Almost 100,000 pages of records from the Foundling Hospital, England’s first home for babies who were unable to be cared for by their parents, have today been made available online for the first time.
The digital archive, launched by the UK’s first children’s charity Coram, which was established as the Foundling Hospital in London in 1739, brings to life the previously untold stories of over 20,000 children who grew up at the Hospital and of their birth mothers.
Today’s digital archive launch is the culmination of Coram’s five-year programme, Voices Through Time: The Story of Care, made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Coram has digitised 405 volumes in the archive, almost a quarter of the entire collection, spanning 1739 to 1899. Nearly 6,500 volunteers from around the world helped transcribe the digital pages to enable detailed searching of their contents.
The digital images and their transcripts are free to access online. In addition to the records about the children, the digital archive contains intimate and moving petition letters from mothers seeking the admission of their children into the Foundling Hospital, and books containing tokens left as a symbol of the connection between mother and child.
The digital archive provides a rich historical resource for research into the lives of working-class women across England, and the history of education, childcare, employment, medicine, disability, textiles, and more. Family historians will find details of children, parents, Hospital staff, and apprenticeship masters and mistresses.
Dr Carol Homden, CEO of Coram, said:
Through these extensive and detailed records, we are able to discover the untold stories of thousands of children who were raised at the Foundling Hospital in the 18th and 19th centuries, and hear rare first-person accounts of the issues faced by women who had no source of support in the harsh environment before the welfare state. It enables us to learn more about the evolution of social attitudes to children’s rights and welfare and the role Coram has and continues to play in pioneering good practice and developing children’s services since 1739.
Dr Carol Homden, CEO of Coram
Alongside the digital archive launch, Coram has today unveiled Echoes of Care: The living history of Coram and the Foundling Hospital, a new immersive art installation exploring the past and present of the care system. The exhibition at Coram Campus in Bloomsbury, London, is the creative culmination of the Voices Through Time programme. It integrates words, images and audio produced by care-experienced young people across five years of creative projects, with details of the lives of Foundlings and their mothers.
Developed in collaboration with care-experienced young people, the installation explores the role of the Foundling Hospital, highlights the unexpected relationships young people forge on their journeys, and challenges the assumptions made about young people in care by illuminating eternal themes and calling for change for the future.
There will also be an evening of discussion and celebration on 24 October, as part Bloomsbury Festival programme, to mark the exhibition and archive launch. Book free tickets at coramstory.org.uk/explore/content/event/echoes-of-care-the-celebration/.
To access the Foundling Hospital Archive online, please visit coramstory.org.uk/the-foundling-hospital-archive/.
Image Source:
- Photo by Jenna Norman: instant images
