Genealogy Chat

Don't ask me why I did, but I picked up the Financial Times 25 June issue and read an article I'd like to share with you, If parents sometimes tried to hide their feelings about a child's death, there was a good reason for it. Before the 19th century, parents were told by ministers of religion to suppress their emotions. Highly emotional grieving was considered a self-indulgence and, among the more religious, as a criticism of God's sovereignty. So, parents have always loved their children even if they have not always shown it. But one small flaw in this otherwise heart-warming tale of doting down the ages is the apparent eagerness of mums, in the days before contraception, to abandon unwanted babies at an alarming rate. In the early 18th century, Thomas Coram started campaigning to establish London's first foundling hospital, up to 1000 infants a year were being abandoned in the capital. Cunningham cautions that it would be unwise to read too much heartlessness into such statistics. Any woman poor, hungry or desperate enough to desert an infant probably did so in the belief that abandonment offered the best hope of survival to mother and baby alike, especially if the child were illegitimate, which would disqualify the mother from employment. And women did not give up their babies without grief, as is evident to anyone who visits the Foundling Museum, Bloomsbury, North London. Once inside the Museum, parents of a sentimental disposition should equip themselves with plenty of Kleenex before perusing the exhibits too closely. It turns out that mothers leaving their babies at the hospital, which opened in 1741, often clung to the forlorn hope that they would one day be reunited with their children if they came upon better times. To this end, they left pathetic tokens with their babies to help identify them later in life: keys, lockets, bracelets and other trinkets, which are now on show. As well as tokens, some mothers left heart-rending notes and poems. 'Go, gentle babe, and all they life be happiness and love' one mother wrote (or more likely had written for her). Another, handing over her infant son, left the words: 'If fortune shall her avours give/That I in better plight may live / I'd try to have my boy again / And train him up the best of men'. How sad is this, I had tears running down my face....

oh, so sad!!

Me too... sniff sniff..

My Uncle was a Coram foundling boy. The Coram Hospital moved to Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire, via Redhill in Surrey ,both my grandparents worked there ( I guess that is how their daughter Hilda met Uncle John) My father is still quite involved with the The Thomas Coram lot. if anyone wants to see, they have quite a good website. The Thomas Coram Hospital eventually became a school - I went there! Jess x

Thanks for sharing this. I felt better reading what Jess wrote, at least some did have a better chance in life, but am still sniffing Yvonne

Nudge

I found that really touching. Thank you for sharing it .