Pelling
And no access to the piano.
- [06:48]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. No. No. Oh, was that what that was? Was that a child playing on a piano?
- [06:52]
Maddy Pelling
I don't think it was a child.
- [06:54]
Anthony Delaney
Okay, I'm not gonna say anything else. It's fine. It is what it is. Now, in this episode, we are going to be following the children after they've been, what, a transition, Anthony. We are gonna be following the children's histories who have now been left by their parents. They've been deposited into the care of the foundling hospital. We wanna know a little bit more about what it's like for those infants and how basically through fate, that they found themselves growing up inside these iconic walls. I suppose so, Maddy, just give us a bit of a quick recap about what we Discovered contextually about what's happening during this history.
- [07:29]
Maddy Pelling
Okay, so the 18th century, we've got the Georges on the throne. When Thomas Corran first sets up the hospital, we have George II on the throne. And in 1760, George III is made king. So that's happening. Britain and London in particular, are part of a growing empire, an empire that is underpinned and fueled really by a brutal trade in human beings. But that brings into this centre of the city enormous wealth, enormous growth, and accompanying that, enormous poverty. The divide between rich and poor is getting bigger and bigger. And for the poor people of the city, navigating life is very, very difficult. There's cheap access to things like gin that are bringing all kinds of social problems. And there is, of course, a problem with these children that Coram saw at the beginning of the. Of the century being abandoned in the streets. And the mortality rate there is really high. But I also want to talk about this issue of morality and the illegitimacy of children in this era and how as the century goes on, there's so much concern with that. There's an interesting, I suppose, kind of revolution that happens in this moment around the idea of romance and love. Romantic novels start to appear. There's this idea of marrying for love, that love is the thing, romantic love, specifically between men and women. It's, you know, limited.
- [09:01]
Anthony Delaney
Exclusively.
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Maddy Pelling
Exclusively, yes, that. That's the thing to aim for. And it starts to seep into people's lives. And elopements, sex before marriage, unsuitable unions, all start to become a problem. And so much so, there are laws put in place to try and prevent people from giving over to romance and the. The inevitable consequences that follow that. So in 1753, for example, the Marriage act is brought in, which requires couples who are hoping to get married have to put up the bans. I think it's something. And nowadays, I think it's about two weeks before. I wonder if it was longer in the 18th century. But you had to announce in church that you were getting married. And this was to stop fortune hunters trying to marry young heiresses. But also people who just. Their families, their friends, nobody wanted that match. And you start to get people eloping to Gretna Green, things like that. And of course, the children who come from these unions are often unwanted. They're not the only children who end up in the foundling. But I think it's an interesting route into thinking about some of the circumstances, the origin stories of some of these children. There's a sort of moral panic, specifically around illegitimacy and the pursuit of what's seen as quite sort of selfish investment in romance that becomes an issue and it becomes a sort of morally bad thing to aspire to.
- [10:23]
Anthony Delaney
So let's think a little bit about what we discovered in episode one. We have this foundling hospital that's founded by Thomas Coram the great and the good of 18th century society, including the Royal family, are involved even financially. So this is a really heavily backed institution. We discovered in episode one the various ways that the children might be admitted. One was through essentially a lottery system of picking a certain color from a bag as you're being looked at by the well heeled women of Georgian England that then changed quite quickly into. You present your child through basically a hatch in the wall and the child is assessed and either admitted or not admitted. And then we move into the 19th century. And then there's this idea of the deserving poor, whether or not the mother most often concerned is worthy of putting her child into the care of the founding hospital. Maddy went to visit the founding hospital this week and looked at some of the tokens there. And the tokens were left one part of the token with the child. A token might be a coin, it might be a hazelnut, as Maddie Describ described in the last episode, might be a piece of cloth. And half of that was left with the child and the other half was left with the mother, just in case her circumstances ever changed and she could come back and claim the child. So we have this heightened, this Palladian building, this grand Palladian building inside which these heightened human stories are taking place. And it's all this veneer of respectability which is very Georgian. But actually what's happening inside is far more complex and emotionally driven. So that's kind of where we got to last time, Maddie in episode one. So where are we heading in this in episode two?
- [11:59]
Maddy Pelling
So now we are heading through the doors of the hospital itself and we're going to be following these children who are deposited by these parents, most often them, their own mothers, into the care of the hospital. And we're going to look at what this institution was like from the inside and what the experience of these children was like as they grew up. A lot of them entered as children, but as you know, tiny babies really. I mean, some days old even. But they left as teenagers and went out into the world. So what happened in those years in between? As ever, I have an image for you to describe which is the centre of one of the buildings on that.
- [12:38]
Anthony Delaney
Site, right this is not an image I'm familiar with. So this is interesting for me. It's the first time I'm seeing it. It is again an interior of a Palladian building. This time you're seeing the columns, you're seeing the symmetrical windows. Everything's laid out in proper order and it's very church like what I'm seeing. It's very new build church if you were in the 18th century. There's a pulpit, there's an organ. The place is packed to the rafters. The building is spread over two levels. The walls aren't particularly ornate. They are very classical, very symmetrical. And there are wooden pews on the ground level. I think there's people standing on the upper levels from what I can make out. And yeah, those wooden pews are very much packed and everybody's very well dressed. These are not poor. And yeah, I've never seen this one before. Maddy?
- [13:29]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. So this is an image by the artist Thomas Rawlinson, who was working at the end of the 18th, beginning of the 19th century. And this is from a collection of images known as the Microcosm of London. It's a fascinating insight into a lot of the interior spaces and exterior spaces of the city of London at the end of the 18th century. And a lot of them don't exist anymore like this one. So it's a really amazing view of a city that is kind of a ghost city to us. Now this is, as you may have guessed, the inside of the church at the Foundling Hospital. And we know from episode one that the church was this incredibly important centre of the hospital, not least because the children were expected to go there every single day and twice on a Sunday. But also because it's absolutely symbolic of the moral message of this institution and the sort of rock upon which it's built. You're absolutely right to say that it's completely packed with the patrons, the most fashionable people in London who are coming to see this. And I don't know if you noticed on the the pulpit, it's a sort of like triple decker pulpit. There are three men on different levels. I mean, could you get any more enthusiastic and holy this is. This is religion at its most fervent. Around the organ on the top level, there are all the children from the Foundling Hospital and they're in their uniform.
- [14:51]
Anthony Delaney
Is that who that is?
- [14:52]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. So they're kind of sea of uniform colour. They're sort of gray blue in this image and they've been, you know, washed and scrubbed and turned out nicely for the great and good of London to come and see them as part of this worshipful but extremely voyeuristic event. So this gives you some insight into the culture of the hospital and the way in which the children were put on display, essentially. And here we're seeing people coming to look at the work the hospital is doing, like, oh, you know, aren't they doing a good job? Aren't those children clean and polite According to our 18th century, early 19th century values?
- [15:31]
Anthony Delaney
1 of the things I'm noticing in this image, Maddie, is that when you're looking, there's a discrepancy between the depiction of the children and the depiction of the people, the patrons, let's say, who are gathered in the church here. And the children are very nondescript. They become this blur of blue, basically. And underneath, if you look at the individuals, they're rendered more individually, shall we say, than the children have been like. The children have essentially no features whatsoever.
- [15:58]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, the children are not important in this image. It's about the fashionable celebrities that are in the crowd. Right.
- [16:04]
Anthony Delaney
And it says something about the importance of status and class within the confines of this interior. But it's interesting because it relates to Thomas Coram, the hospital's founder own in society, because he was actually voted off the board of governors very soon after it opens. Now, his name is still associated with the Foundling Hospital and the Foundling Museum today, but he was essentially ousted, at least from that position of power, because he was deemed too, I guess, rough and ready for the elite that were attracted to it.
- [16:37]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is a man who started this whole movement, really, and looked around him and saw the terrible poverty and wanted to do something about it, but the sort of juggernaut that he creates in the Foundling Hospital, which, you know, arguably was doing amazing work and delivering these children from terrible lives, but at a price agreed by the upper echelons of society. And Coram himself doesn't really necessarily fit into that world. It's similar for some of the other people associated at the beginning with the hospital. I'm thinking of Hogarth, who isn't born into an aristocratic family. He's born into this lower middle class family and, you know, makes his name through his art, but is never really part of the society that's engaging with his work and buying it. And yet he and Coram continue to work with the hospital in these different ways. Hogarth, for example, designed the uniforms, which is a lovely detail. I really love that. And he and his wife, who were childless, actually fostered a lot of the children that came through that system. And I don't know if anyone's ever written about that, but I feel like there's a novel set in Hogarth's household with him fostering those children that needs to be written. So if you're a novelist out there, please write that, or someone pay me to write it. I will write it. So, you know, there's this sort of interesting class tensions going on here, and we've got the aspirations of the institution and the face that it presents to the world and the reality of the people who are actually doing the work and the children themselves.
- [18:06]
Anthony Delaney
You know what strikes me when we're talking about this and that is that we always have to remind ourselves to come back to the women and the children, even though the women and the children are at the heart of the entire thing. Like so often it's. It's dominated by the patrons, the well to do the blah, blah, blah, because they're leaving the histories behind, right? The other people are not. And that's why the tokens are so important. But I know that you have done some research on what the daily routine of the children is like, so can you let us know what that would have looked like from just a typical day at the at the Foundling Hospital?
- [18:47]
Maddy Pelling
The clock of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, otherwise known as the Foundling Hospital, announced that it was lunchtime in the boys rectory. They were sitting down in long lines at tables covered in white linen. They wore brown uniforms of tough, thick fabric trimmed in red. The bright autumnal sun struck through heavy framed windows and shone on the wooden panels of the wall. It was boiled beef and soup today. The boys ate it in stony silence by mutual accord, the way they always did when there were visitors prying at them. And there often were ladies and gentlemen from outside who came to see the children eat. They stood at the edges of the room, watching, whispering. One of these ladies asked a matron, how many boys are there? What age are they usually put out into life? Do they take a fancy to the sea? One boy, around six years old, smirked and kicked his friend under the table. The meal was ending and the two boys got down now and took off together back to their chores. His friend to mend's shoes and the other back outside to the vegetable gardens. Some pieces of this young soul had been crushed by life already, by all the scars and rejection he'd felt by his isolation behind the hospital's iron bars. But he was still a boy. With a child's resilient capacity for joy, still felt his legs breaking out into a run as he rushed out into the open air where the leaves were falling off the trees and the sparrows were calling.
- [21:02]
Unknown
I'm Matt Lewis, host of the Echoes of History podcast, where every week we'll be delving into the real life history that inspires the locations, characters and storylines of the legendary Assassin's Creed franchise. Join us as we explore the narrow streets of Medici ruled Florence, cross sand dunes in the shadow of ancient pyramids, climb the rigging of 18th century brigs, sailing across the Caribbean, and come face to face with some of history's most significant individuals. Whether you're a history fan, a gamer, or just someone who loves a good story, Echoes of History is the podcast for you. Make sure to catch every episode by following Echoes of History, the Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History. Hit wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:54]
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- [22:46]
Unknown
Total bada bada boom.
- [22:48]
Maddy Pelling
Sold. Huh?
- [22:49]
Unknown
Just sold my car on Carvana. Dropping it off and getting paid today already. What? You still haven't sold yours? You told me about it months ago.
- [22:57]
Maddy Pelling
I just.
- [22:58]
Unknown
Is the offer good?
- [22:58]
Maddy Pelling
Oh, the offer's great.
- [23:00]
Unknown
Don't have another car yet.
- [23:01]
Matt Lewis
I could trade it in for this car I love.
- [23:04]
Unknown
Come on, what are we waiting for?
- [23:06]
Matt Lewis
Ah, you're right.
- [23:07]
Unknown
Let's go.
- [23:09]
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- [23:56]
Anthony Delaney
You know what is interesting about this? Just the level of display that these children and the mothers before them were kept on such display. And I can imagine people thinking, well, it's in the context of the time. It wasn't that unusual in the context of the time this, in the context of the time, that I will add a proviso to that. The 18th century is notoriously, if you study the history of domesticity, which I do, notoriously the time at which privacy became far more paramount, and you can guarantee that these people wouldn't be allowing other people, the people who are viewing the foundlings, wouldn't be allowing the same level of scrutiny in their home. So in terms of the context of the time, privacy is more and more valuable than it ever has been. And yet they are deliberately depriving the privacy of these children anyway. Look, it just. It just strikes me that as society is becoming more and more private in the 18th century, these. These people are very much on display for this part of their lives anyway. But it's. It's a real testament to. And this was very much contained in Helen Berry's work that I spoke about in the start of episode one, about the kind of. The fun nature some of what you just described there, Maddie, the fun nature of what life might have been like. Because at the end of the day, these are children and they will find and make fun some as much as they possibly can within the confines of the foundling hospital. But talk to me about the process after they've been taken in then, because one of the things that sticks with me again about this whole history is the naming process. So tell us about that.
- [25:37]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, so it's interesting that you pick up on both that removal of personhood and privacy, but also the resilience to that little bit, and the fact that there is camaraderie to be found and companionship and fun within this institution. The foundling was there to help, and they do want these children to thrive, albeit within strict prescribed conditions. But on the other hand, these children, when they're handed over, become almost the property of the hospital. And they are stripped of their identity and given a new one that they are expected to adopt and to adhere to for at least the part of their life when they live in this institution. So to talk about that process, then when a baby is left, and remember, at the beginning of the foundling's history, at least, it only took babies and if your child was too many months old, it wouldn't receive you into its care. When a baby entered, they would be re baptised. So irrelevant of whether they'd been baptised before, they were given a new name and a number. And the number, along with the token their mother would leave, would be the thing that would identify them if that parent ever came back for them. And they were told, by the way, to never expect or hope for their parents to come back. So once you entered, you are really given this sense that you are on your own in this world and the foundling owns you and you owe it something and you are part of that, that new community, whether you like it or not. That's where you grew up in. Of course, the thing about babies is they're quite hard to keep alive and feed and it's a struggle. And so these infants would be sent out almost immediately to the countryside, to the outskirts, the rural outskirts of the city and beyond, to wet nurses, because of course they need to be fed. So they would be kept with foster families until they were about 4 or 5, when they would then be brought back to the school for this kind of reintroduction into society as foundlings at the hospital. And that's when their education there began. Now, you would be lucky to get to the age of four or five and be brought back to the hospital. So the statistic that we have is that only around 50% of the children, and this fluctuated throughout the hospital's history, but 50% of the children in the hospital would die before they were old enough to leave. So those aren't great odds. But we know equally that 80% of children abandoned on the city streets did die. So your chances in the hospital are better. They're still not wonderful, but they are better. So the hospital is providing a necessary service, albeit a limited one, and certainly not an entirely foolproof one.
- [28:23]
Anthony Delaney
So they return to school aged four or five, if they're lucky enough, as you said, once they get back in there, we then have this image which I discussed in the picture previously, about children in blue uniforms, very, you know, tailored, very army looking, almost military, like, how strict was it for them if they did return?
- [28:45]
Maddy Pelling
So out of, I think, necessity, things were very strict and very disciplined in the hospital. So cleanliness was obviously a huge priority. There was order, there was Regulation. There was a real emphasis on politeness, no surprise to the 18th century, but on manners, on how you conducted and held yourself. But there were also opportunities, and particularly opportunities associated with medical advancements. And that might sound strange given the statistics we've just heard, but there were some amazing conversations around healthcare that the Foundling Hospital was not only part of, but was really central to. So we've heard how the youngest children were sent out to wet nurses. But pretty soon into the hospital's history, it becomes embroiled in conversations around bottle versus breastfeeding, you know, debates that are still very much going on today. The other thing, medically speaking, that's so important and so part of the Foundlings discipline and sort of rule book, if you like, is this idea of inoculation. One of Thomas Coram's close friends who becomes a governor was this man called Dr. Richard Mead, and he was a famous pioneer of smallpox inoculation. And smallpox is this huge problem in the 18th century. If you are lucky enough to survive it, you're often left with terrible pockmarks on your face, terrible scars. And women in particular really feared getting this and it could kind of ruin your chances on the marriage market, etc. And the hospital actually insists not only that all the children coming in are inoculated, but also that every single one of its staff, from the servants to the medical practitioners to the people working in the church, the people working in the kitchens, everyone has to be inoculated against smallpox. And that feels really modern to us today, you know, particularly in the wake of COVID and the discussion around that and the vaccination there, this feels very forward thinking.
- [30:46]
Anthony Delaney
I think one of the things that I always remember listening to, I think I was listening to a podcast somewhere or else about the staff at the Foundling Museum as it is now, is that they've done some really interesting research into children with disabilities there too, haven't they?
- [31:01]
Maddy Pelling
And, yeah, I was reading about the children who were taken into the hospital who had disabilities. And again, this feels quite forward thinking. And the Foundling itself decides to tailor the training it's giving its children, because part of the function of the hospital, of course, is not to just take care of children, but to train them and put them back out into the world as useful citizens. And it does things like siphons off children who are blind or visually impaired to be part of the choir. And this is a choir, by the way, that's being overseen by Handel himself, the composer Georg Friedrich Handel. Like, this is pretty incredible stuff. They're taught to play musical instruments, they're given that incredible skill and something that they can make money with on the outside. Other children with disabilities, physical disabilities, are trained as seamstresses, as servants, things that will allow them to make a life for themselves beyond the walls of the hospital. So again, it feels quite forward thinking. It feels recognisably modern to us in the 21st century.
- [32:01]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, it is interesting that it's kind of at this, the very edge of forward thinking medical advancements in some ways as well. It also begs the question what the ethics, I suppose, around that are with these children. Specifically. One thing which did strike me, there was this idea of nourishment as well that you were talking about in your narrative where you talked about the boiled beef and soup. Like, you know, what is the food situation Once they're back at the foundling hospital, I presume they're well taken care of. But what are we looking at in terms of nutritional value in relation to general 18th century diets?
- [32:36]
Maddy Pelling
It is nourishing, it's very regulated, of course, as every aspect of life is for these children. But certainly by the late 18th, early 19th centuries, they're having things like for breakfast, they're having bread or oatmeal. For dinner, they're having boiled or stewed beef with potatoes, which is not terrible unless you're a vegetarian, which I don't think any child in the family hospital would have the option of being. On Sundays, though, get this. The excitement. Each child would be given a small amount of butter to add to their breakfast, which I think is fine if your breakfast is bread. If it's oatmeal, that's a bit gross. Also, they got a beer with dinner. Love it.
- [33:13]
Anthony Delaney
What else would you be doing as a six year old?
- [33:16]
Maddy Pelling
Exactly.
- [33:17]
Anthony Delaney
Slugging beer on a Sunday?
- [33:18]
Maddy Pelling
Well, you've had to go to church twice, so you'd need it. They, they also, indeed, they also grew vegetables in the hospital grounds. And there are records of the kitchens there having something called a steam box, which is thought to be, you know, the way that you would cook the vegetables. So pretty healthy. There's a food historian called Jane Levy, who discovered in the archives. I just love this detail. There was a milk supplier at the end of the 18th century. He was selling what was meant to be whole milk to the hospital, and specifically whole milk so that the children could get the calories, you know, thinking about that nutrition. And for 20 years he was actually selling them skimmed milk. And this, the outrage when it was discovered was not about the missing calorie intake of these poor children who had to have skimmed instead of whole milk. But the fact that this had cost the hospital an extra 200 pounds a year, which is several thousand in today's money. So it's quite funny little anecdote, but I think it says so much about the sort of the chain of people caring for these children. You know, at the top you've got the governors, you've got these wealthy patrons, but then you've got the suppliers of food, you've got the medical practitioners, you've got servants, you've got staff working in the kitchen in the little hospital, you've got the religious people caring for their spiritual health. There's in any institution, and I don't think the foundling was any different. There is opportunity for abuse of power, for, in sinister ways and in sort of comedic ways, you know, to sort of cheat the system a little bit. So I think you have to remember as well that human element, that all these people are just sort of going along with their own motivations and their own concerns and greed.
- [34:57]
Anthony Delaney
Often, oh my God, I hope people were doing this left, right and center. As long as it didn't impact the children, fine. Now come here to me. We can't stay, of course, in the foundling hospital all our lives because we will. I was going to say we'll, we'll age out and we'll become adults, but that's not even the case at all. You don't have to be an adult to be ceremoniously, actually, not unceremoniously, but ceremoniously taken out of the foundling hospital. So just give us an idea of like what it was to leave the foundling hospital.
- [35:49]
Unknown
I'm Matt Lewis, host of the Echoes of History podcast, where every week we'll be delving into the real life history that inspires the locations, characters and storylines of the legendary Assassin's Creed franchise. Join us as we explore the narrow streets of Medici ruled Florence, cross sand dunes in the shadow of ancient pyramids, climb the rigging of 18th century brigs Sailing across the Caribbean, and come face to face with some of his history's most significant individuals. Whether you're a history fan, a gamer, or just someone who loves a good story, Echoes of History is the podcast for you. Make sure to catch every episode by following Echoes of History, the Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History. Hit wherever you get your podcasts.
- [36:41]
Maddy Pelling
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- [36:54]
Maddy Pelling
Steve Madden. Yes, please.
- [36:56]
Matt Lewis
It's perfect.
- [36:57]
Dr. Laurie Santos
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- [37:00]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah.
- [37:01]
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- [37:20]
Maddy Pelling
So you're absolutely right. You would reach the. The ripe old age of maybe 13 or 14, 15 if you were lucky. And basically you, you were out, you had to go, you had to make room for more children coming in, more desperate babies. And one of the ways that they did that was through apprenticeships. So we're about to hear about one little boy, maybe the same baby that was left by the woman we heard from in episode one. Going out now into the world for his first ever job. The boy, just 11 years old, lay curled on his cot near the forge's cooling embers. The household slept, their quiet breaths the only sounds in the shadowed room. But sleep eluded him as his thoughts wandered far beyond the blackened hearth. Not long ago, he'd stood in the great meeting room of the hospital, the very room where his mother had left him years before. This time, the men of the board had chosen his fate. A blacksmith, he would become, sent north to Yorkshire, where the winds pierced through wool and flesh alike. He was to be recast as molten iron is in fire. The forge stood alongside the London road, its sooty chimneys marking the rhythm of passing travellers laden carts creaking, stagecoaches and post chaises glinting with wealth. His work, though hard, gave him purpose. The blacksmith's family were good people, their son a companion in the toil. Yet sometimes, as he struck the iron or worked the bellows, his gaze wandered to the road. There, amidst the blur of faces, he would catch a woman's eyes, never the same, yet always startling. His heart leapt with hope. Perhaps she was out there somewhere. Then the roar of the fire demanded him back and he returned to the new life being forged.
- [39:42]
Anthony Delaney
I'm sorry to mention this book again for the third time, it feels like I'm on commission here, but in Helen Berry's Orphans Of Empire, it concentrates on the. The life of George King after he leaves the foundling hospital. And it's really fascinating and chimes in very much, Maddy, with what you're kind of describing there to a certain extent, in that his apprenticeship wasn't necessarily the most positive. So it's interesting to see. Loads were, but then plenty others were really, really negative experiences. And some of the foundlings ran away and some foundlings had bad reputations. Then thereafter, it was Interesting earlier as well, to hear you say about them joining. Did they go to sea? Because. Yes, a lot of them did join the Navy.
- [40:20]
Maddy Pelling
You know, so many thousands of them would have gone on to all these different lives and. And certainly with apprenticeships, you know, if the foundling hospital posed its own dangers in terms of mortality, in terms of potential human corruption, you were introduced into a limited, small household whose occupants were not really vetted. You were required to stay there for several years, having given your consent, age 11, or whatever it was, you know, or at least your guardian, that is, the hospital would have given their consent. And you've been put in this position that you cannot leave. It's essentially child labour until you are at the end of your teenage years. It's so hard to. You could spend a lifetime tracing all these different lives and the stories that they went out to. And I wonder if you could speak to a boy or a young girl in the 18th century who'd been through the foundling system and had then made a life for themselves, what they would say the legacy of that care was and whether they would consider themselves to have been better off than the circumstances that they were born to and that they were taken out of. I don't know if it's necessarily for us to say that. I think everyone would have an individual story and an individual opinion.
- [41:41]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, I know in the case of George King, he was happy with his time at the foundling. It was outside of the foundling in the apprenticeships that he struggled with, that he thought the foundling did him well, but that the apprenticeships were far, far more difficult for him.
- [41:59]
Maddy Pelling
Before we end this story, though, in this episode, we've thought about the children and those children who were left by parents for whatever reason and who then had to find their own way in the world and make their own way in the world. And I just want to go back as well, to think about those parents, most often the mothers who left those children behind and who may have gone on to have, hopefully, happy lives. Certainly not all of them would have. A lot of them may have had further children, may have been in marriages, happy and otherwise. And, of course, so many of them never had the opportunity to come back and reclaim those children that they were forced to leave that life, circumstances, whatever it was, forced them to leave behind at the hospital. And when Freddie, our producer, and I, went to look at the tokens and I was standing in front of that case, there's one that's really stuck in my mind. And we didn't talk about it in episode one, and that is. It's quite a large medallion. It's metal. I think it's made of brass and it's in two halves and it's cracked down the middle with this really cinematic, like, perfect crack. It looks like a prop from something. And the medallion itself is really interesting. It depicts Sir Isaac Newton, that great scientist of the Enlightenment, which in and of itself is so fascinating to have a symbol of so much thought in the 18th century, this idea of advancement and scientific striving forward and polite aspiration and all of that, that this society at large was moving towards. And of course, once you stand there and you look at it for ages and you think it's not necessarily the most interesting object in that case, there are other more interesting handmade objects. But then it strikes you that two halves of it are together, therefore it means that parent came back for that child.
- [43:50]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, that's so cool.
- [43:53]
Maddy Pelling
I don't know if we know the story of that particular child and that mother and what their moment of reunion was like, but that's the one that's really stuck with me. And I suppose, you know, that's not to say that that is the only opportunity for a happy ending for these children. I think lots, lots of them probably had better lives through separation, through this new opportunity. You know, that's not the only outcome to hope for. But there's something so, as you said in episode one and say, there's something so magical about the tokens and that reunion of those two halves of the medallion will always stay with me. I think.
- [44:31]
Anthony Delaney
I think one of the things to leave us with now on this episode, Maddy, is the legacy of the Foundling Hospital today. And I think you have some information that you want to share with us.
- [44:43]
Maddy Pelling
The roots of Coram's project go deep and they continue to sprout and grow. Even now, during its two centuries in operation, the Foundling Hospital looked after a remarkable 25,000 children. It's considered the birthplace of children's social care in Britain. And today, the Quorum Charity continues not only to look after the archives of the hospital, but to work with children and young people. They continue to run an adoption agency, one of the largest independent agencies in the country today. This year in the UK, 39,053 children and young people will enter the care system. That's 107 children every day, according to Coram, the charity, not the man. At the start of 2024, there were 2,410 children in England alone who were ready for adoption. But for whom a family hasn't yet been found.
- [45:44]
Anthony Delaney
And so we come to the conclusion of this two part on the history of the foundling Hospital. It's been so enlightening. Maddy, thank you for taking us through these these two episodes and thank you for listening. We would love to hear what you've made of this miniseries and your thoughts on this or any other episode. We also welcome, of course, your suggestions for other episodes. Don't send them to us on Instagram. We don't see the DMs. Email our producers, Freddie and Charlottefterdarkhistoryhit.com or else we'll lose all your amazing suggestions. And they are amazing because we know that when we get them in the emails, they're incredible. But anyway, I hope you've enjoyed these two episodes. We'll see you again soon. Thank you for listening.
- [46:26]
Maddy Pelling
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Maddy Pelling
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Maddy Pelling
Well, technically it's buy one phone, get one.
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Matt Lewis
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