Lost Children of Georgian London (Part 1)

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
Episode: Lost Children of Georgian London (Part 1)
Release Date: December 16, 2024
Hosts: Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling

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Introduction

In the inaugural part of "Lost Children of Georgian London," historians Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling delve into the grim realities of 18th-century London, focusing on the establishment and early operations of the Foundling Hospital. This episode explores the societal conditions that led to the creation of one of London's most significant charitable institutions and the complexities surrounding child abandonment during that era.

Historical Context: Georgian London’s Duality

Maddy Pelling sets the scene by painting a vivid picture of Georgian London—a city marked by stark contrasts between opulence and abject poverty. Describing the bustling streets filled with various tradesmen and the ever-present squalor, she emphasizes the dire circumstances faced by countless children abandoned in the city. Pelling notes, “[In the 1730s], every single year in London, a thousand babies were abandoned because of extreme poverty” (11:56).

Anthony Delaney expands on the political and social climate of the time, highlighting the volatility brought about by the Jacobite risings and the burgeoning British Empire. He underscores the rapid industrial growth and the resulting filth and deprivation that plagued the city's lower strata. The duo illustrates how these factors created an environment where child abandonment became a pressing humanitarian crisis.

Thomas Coram: The Visionary Behind the Foundling Hospital

Central to the narrative is Thomas Coram, a ship's master whose compassionate response to the plight of London's abandoned children propelled him to found the Foundling Hospital. Maddy narrates Coram’s realization of the urgent need to address child abandonment, leading him to campaign tirelessly for seventeen years to secure funding and royal approval. She remarks, “Thomas Coram... would do it if no one else would” (04:15).

Anthony shares his personal connection to the history, referencing Professor Helen Berry’s seminal work, Orphans of Empire, which provided deep insights into Coram’s endeavors. He acknowledges Coram's persistent efforts to garner support from wealthy patrons despite societal reluctance to aid impoverished and often morally stigmatized mothers.

William Hogarth and the Moral Discourse on Poverty

The episode spotlights William Hogarth, a renowned artist deeply concerned with the moral implications of poverty and child abandonment. Anthony vividly describes Hogarth’s famous print, "Gin Lane," which starkly portrays the destructive effects of gin addiction and urban decay. “[Gin Lane] is an image of degradation, it's an image of poverty, it's an image of alcoholism” (13:50).

Maddy interprets Hogarth’s work as a satirical critique of societal neglect and the doomed cycles of poverty. She emphasizes the emotional weight of the imagery, highlighting its role in galvanizing public opinion and support for the Foundling Hospital. Hogarth’s collaboration with Coram is depicted as a strategic alliance that combined art and philanthropy to foster a cultural hub within the hospital.

Establishment and Early Operations of the Foundling Hospital

Delving into the hospital’s operations, Maddy explains the initial system of child admission through a lottery-based system introduced in 1741. This method, though seemingly fair by removing subjective biases, resulted in heartbreaking outcomes for many hopeful mothers. She narrates a poignant scene where women anxiously draw colored balls to determine their children's fates:

• White Ball: Acceptance of the child.
• Red Ball: The child enters a waiting list.
• Black Ball: Rejection, forcing the mother to leave with her child.

This process exposed the emotional and social fractures of the time, emphasizing the desperation of mothers and the indifferent scrutiny of the wealthy patrons overseeing the admissions. Maddy voices the profound sense of anger and disgust felt when witnessing the dehumanizing aspects of this system (35:03).

Evolution of Admission Systems

Anthony and Maddy discuss the subsequent reforms in the Foundling Hospital's admission processes. Following the initial lottery system’s shortcomings, the "General Reception" system was introduced in 1756, allowing parents to submit their children through a hatch. While this increased intake capacity, it compromised the verification of parental consent and introduced vulnerabilities to exploitation and abuse.

Maddy highlights the transition to a more bureaucratic approach, noting the introduction of petitions and strict documentation processes in the early 19th century. This shift further entrenched the stigmatization of mothers, requiring them to provide intrusive personal information and often relying on third-party endorsements for approval. The system's inherent flaws led to emotional trauma and bureaucratic indifference, as illustrated by Maddy’s recounting of archival research that revealed the indistinguishable nature of successful and unsuccessful petitions (41:24).

Emotional and Human Implications

The hosts delve into the profound emotional toll on both mothers and children involved with the Foundling Hospital. Maddy shares a heart-wrenching narrative of a mother who, despite her desperate circumstances, experiences both hope and rejection within the hospital's processes. The ritualistic and performative aspects of child submission—such as the drawing of balls and the public judgment by wealthy patrons—are depicted as deeply traumatic and demoralizing (32:40; 36:24).

Anthony reflects on the moral justifications of the time, observing that contemporaries likely viewed their actions as virtuous and necessary, despite the evident cruelty. This historical perspective underscores the complexities of societal norms and the often contradictory nature of humanitarian efforts.

The Foundling Museum and Tokens of Memory

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the Foundling Museum, located on the original site of the Foundling Hospital. Maddy and Anthony describe the museum's architectural features and its preservation efforts, including the reconstruction of original rooms using authentic materials and artworks. Anthony humorously critiques the theatrical feel of such reconstructions, while Maddy appreciates the immersive experience, likening it to stepping back into history (24:39; 29:12).

Central to the museum’s exhibition are the tokens left by mothers when they abandoned their children. These tokens, often broken into two halves, symbolize the severed bond between mother and child. Maddy provides an intimate look at these objects, ranging from simple hazelnuts to intricate jewelry, each carrying personal significance and serving as tangible links to the past. She describes one particularly evocative token—a simple hazelnut—as a symbol of both poverty and maternal protection (50:38; 51:42).

Anthony emphasizes the magical realism encapsulated in these tokens, remarking, “There’s a companion piece to the token you're looking at lost now in the world somewhere. It’s magical” (49:13). These artifacts not only preserve individual stories but also evoke the collective emotional legacy of the Foundling Hospital.

Conclusion and Teaser for Part 2

The episode concludes by highlighting the transformative impact of the Foundling Hospital on Georgian society and the enduring legacy captured within the museum. Anthony and Maddy tease the upcoming second part, which will focus on the experiences of the children within the hospital and the institution’s long-term effects on their lives.

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Notable Quotes

• Maddy Pelling [11:56]:
  “In the 1730s, every single year in London, a thousand babies were abandoned because of extreme poverty.”

• Anthony Delaney [13:50]:
  “[Gin Lane] is an image of degradation, it's an image of poverty, it's an image of alcoholism.”

• Maddy Pelling [35:03]:
  “I feel viscerally disgusted by this system.”

• Anthony Delaney [49:13]:
  “There’s a companion piece to the token you're looking at lost now in the world somewhere. It’s magical.”

Final Thoughts

In this episode, Anthony and Maddy seamlessly intertwine historical facts with personal narratives, bringing to life the harrowing experiences of abandoned children and the women who faced societal scorn. Their exploration of the Foundling Hospital not only sheds light on a critical aspect of Georgian London's social fabric but also invites listeners to reflect on the enduring human capacity for both compassion and cruelty.

For those intrigued by this deep dive into history, the episode serves as a compelling invitation to explore the reconstructed spaces of the Foundling Museum and to engage with the tangible remnants of this poignant chapter in London's past.

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Stay tuned for Part 2 of "Lost Children of Georgian London," where Anthony and Maddy will explore the lives of the children within the Foundling Hospital and the institution's lasting impact on their futures.

Transcript

[Anthony Delaney]

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[Maddy Pelling]

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[Anthony Delaney]

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[Maddy Pelling]

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[Maddy Pelling]

Thomas Coram, ship's master, had recently returned home from America and was making his way from the docklands of Rotherhithe to the centre of London. Walkers ran past him. Shops opened. Coaches rolled. Carts shook the ground. The street rang with the cries of the city. Here and there, its inhabitants went about their lives. A woman from Billingsgate carrying fish. A milkmaid chalking her bill on the door. The crash of barrels rolling into brewers cellars. The creep of swinging signs in the wind that threatened rain. From his carriage window, Coram saw it all. A black canal of mud burbling with sewage down the centre of the street. Chimney sweeps skulking along, marking sooty stains on heedless passersby. Dustmen pushing carts with ashes flying off them, and butchers with hands caked in blood. None of this shocked Coram. London life was dirty and hard. It always had been. So what? But what made his brow furrow now, what he kept seeing and thinking about were the children. The infants of this hard, busy city spat out onto mud splattered street corners and down alleyways. Boys and girls of 8 or 10 years of age starving amongst the throng like cats or dogs. Small faces huddled in shadows, Older ones holding the little ones in their laps. Babies abandoned by the side of the road by mothers who could not care for them, dare not care for them. How could a city of such wealth accept this? Something needed to be done. And he, Thomas Coram, ship's master, would do it if no one else would.

[Anthony Delaney]

Hello and welcome to After Dark.

[Maddy Pelling]

I, as ever, am Anthony, and I, as sometimes.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm Maddie, and today we are. We're in the 18th. Well, mostly in the 18th century and a little bit into the 19th century to tell the story of the Foundling Hospital. So Maddie and I are in our historical sweet spot for this one. They're not directly related, but this has some similar issues that were raised in our Amelia Dyer epis. So if you haven't listened to that, go back and check that one out too. It's in the back catalogue there somewhere. But this specific one is a history that spans across decades and centuries in some ways because it still has an impact in our own time. It is a fascinating history with loads of personal stories, but as Maddie was kind of saying there. There's also something that can sometimes be quite emotionally difficult or complex or tricky about this history. So it's. It's an interesting one to delve into. We're going to encounter injustice and anger, but also hope and kindness, which will be right up against sorrow and cruelty in this history. This is. This is a really complex saga, really. It's a history that has affected all levels of society. And across these two episodes, we'll be hearing about some of the richest and then also some of the poorest people in British society. But more than anything, this is, I suppose, history about human beings and their capacity to be both good and to do bad as well. And we'll encounter some of those difficult histories as we go through, as I'm saying, so this is a good one, Maddie. We're looking forward to this one.

[Maddy Pelling]

I've been really excited to do this for ages. And as you're going to hear in this episode, I went with one of our producers to the Foundling Museum, as it is now on the site of the Foundling Hospital. And we're going to get into how much of the original building or buildings are left, what that site looks like now. But going there, and I've been before, but every single time I go, I feel it really deeply. I get really emotional about this. And I don't know if we're becoming hardened to this on After Dark, but there's not that many episodes now where it stays with me. The one that springs to mind is our Joseph Merrick episode where we did actually have a little bit of a cry while, like, during the recording of that. But this one, this one is a really delicate history and I really want to do it justice. So I'm very excited to do this today. Anthony, do you think it's fair to say the Foundling history and the Foundling Museum, something of a, I suppose, a mecca for historians of the 18th century? It's a history that we all get taught, we're all kind of trained in, I suppose. Is it something that you connect with?

[Anthony Delaney]

It is, but for very practical reasons, in many ways, because when I was preparing to do my PhD, my supervisor, who ended up being my supervisor, is Professor Helen Berry. And if you Google one of Professor Helen Berry's books, it is Orphans of Empire. And it is probably the most recent, most thorough, most celebrated history of the Foundling Museum and about one foundling in particular. And from Helen's title there, you might gather that foundling was the term used in the 18th century, but not just in the 18th century for a child who was orphaned, not necessarily orphaned, could have been abandoned, could have been given up. So it's a child who is basically putting care as we would understand it. And so in preparation for applying for my PhD with Helen, orphans of Empire was one of the books that I pored over again and again just to try and get that tone of the 18th century. Right. And just was so fascinating to hear some of the things that Helen was able to share that didn't make it into the book, but that did, you know, she encountered in the archive, which she spent years in. So, yeah, it is. And it's a very, as you say, Maddie, it's a great place to visit. It's one of the. One of the most interesting museums in London, I think.

[Maddy Pelling]

I agree. And I think hopefully listeners who haven't been before will hear these two episodes and then take themselves off to go and see it. And I think, you know, there's Something so emotive about the idea of the foundling. It's deep in our culture. If you think of the literary or cinematic foundlings. We've got Harry Potter, we've got your Oliver Twists, Mowgli, Lyra Ann Shirley, Tom Riddle, Matilda. I've been adding to this list as I've been preparing for this. And our producer Freddie's written Heidi on there. Who is Heidi?

[Anthony Delaney]

Heidi. You don't know who Heidi is?

[Maddy Pelling]

Who's Heidi?

[Anthony Delaney]

She's the girl with the goat and the. Well, the pigtails and the. Yeah, it's like. I don't really know. She was on a TV show. I think it's books as well. I didn't know she was an orphan, to be fair. Well, thanks, Freddie.

[Maddy Pelling]

Well, you learn something new on this every day. So we have, on the one hand, this very kind of romanticized literary version in our heads of what a foundling might be. But the reality, of course, for people living in the 18th and the 19th century in London, that reality was quite difficult. Life for children living in poverty in particular, could be very bleak, very dangerous, very difficult. And there wasn't really a safety mechanism in place for those children until the foundling. So that's the history that we want to talk about. Let's give it a little bit of context, Anthony, and I'm going to share this with you because this is a time period that we both know intimately. I mean, that's. That's very unfair. You're very much an early 18th century person. I. I'm more of a Regency person heading into the 19th century. So this is more your territory than mine thing. But we're in London. We're beginning in the 1730s, the late 1730s. So George II is on the throne. The Hanoverian monarchy is in full swing now. The first decades of that century have been shaped, interrupted, challenged by the Jacobite rising. So the supporters of James II, who is ousted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, have these multiple risings against the Hanoverians that have taken over the throne. And the final one, of course, will happen in 1745-6. And we're not there yet, but it's a period when the British Empire is growing across the globe, but also we have these. These tensions and these potential dangers at home. So it's quite a volatile period. Right?

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah. And it's changing not just globally, but at home as well. The way we understand politics is changing. We're coming into the era of the first Prime Minister. So Robert Walpole is going to be changing how government is done in England at this time. But as you've kind of been pointing at there, Maddie, this is also like a world of two halves where you have this enlightenment idea, which is finding its expression in print culture, which is growing and growing and growing exponentially at this time. And then you also have extreme poverty. And it's very much the haves and have nots. And some of those conditions, we're more aware of them from the 19th century because Dickens draws such attention to them. But they're there in the 18th century. They were documented certainly by the 1720s. And the filth, the smells, the deprivation, often what was causing a lot of this was waste from growing industry. So, for instance, offcuts from butchers that are just slung into the streets, animal waste, because animals are wandering these. Some of these streets too, depending on the area. If it's a well healed area, okay, you're not going to find pigs wandering through, but in poorer areas you will. So this is very much the setting for what we can see. And Maddie, I know when you were at the Foundling Museum, there were some interesting stats that you came up with that they had provided about just the amount of children who were abandoned or who were living in poverty.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. So in this context of this terrible poverty and this divide between the rich and the poor, we get parents who most often mothers, of course, who can't look after their children. They literally can't afford to keep them, or they can't keep their children. They can't even admit to having parented them within the hierarchies and the restrictions that they're living in. These aren't people abandoning their children because they don't. They simply don't care. There's a multitude of reasons. Yeah. One of the statistics on the Foundling Museum website is that in the 1730s, every single year in London, a thousand babies were abandoned because of extreme poverty. And that, I mean, that's just a statistic that's so. It feels so removed and so alien to us. And it's really hard to sort of visualize what that would mean. And the societal, moral, human cost of that is so complicated. In one parish in London, by the middle of the 18th century, in the 1760s, 86% of those abandoned babies died in the first year. Some were, I suppose, quite literally picked up and helped by the other children living on the street or other adults living on the street. And they might be the lucky ones to survive, to get help, to be fed, but 86% of them died in the first year of Abandonment. It's really shocking. So to give a sort of flavor of the conversations that were going on at the time around the cost of poverty and its effect on society, I want you to look at what I think is Hogarth's most famous image. And it is an image you are all going to know in your mind's eye. And that is the print cartoon of Gin Lane. So Anthony, for anyone who hasn't seen this or can't conjure it, and as soon as Anthony starts describing it, I think you will know what we're talking about, but tell us what we're looking at.

[Anthony Delaney]

So there's so much going on in this image which is called Gin Lane, as Maddie said, that all the codes I won't be able to describe all of them. So I'm going to give you an overview of the picture as best I can. But there's just so much going on. You could spend hours on this and indee lecturers do at university. At the center of the image you have a woman dressed in rags sitting on some steps and she is bare chested and she has, it seems, let a child fall from her care. The implication being that she is not a worthy mother because of substance abuse, etc. She's looking very disheveled, she's got cuts and bruises on her legs, as I say, her clothes are all torn and that child is falling over a banister down into the street below. You also have, if you just look up from her, there are bodies being placed into wooden coffins. There's an undertaker's advertising with a coffin. That's a sign coming out from the shop. The buildings are crumbling literally down onto the street, onto the people below. There is one section of another building that's missing and within that you can see that there is a body hanging from a rafter. There is no end to what I'm seeing here. A lot of it, of course it says relating to Jin Lane and you know, I've literally missed hundreds of symbols and hundreds of things out of here. But it's oh, there's another woman there on the right hand side and she's feeding her child what we presume will be Jinn as well. There's another very emaciated man in the right hand corner down the front who's been drinking gin and he's passed out and he's, you know, skin and bone because Jinn has laid waste to his life basically. So yeah, it's an image of degradation, it's an image of poverty, it's an image of alcoholism. It's an image of. It's a critical image from Hogarth's point of view, where he's saying, basically, gin is ruining. Ruining London.

[Maddy Pelling]

Anthony, do you remember when you were little and at Christmas, would you ever get the big fat copy of the Radio Times?

[Anthony Delaney]

I lived in Ireland, so no.

[Maddy Pelling]

So was there no Radio Times in Ireland? Okay. Sad. Not the living in Ireland, the lack of Radio Times, of course, but inside that, there was a Hogarthian style, sort of collaged scene that would have clues for every single show that was gonna be on at Christmas. And it would be like a street scene or something, or the interior of a pub, and every single item would be a clue. And I feel like Hogarth is the original of that.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, of course.

[Maddy Pelling]

But incredibly bleak and pessimistic, but. So Hogarth himself is a really interesting character in the Foundling Hospital's history, and we will come on to talk a little bit more about his relationship with it. But he was very, very interested in the conversations around poverty. The sort of moral dilemma of, do you help people out of these cycles of behavior? And we see in this image, you know, the sort of hinting towards generational repetition, that these parents, specifically mothers, again, these women, are being shamed for gin addiction or substance addiction, whatever it is, that their children, if they do survive, are fated to repeat that cycle. And that's something that Hogarth very interest. Interested in this idea of people being born to a certain fate and not being able to escape their social class and their circumstances. In this image in particular, there are so many children. I don't know if you can see to the right, just above the emaciated figure in the foreground, there's a woman pouring gin down the throat of her baby. And to the left of the breastfeeding mother who's dropped her child, as you say, down a flight of stairs. There are some children who. I mean, I think they're children, they're tiny, they are so emaciated, they have this really haunted expression. And one of them is gnawing on a bone that he's sharing with a dog, a stray dog. And you can start to see, of course, this is a very heightened satirical image. This isn't necessarily a documentation of what the Georgian street life looked like if you stepped out of the door. But we start to get this flavour of the realities of poverty in London. So you can see why there's a need for some kind of, as I say, safety mechanism or charity that is going to maybe combat some of these issues. That we see in the city. And in steps Thomas Coram. He is a remarkable figure. He is so fascinating to me because he's sort of unconnected, other than being a citizen of London, he's unconnected to this poverty. He's not from a particularly wealthy background, and that's an interesting thing that goes on to shape his story with the Foundling Hospital and his efforts to get wealthy patrons. But he just looks around him and says, someone needs to do something here and I'm going to be the person to do it. And I think that's a pretty inspirational stance to take. But it does take him 17 years from having that moment of realisation to actually getting what will become the Foundling Hospital set up. That entire time he campaigns for funding, he approaches wealthy lords and ladies. Eventually, in 1739, he achieves a Royal charter from George II to set up the hospital. And he tries to attach patrons to it and he finds that they're all really reluctant, not least because he isn't of their social class. So why would they want to help? And why would they want to help the children of poor, possibly substance addicted mothers who, in the eyes of a lot of people, have failed morally and can't look after their own children? Why would anyone want to do that? The tactic that he uses is then to apply to the wealthy wives, sisters, mothers of these rich men. And he starts to gain more traction with them and soon they are coughing up and the hospital starts to get its funding. And then in comes Hogarth, who we know is so interested and so concerned with the poverty that he's seeing. And together they have this really great idea. And I'm always sort of fascinated by whether this is a very, very clever marketing strategy that they come up with, or whether this happens a little bit more organically than that. And it's never sort of verbalized between the two of them. But what happens is Hogarth starts to donate his artwork, including a huge portrait of Coram himself, to the newly built hospital, built with the money from George II and other paintings. And the composer Georg Friedrich Handel also comes on board and starts to do performances there. We know that the, I think the first ever performance of the Messiah takes place in Dublin, but the second, I believe it's the second, takes place place in the Foundling Hospital for a London audience. And so people start to come to this space as almost a cultural hub. This is, in a lot of ways, it's certainly called this. If you do any research online, it's the first public British art gallery there are lots of private art collections in the 18th century, but this is the first time people can go somewhere publicly to look at an art collection that's growing. And when they get there, they then see these children who've been quote unquote saved from the poverty that they found themselves in, and then they're persuaded to part with their cash. So it becomes quite a clever system really.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on Not Just the Tudors From History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors. Murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches clues in the title really. So follow not just the Tudors from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Anthony Delaney]

No, this is very pleasing to my Pleiadian leanings, I have to say. So when I say Palladian, this is such a good example of Pleiadian architecture. Pleiadian architecture is huge in Britain at this time. So if you're thinking the Pleiadian style, you're thinking symmetry, you're thinking simple but classic lines. This is obviously a throwback to the classical age in Italy and in Europe. And it is all columns and beautiful symmetry throughout the windows, and everything's equal and equally spaced and it's just all very grand. Thinking Burlington House, for instance, which was built, you know, within a few years of this same building. So it's grand, it's very symmetrical, looking straight at the building. Now, there are three sections to it. There is the main hub, which is directly ahead and then either side, it's got what I guess we can describe as wings which match one another. So again, that symmetry, that matching, it's what you would come to expect from the Palladian style. It's then surrounded by very simple but quite imposing wall, I suppose, some of which, the outer regions look to be wooden in this, but the main pillars are also of stone to match the house. And again, they're in the Pleiadian style. And actually what's interesting about what I'm seeing in the forecourt, because there's another image which relates to the foundling hospital and it shows the children in the forecourt. But this forecourt picture shows very well dressed 18th century men and women. I'm looking for a woman. Yes, I see two women there. So men and women who are. Oh, yes, there's couples there as well. So they're doing what you were talking about, Maddie, and it seems very much like they're visiting. The gates are open, so it's very much inviting the outside in. There seem to be some stewards there as well. But this is. This is a showpiece, without a doubt.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. No, I think. I mean, amazing description. We are now an architecture podcast.

[Busy Mom]

We are.

[Maddy Pelling]

We are. Anthony will now name every single Palladian building in Britain and Ireland. Go.

[Anthony Delaney]

No, I won't.

[Maddy Pelling]

No, I think you're absolutely right. The gates are open. This isn't designed for the. For this particular audience as an imposing fortress. This is something soft and inviting and something for tourists to come and gawp at, I suppose. So, in the city, It's a stone's throw from the British Library and King's Cross Station. It's in that corner of London. And if you go there today, as I did recently with our producer, you can go and see. So a lot of the wings and the original buildings are lost to us now, but a lot of the actual rooms and some of the architectural features from the interiors have survived. The building there today is modern built. I think it's 20th century, might even be parts of it built relatively recently. But there are entire rooms that have been recreated using the original artworks, the original plaster, the original materials, the fabrics from the interior of the building. And there's the original staircase as well from one of the wings. So the two wings that we're looking at in this image, there's the boy's wing and the girl's wing. And these children were kept separately. And I was listening, actually, to some audio recordings of testimonies from children who were in the Foundling Hospital in the early 20th century. And they talked about how in the girls wing, you would never set eyes on the boys, apart from maybe Christmas Day at the church in the middle, you'd attend at the same time and that kind of thing. So they were kept very separate. But even though a lot of that space is lost because there are these survivals and they've been reincorporated into the museum, you do feel when you go there that you're stepping back into this space and you can kind of imagine, you know, all these little. Little hands and feet going up and down the staircase and opening the doors and things. It. It is really evocative.

[Anthony Delaney]

Do you know what? And I totally, totally get what you're saying, Maddie. I never get it. It's one of those places that I'm always a little thrown by. And it's actually not the only one. I get this a lot. When historical places reclaim things or replicate things, and it's been moved or it's been manipulated into another position or whatever. I always think it. I mean, this is just the purest of me. And it's so trite and I shouldn't even bother saying it, but I always just. For some reason, it evaporates in that moment for me where I kind of go, oh, but it wasn't here. They woke up. And then that literal wood. Yes. And that's. That's tangible and that's whatever else. But you know, the way in the V and A, there's a reconstruction of a room, of a. I think it's a 17th century room, which looks absolutely stunning. I'm always like, yeah, but who cares? It's reconstruction. I don't care.

[Maddy Pelling]

See, I love. I love that. I would have thought, Anthony, you're an actor as well, in fact. Is that. Why does it feel like a stage set to you? Because that's what I love. I feel like I'm entering an immersive world. If something is recreated with the original materials, does it just feel too theatrical for you?

[Anthony Delaney]

Is that a. Yeah, it does, it does, you're right.

[Maddy Pelling]

A feeling of artifice. Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's so interesting.

[Anthony Delaney]

That's not to say that's not a very special place. And I do still love visiting there all the time, I truly do. But, yeah, I just. I hate that reconstruction removing thing. Anyway, forget about my personal preferences about whether or not things are moved. Let's get back to. I suppose the people are at the core of this history. And we've spoken about Coram, we've spoken about Hogarth, we've spoken about Handel. Gosh, it's a real Georgian ensemble, isn't it? It's quite.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's a who's who of 18th century society.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, but talk about. Let's talk about the children themselves, then. Who are they and who are the parents who left them there?

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, that's. I mean, it's obviously a fantastic question and that's the history that I really want to keep at the core of what we're talking about. So the hospital first advertises that it's going to take these children in through newspapers and of course, immediately that is then available to people who are literate or who at least know someone literate who can read those adverts and also signs in the street, which is fascinating thinking about the sort of target audiences, I suppose, for these adverts. We know that the hospital is set up in 1739, but it admits its first children in 1741, on the 25th of March. And in that first wave, and it's immediately popular, they get 30 babies, these first 30 children. There's 18 boys and 12 girls. And the influx of children never stops from that point. And within a few years, we're talking three or four years. Parliament itself is having to provide funds to the hospital because there are so many children being left at its doors whose parents are trying to gain entry for their offspring, that there has to be this. This extra aid in place. In those first few years alone, in between the hospital setting up and Parliament providing these extra funds, it's estimated that 15,000 children passed through its doors. So a bit more than the first 30 babies. So you can see just how desperate people were in the city that they really, really needed this. And of course, very, very quickly, there needed to be a system in place to sort through the applicants. It was not possible to just allow everyone in the city to bring the children they couldn't care for through the door. So there had to be something set up. They had to come up with a system that was fair, but that also would allow them to limit the intake in some way.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm smiling as you start to make this pivot towards this next bit, because I think what you're about to describe next is probably the most iconic moment, I think, in anything got to do with the Foundling Museum. And it is so visual that it just lends itself to the story of history, if that makes sense. And if you don't know this, if this is the first time you're ever encountering the Foundling Hospital, just listen to what Maddie tells us next. It's so 18th century. I'll just leave it there.

[Maddy Pelling]

When she entered through the iron gate outside, she passed two statues. One of a winged goddess with the wheel of fortune in her hand, another of a mother and her children clinging desperately to each other. She'd looked back at them as she was ushered inside, along with the others who'd waited at the gate. Now, in this room with its carved ceiling, golden picture frames and candlesticks, men and women in fine clothes told them to sit and wait their turn. So they sat, each holding a young baby in their arms. Some of the infants were well turned out. Others were wrapped only in a head cloth. Some cried, some fed at their mother's breast. Some slept. Her own boy was wrapped under her shawl, tucked in tight, looking up at her face. The woman beside our mother was called up to the centre of the room, instructed to approach the panel of finely dressed people sitting in judgment before her. A man held out a bag and explained what he'd explained to all the others, that there were balls of three different Colours inside, the colour she picked would decide her fate. A white ball meant your baby was accepted. A red ball meant you had to wait and see if a place would come up. A black ball was rejection. Take your baby and go. Our mother watched as the woman before her drew a black ball and was left to stare at it, hopeless and desperate. Now it was her turn to go up to the man with the bag. The fine women smiled sympathetically, one leaning over the other's shoulder to get a better view. As she put her hand into the bag, her heart was in her mouth. A breath catching feeling so much and thinking all of a sudden of those statues outside the Wheel of Fortune, the mother clinging to her child. She drew out her hand. The ball was white. The man congratulated her.

[Anthony Delaney]

So there's that imagery that I was talking about that Maddie has just conjured up for, is there? And I find it a really strange thing because you have these desperate women with poor children who are taken in to have their fate decided by a lottery ball draw. It's like bingo. And they're there and they're hoping for a change in their children's lives, essentially, if they can, because, you know, they could offer. The foundling hospital could supposedly offer more stability than they could at that particular moment in time. And Then you have 18th century virtue signalers who are standing around, who are rich women usually, actually who are standing around this room with these other poor women looking at them as if they're a zoo display. And they watch them, they're whispering. You often see depictions of them with fans and they're covering their faces, but looking out over the fan, it's almost as if they dare not share the same air as these poor women in this hall. And the red, the white and the black, those always just stick to me too, with me too, because it's just so. It's. The imagery is just so clear and all I ever, you know, there's so much going on, there's so much emotion going on in there. But what I always walk away with is anger. From that description, I was just about to say this.

[Maddy Pelling]

I feel, I feel viscerally disgusted by this system.

[Anthony Delaney]

Like those, especially those women who are those upper class women who are aristocratic, often women who are standing along the sidelines, it's just like, get out, mind your business.

[Maddy Pelling]

But they're the same patrons who are giving money to the hospital. In their mind, they're doing a good.

[Anthony Delaney]

Thing and they're absolutely, you know, the.

[Maddy Pelling]

Financial foundation of this system that allows these poor women to Come in. But it's. It's so voyeuristic. It's such a display of hierarchy and, you know, know your place. And the fact that it's left to chance, seemingly to chance, is so interesting because, of course, I suppose on a practical level, it is arguably a fair system in that it's not based on the mother's circumstances or backstory. Nobody asks them, has this child been born out of wedlock? Or, you know, are you a servant working in a kitchen somewhere who simply can't afford to keep the child, you're not allowed to keep it under the roof of your employer, etc. Nobody asks for that information. In that regard, it is fair. But the horror is, as you say, this watching of the women, this judgment, and it's so performative, the drawing of the ball out of the bag, the people watching, they're having to step forward and do that in a room full of other women. And, of course, if you get the red ball, you can wait and see if you can get a spot. So the women who get the white balls, whose babies are accepted, the children are then subject to a health check, and if they show any signs of disease, they're handed right back to the mothers, and the women with the red balls then get a chance to submit their children. But if you drew a black ball, you would look around that room and we can only imagine the feelings of jealousy of the women who've been successful when you haven't. The feeling of being degraded in front of these wealthy people and then rejected. This would have taken a huge amount of strength and courage to even walk up the steps of the Foundling Hospital and give over your child who you love. These aren't women who just can't be bothered to look after their children. These are women who do not have a choice. They are desperate to get to that point and then be turned away.

[Anthony Delaney]

It's interesting as well, because this is the image that lingers for historians when you're studying the Vandling Museum. But it's actually not in place that long. Right. There's a new system that comes in shortly, more than a decade later. Is it?

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. So the lottery is only in place, as you say, for a few years. So it comes in, in 1742, only a few months after the first babies are admitted, as a way of sort of reacting, I suppose, to that influx, that flood, that tsunami of babies. But then next we get something in 1756 called the General reception. And this is a new system that's introduced. This is Parliament approved There's extra funding given to it because there is this recognition that the lottery might actually not be helping as many people as are needed. There's more funding needed for more places, they need to take more children in. And so they build a lodge on the side of the site and parents or guardians of children, it's not necessarily mothers anymore, can pass their baby through a hatch. That child is then assessed. And if you're the parent or the adult that's given this child over, you have to stand and wait. And if the child is diseased or if it is too old, because they mostly want young babies, it will be handed back to you. If it's healthy and it's young enough, it will be taken. There are no questions asked and you, as the depositor of that child, just leave. You just go. Which, of course, is a system that is, I suppose, more open to people. Anyone can give their baby as long as it's. It's not showing visible signs of disease, you can get your baby into the hospital. But the problem with this system is that there's no way to validate the identity of the people giving the babies over. And so there's no way to guarantee the mother of that child has given her permission. And you get grandparents bringing in children, you get men who fathered children who don't want them, you get all sorts of nefarious people and there's no money that's exchanging hands. But if you want to get rid of a child, this is a very good way to do it. So that system has its issue as well. So then there is a new system introduced, and I think this is the worst of the three. It's awful.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes. And trust the Victorians to bring in even the concept of the deserving poor. And, Maddie, I know you're going to tell us about it in a bit more detail. I just can't help but feel we're on the brink of another awful bloody Victorian Mark 2 era, even in our own time, that there's this delineation of poverty and deserving poor. And here we have it in the foundling.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, yeah. It's not great. So this begins in the early 19th century, so we can't entirely blame the Victorians, but certainly it is the defining feature of the foundling. By the.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm still going to blame the Victorians.

[Maddy Pelling]

I mean, we'll blame them for everything. We're 18th century.

[Anthony Delaney]

I do. I genuinely blame the Victorians for everything.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, no, it's, it's. It's actually true. I do think they are to blame for everything. We're sorry to all the Victorianists out there. So this is a system of petitions. So if you are a mother, and this is all about, by the way, this is now about blaming the mother, judging the mother. Women are entirely responsible for their children in this scenario. There's no fathers being held to account in the same way that the women are. So if you're a mother who needs to give your baby over to the foundling, you have to fill in some paperwork. And this is a printed form that everyone was given. And bear in mind so many of these mothers are not literate or their literacy rates are not good enough to be able to fill in this form. So straight away, you need to find someone who can help you. And often that might be, like the parish priest, a rector, a curate, something like that, or your employer, if they are generous enough, tolerant enough to help you with that. And often that would not be the case. And you have to fill in all this information. And it is so intrusive. It asks about your marital status, it asks about the identity of the father, if known. It asks you to explain how you met him, how this baby came to be conceived. I mean, it's disgusting. It is disgusting. And if you were lucky to have a patron or someone supporting you, they could then attach a letter of recommendation to say, this woman is of good character, she deserves help. She's a poor unfortunate, she can't help herself, but we should give her some help. And sometimes you would get people writing to say, do not help this woman. She's dreadful. You know, it's so grim. And I, in writing my second book that I'm doing at the moment, one of the women in that story deposits her child in 1817 into the foundling. And I went along to the archives, and when you call up these petitions, they're in huge, big bundles. And there are the petitions of those who are successful and the petitions of those who weren't. And my woman who I was researching gave her baby over. She was successful because she had the support of someone in the church, and her baby sadly died two weeks later. It's a really tragic story, but when I was sat in that archival room in the London Metropolitan Archives, and I really recommend people go and look at these records, I then started to read through the huge pile of the petitions from that same summer of the women who were unsuccessful, and there is nothing to distinguish the women who got their babies in and the women who didn't. And I cried so much that I had to Leave the reading room at the archives. I couldn't see, and I was actually afraid. I was crying onto the 18th century, 19th century paper. I know. So I know I had to remove myself and it made me so angry and I had to go and get a coffee and walk around the block and come back. And it was so moving. And it outraged me. It absolutely outraged me. And here were these lives, these complex human lives that were lived within the confines of the circumstances they were born to, and they had no hope of getting themselves out of that. And you could see the love, often the love between the parents as well, who simply couldn't care for the child. You know, it wasn't that all these women were tragically abandoned by terrible men. Often they were. But these are just lives that needed help and support, and often they didn't find it.

[Anthony Delaney]

And the bizarre thing is that in the context of the time, for many people who worked in this area, this was best practice. So they certainly were in no doubt about their moral standing. They knew in the context of their time what they were doing was absolutely right.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on not just the Tudors from History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title, really. So follow not just the Tudors from history hit wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Anthony Delaney]

So we've seen now how the children are processed in those three different ways at various times in the history of the Foundling Hospital. But what exactly for the people involved, which is what you're getting at here, Maddie, what exactly might they expect at this particular moment in time?

[Maddy Pelling]

Her face was pale and drawn from sleepless nights as she stared down at her baby, a small, fragile thing with a tuft of dark hair peeking out the clerk had been kind to her as he'd asked his questions and written things down on his pieces of paper. He'd taken great care to note everything her boy was wearing. She'd liked that. As if they were all important pieces of this fleetingly young identity. One ribbon, one cap, one threadbare bigging, one forehead cloth. Then he'd asked the name of her boy and she'd given it him. Lastly, he wrote down a number, once on the form, once on a slip of paper he pinned to her baby boy's clothes. A stern nurse came up now and took the boy from his mother's arms. He began to cry at once. She'd known he would. She noticed the nurse didn't comfort him. The clerk told her they would take good care of the child and assured her he'd be better off here. Then he asked if she'd brought something to leave behind in case she could ever come back to reclaim the child she'd almost forgotten. Hurriedly, she put her hands to her neck and handed it over. The shilling on a string that had caused all her woes. A shilling bent in half as a sign of love, with initials and a star carved on the back of it. A promise of marriage. Or so she'd believed. Look where that had got her. Look at the tiny face that broken promise had led to. The nurse began to walk away towards the door. That was it. Her boy was gone, swallowed crying into this grand, grim building.

[Anthony Delaney]

History is just insane. It is the wildest subject in the entire world. This, everybody who's listening is what Maddie is describing. There at the end of that, are the foundling tokens. And they are the most individually beguiling pieces that you'll find in any collection anywhere. They're so full of history and so full of stories. Maddie, tell us a little bit more about tokens and what they are and what they look like.

[Maddy Pelling]

They are beguiling and they're so different. They're so individual. So these are objects that mothers depositing their babies to the foundling would leave behind. And often they were broken in half and the baby would be left with one half and the mother would take the other half away. Or sometimes they'd be twin objects and they were kept in the hospital records along with the baby. Because the thing was, the second your baby went into the hospital, it was given a number and then it was re baptised with a new name. So its initial identity in the world was entirely scrubbed. And the idea was that if the mother's circumstances ever changed and she could come back and claim that child, she would need to be able to prove her identity and to connect with the right infant. So the tokens were a way of doing that, a way of proving. And this kind of grew up from an earlier system where the clothing of the child would be cut and a piece would be given to the mother and a piece kept in a ledger. But of course, cloth is fragile and delicate and can get easily lost, so this system of leaving something a bit more individual, a bit more interesting, grew out of that. And there are. I mean, there are hundreds of them, but there's a glass case in the museum now where you can go and look at them. And I did that with our producer, and what you're going to hear now is me reacting in real time to the objects that we're looking at.

[H]

There are so many different tokens here. There's such a phenomenal variety of objects. Metal coins and tokens. There are little glass buttons and beads. There's a ceramic label for a bottle of ale. At the top we've got locks, we've got these handmade items. There's a bracelet, there's at the bottom here, bits of jewelry. There's a garnet ring. There's an embroidered little purse that I'm looking at, a pink, little tiny bag with the initials MD sewn onto it, and sequins. There's even this really strange item here that looks like little nuts or seeds strung together on a piece of string. And to be honest, it's a little bit revolting. There's a tiny, tiny coin there that's.

[Maddy Pelling]

Barely bigger than the nail on my little finger.

[H]

Interesting one down here. Look at this. This is a tiny fish made of ivory and it's got this amazingly precise eye carved into it that sort of.

[Maddy Pelling]

Follows you as you. You go past it.

[H]

There's. There's even a tiny metal fist, a hand and a forearm, which is really incredible, and I'm fascinated to know more about that. There are things here that would have cost significant amounts of money, but not everyone coming into this space could afford to leave something so fancy. And amongst all these metal, ceramic, bejeweled objects, there's one here that really speaks to me and it is a simple hazelnut. Nothing more, nothing less, just a nut. And on the one hand, this hints heavily at the mother who left this. Being incredibly poor, this is an object she might very well have picked up on the floor outside the hospital on her way to deliver her baby. This is something that had no real value, financial value, at least. In the 18th century city. But also there's another alternative explanation for this. We know that in folklore, hazelnuts and hazel trees are associated with protection. So it could be that this impoverished mother, forced to part with her child, is actually trying to imbue that baby through this object with. With some kind of magical protection. She's leaving with it a valueless object, but also that highest value of things, a mother's love, a mother's aspiration for her child.

[Anthony Delaney]

It is the highlight of any trip to the Foundling Museum is the collection of tokens that you'll see in that glass cabinet. It's so worth your while spending a little bit of extra time in front of those tokens and just remembering the hands that had wrapped themselves around those tokens and remembering that there's a companion piece to the token you're looking at lost now in the world somewhere. And it just. It's magical, actually. That's magic. That's real magic. And that's why I just love history so much. I love when you're within that much of a hair's breadth of people's heightened emotions. It's just the most incredible display, if for nothing else. And there's plenty more besides. But if for nothing else, that is the reason you would go to the Foundling Museum. Well, Maddie has led us through the application and the taking in of children into the Foundling Hospital in episode one. In episode two, we're going to concentrate on the children's experiences and the impact the Foundling Hospital had on them. But thank you for now for listening to this episode and for listening to After Dark. If you've enjoyed this episode and this specific social history, then please do check out Betwixt the Sheets with Kate Lister. You'll find lots more there besides. And as it's the festive time of year, spread the word this Christmas and tell friends, family, reindeer and everybody else in your lives about After Dark because it helps us to find more listeners. Stay tuned for episode two.

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