THE EARLY YEARS OF THE
FOUNDLING HOSPITAL
1739/41 – 1773
D. S. ALLIN
Image: Detail from Taylor White, 1758, Francis Cotes (1726-1770) © Coram in the care of the Foundling Museum
iii
CONTENTS
PREFACE:
x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
xi
ABBREVIATIONS:
xii
CHAPTER ONE: THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The Foundling Hospital in London.
The main phases of the Foundling Hospital’s history.
The importance of the Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century.
The sources.
CHAPTER TWO: LONDON’S FOUNDLINGS IN THE EARLY AND
MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The number of deserted children in London before the General Reception.
Infanticide.
Deserted children.
Reasons why babies were abandoned: callousness?
Illegitimacy and child abandonment.
Poverty and child abandonment.
Calamities that could lead to a child being abandoned.
Failures of the Poor Law to prevent children being abandoned.
Lamentable condition of London’s pauper infants.
Thomas Coram’s plan for a foundling hospital.
CHAPTER THREE: REASONS FOR BACKING A FOUNDLING HOSPITAL.
The Enlightenment.
An age of ‘benevolence’ and ‘sensibility’.
Need for a large and industrious workforce.
Manning the navy and the army.
‘Charity, humanity, patriotism and oeconomy.’
1-10
1
3
8
9
11-31
11
13
15
16
20
23
26
27
29
30
32-43
32
33
37
40
42
iv
CHAPTER FOUR: THE EXTENT OF SUPPORT FOR THE HOSPITAL.
The governors.
The role of the aristocracy and the ‘middling ranks’ in running
and financing the charity.
The active governors:
a) Businesses such as Theodore Jacobsen, Charles Child, Jonas
Hanway and especially George Whatley (probably almost as
important as Taylor White).
b) Physicians such as Robert Nesbitt, James Mead and, during the
period of the General Reception and its aftermath, William Watson
and Charles Morton. (See page 160 for Watson and Morton).
c) The Treasurer Taylor White (a barrister), the key figure in running
the whole institution during the General Reception and its
aftermath.
The role of untitled governors in financing the Foundling Hospital.
Popularity of the new venture.
Loss of popularity during the General Reception and its aftermath?
CHAPTER FIVE: THE ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE FOUNDLING
HOSPITAL. 1739/41 - 1773
Boldness of the Foundling Hospital enterprise.
The Hospital’s plan for looking after the children.
The tasks facing the Hospital.
The Foundling Hospital’s central government.
The supervision of the nurseries and the branch hospitals.
Key role of Thomas Collingwood, the Foundling Hospital Secretary.
Keeping track of the foundlings.
CHAPTER SIX: THE HOSPITAL’S FINANCES.
Before the General Reception.
The General Reception and its aftermath.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE EARLY YEARS OF THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL BEFORE
THE GENERAL RECEPTION.
The decision to send infants to nurses in the country.
Preference for wet nurses.
Recruiting the nurses.
The inspectors.
The grown children and the London hospitals.
The building of the new hospital in Bloomsbury.
Training children to be useful members of society.
Reservation about the Hospital’s record.
The loss of life of children at nurse.
The health of the grown children.
Total number of deaths.
44-58
44
47
49
53
55
57
59-74
59
60
62
64
67
68
72
75-85
75
76
86-108
86
89
90
92
93
94
97
100
100
101
104
v
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE FATE OF INFANTS IN THE LONDON HOSPITAL
DURING THE GENERAL RECEPTION.
Deaths of infants in the London hospital.
Reasons for the large number of infant deaths in the London hospital.
Foundlings from the provinces and foundlings from London.
CHAPTER NINE: THE CARE OF INFANTS AND YOUNG CHILDREN IN THE
COUNTRY DURING THE GENERAL RECEPTION.
The number of children sent to the country nurses.
The inspectors.
Laymen.
Clergymen.
Women inspectors.
Conscientious inspectors, such as Dr John Collett (Newbury) and
Mrs Juliana Dodd (Swallowfield).
Troublesome inspectors, such as the Revd Mr. Rogers (Chertsey) and
Bertie Burgh, Esq.
The number of country nurses employed.
The loss of life amongst the general reception children at nurse.
Ages at which children died at nurse.
Causes of death.
The changing role of nurses in the 1760’s in the aftermath of the General
Reception.
CHAPTER TEN: THE LONDON HOSPITAL’S GROWN CHILDREN DURING THE
GENERAL RECEPTION AND ITS AFTERMATH.
Number of children in the hospital.
The organization of the hospital.
The daily routine of the grown children.
Attempts to keep the children healthy.
(i)
Honorary Surgeons – Lewis Way and Thomas Tompkyns.
(ii)
Physicians – Dr William Cadogan, Dr Charles Morton and Dr
William Watson.
(iii)
Apothecaries – John Partington and Robert McClellan
(iv)
Infirmaries.
(v)
Diet.
Infectious diseases.
Fatal diseases, especially smallpox, fevers, measles and dysentery.
Educating and training the children.
The London hospital and apprenticeship.
The number of apprentices from the London hospital, 2 June 1756 to
31 July 1773.
Trades to which girls were apprenticed.
Trades to which boys were apprenticed.
The fate of the children apprenticed from London.
109-118
109
110
113
119-154
119
125
128
131
132
135
137
139
142
147
147
149
155-195
155
157
159
161
161
162
165
168
168
170
172
176
181
182
187
185
189
vi
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE SETTING UP OF THE SIX BRANCH HOSPITALS.
The reasons for establishing branch hospitals.
The selection of sites for the branch hospitals.
Expenditure on the branch hospitals.
Cost of building and equipping the branch hospitals: London, Ackworth and
Shrewsbury compared.
Cost of running the branch hospitals: London and Ackworth compared.
Number of employees and foundlings at Ackworth.
Number of employees and foundlings at Shrewsbury.
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE GOVERNORS OF THE BRANCH HOSPITAL.
The number of governors.
Attendance of governors at branch hospital meetings.
The leading governors:
(i)
Ackworth, especially Sir Rowland Winn and the Revd. Dr
Timothy Lee.
(ii)
Shrewsbury, especially Roger Keynaston and the Revd Dr
Adams.
(iii)
Chester, especially Trafford Barnston, Dr Alan Denton and
John Orange.
(iv)
Westerham, especially John Warde and Thomas Ellison.
(v)
Aylesbury, especially John Wilkes.
(vi)
Mrs Prudence West at Barnet. Not a governor but played
the key role in the Barnet hospital.
Conclusion.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE ROLE OF THE BRANCH HOSPITALS.
Their importance.
The supervision of nurseries by the branch hospitals.
(i)
Barnet and Aylesbury.
(ii)
Westerham.
(iii)
Ackworth.
(iv)
Shrewsbury and Chester.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: CHILDREN SENT TO THE BRANCH HOSPITALS.
The task of allocating children to the branch hospitals.
Children from local nurseries.
Children from London.
Children from other branch hospitals.
Children from non-local nurseries.
196-210
196
198
201
202
204
209
210
211-229
211
214
216-219
219-223
223-226
226-227
227-228
229
229
230-238
230
234
235
236
236
237
239-243
239
239
240
241
242
vii
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE MANAGEMENT OF THE BRANCH HOSPITALS.
The role of the governors.
The masters or secretaries.
(i)
Ackworth – Richard Hargreaves, then his son John.
(ii)
Chester – Joshua Small.
(iii)
Westerham – John Hoath (sacked), John Saunders.
(iv)
Aylesbury – Robert Neale (Secretary).
(v)
Shrewsbury –Thomas Morgan (sacked), Samuel Magee.
The matrons.
The daily routines at Shrewsbury.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE CHILDREN’S CLOTHES AND SHOES.
Clothing.
Shoes.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE CHILDREN’S FOOD.
Barnet.
Aylesbury.
Chester.
Shrewsbury.
Westerham.
Ackworth.
The adequacy of the children’s diet.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE HEALTH OF THE CHILDREN IN THE BRANCH
HOSPITAL.
Fresh air and exercise.
The provision of medical care:
Barnet
Aylesbury
Westerham
Chester
Shrewsbury
Ackworth.
The loss of life at the branch hospitals.
Fatal disease, especially consumption, fevers, dysentery, smallpox and
measles.
Inoculation against smallpox..
CHAPTER NINETEEN: EDUCATION IN THE BRANCH HOSPITALS.
Religious education.
Teaching the children to read.
244-255
244
245
248
248
248
249
249
250
254
256-264
256
262
265-273
265
265
266
266
269
271
273
274-298
274
275
277
278
281
282
285
291
292
296
299-310
299
303
viii
CHAPTER TWENTY: THE CHILDREN’S EMPLOYMENT IN THE BRANCH
HOSPITALS.
Motives for making the children work.
The work done by the children:
Aylesbury.
Barnet.
Chester.
Westerham.
Ackworth.
Shrewsbury.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE BRANCH HOSPITALS AND APPRENTICESHIPS.
The role of masters and mistresses.
The number of children apprenticed from the branch hospitals.
Westerham
Aylesbury
Barnet.
Chester.
Shrewsbury.
Ackworth.
The case for apprenticeship.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE GENERAL RECEPTION: SUCCESS OR FAILURE?
The cost of the General Reception to the taxpayer.
Alarm at the high death rate during the General Reception.
Belief that the Foundling Hospital was doing more harm than good.
The policy of indiscriminate admission.
Increase in fornication and bastardy?
Encouragement of desertion of children?
The effects of the General Reception on the nation’s prosperity, on the
parents and on the foundlings themselves.
Foundlings from the provinces.
London foundlings.
The saving of life of London’s pauper infants.
Increase in the number of London foundlings during the General
Reception.
Tentative conclusions. The General Reception probably saved the lives of
several hundred London foundlings. Not clear whether it saved the lives of
children from the provinces.
POSTSCRIPT
Links with the Period of the General Reception
.
311-333
311
312
313
315
317
322
329
334-369
334
336
339
340
341
342
345
353
369
370-396
371
372
374
374
376
377
378
380
386
391
393
396
397-399
397
ix
Appendix A:
Children taken in by the Foundling Hospital, 1741-1800.
400-403
Appendix B:
The Relative Number of Legitimate and Illegitimate
Children.
404-407
Appendix C:
Motives for Supporting Charities in the Eighteenth Century.
408-415
Appendix D:
Donations and Subscriptions 1739/41-1773.
416
Appendix E:
Governors Attending Meetings of the Branch Hospitals.
417
Appendix F:
Sick Children in the Ackworth Infirmary, (1760-1773).
418-419
Appendix G:
Work done by the Children in the Westerham Hospital.
420-421
Appendix H:
Occupations to which Boys were Apprenticed from
Shrewsbury.
422
Trades of Boys Apprenticed from Ackworth Hospital, 17581773.
423
Trades of Girls Apprenticed from Ackworth Hospital, 17581773.
424
Appendix K:
Mortality in London.
425
Appendix L:
Number of Foundlings at Shrewsbury.
426
Appendix M:
Number of Children passing though the London hospital and
the branch hospitals.
427-428
Appendix N:
Thomas Day and the Foundling Hospital.
429-430
Appendix O:
Taylor White, 1701-1772.
431-432
Appendix I:
Appendix J:
A Few Suggestions for Further Reading.
433-434
x
PREFACE
The aim has been to add to our knowledge of the Foundling Hospital in its early years,
especially during the General Reception and its aftermath. In that short period the charity
ceased to be concerned only with the problem of abandoned children in London and
became of truly national importance, taking in thousands of children from the provinces as
well as from London itself.
Certain topics that have been adequately covered by others, such as Thomas Coram’s
campaign to have a foundling hospital established and the role of Hogarth with his fellow
artists, and of Handel in arousing the interest of the public in the charity, have been included
for the sake of completeness, but have been dealt with only briefly in order to allow space
for new material. Particular attention has been given to the vitally important contribution of
the branch hospitals.
The Foundling Hospital could hardly have coped with the huge
increase in the number of children taken in during the General Reception without them.
Ackworth’s importance in finding apprenticeships for the ‘grown children’ has also been
emphasised.
The last chapter tries to assess whether the General Reception benefited the country or
whether, on the contrary, it did more harm than good.
D. S. Allin, London, January 2010.
Revised June and December 2010
xi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the following for their help.
The staff of the London Metropolitan Archives who have been most efficient and helpful.
In 1995, Mr. F. A. Davies, the Hon. School Archivist of Ackworth School, was kind enough to
show me round the school, which occupies the buildings of the old Ackworth branch
hospital. It was very interesting to go round the building especially as the branch hospital’s
archives were still at Ackworth at the time (they are now in the London Metropolitan
Archives with all the other Foundling Hospital records). His successor, Ms Celia Wolfe, sent
me some fascinating photographs of the school, dating from 1895 and two fine drawings by
T. S. Ashworth (1969).
Ms Sophie Raikes, research assistant at the National Trust, provided a family tree showing
the three members of the Winn family who held the post of treasurer of the Ackworth
Hospital.
Mrs Yasmine Webb, the Local Studies Collection Manager for Barnet, was able by some
clever detective work to pinpoint the site of the old Barnet (or Hadley) branch hospital.
The Shropshire Record Office provided me with a copy of Rocque’s fine map of Shrewsbury
of 1746 and Ms E. Young cleared up a point concerning the use of the old foundling hospital
building by the Poor Law authorities.
Ms Kate Iles sent me some excellent photographs of the building as it is today.
xii
Mrs P. Lynch, the heritage Officer for Chester City Council, sent me three copies of pictures
of Chester Blue Coat School and a copy of Alexander de Lavaux’s Plan of Chester of 1745.
Ms. Josephine Hutchings, Archivist of Lincoln’s Inn, furnished information on Taylor White’s
legal career.
Mr Alistair Ferguson provided photographs of the interior of the Well Street hospital at
Westerham and explained that it was later renamed Chartwell and was Winston Churchill’s
home for the last forty years of his life.
I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Mrs Maureen Berry for typing the manuscript.
xiii
ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations have been used for Foundling Hospital records at the London
Metropolitan Archives:
G. Ct.
-
General Court Minutes
G. Cttee
-
General Committee Minutes
Sub-Cttee
-
Sub-Committee Minutes
Gen. Reg.
-
General Register
The references preceded by A/FH are the call numbers in the catalogue.
Where the
material has been put on microfilm, the number of the microfilm has been added.
UNUSUAL USE OF WORDS
The Foundling Hospital did not use any special jargon, but there are three usages worth
explaining at the outset.
House
The charity sometimes used the word House with a capital H to mean the London hospital; it
was also sometimes used to mean the main part of the London hospital as opposed to the
infirmaries. Where the word House is used in the text it refers to the London hospital (i.e. the
first usage).
‘Grown Children’
These were children who had been returned to the London hospital or sent to one of the
branch hospitals after having completed their stay with country nurses.
xiv
Nurseries (Inspections)
Nurseries were nurses and foundlings under the care of particular inspectors – sometimes
also called inspections. They were not institutions, since the foundlings were cared for by
the nurses in their own homes.
Nurseries were normally identified by the name of the
inspector or the place where he or she was based or both, e.g. Rev. Thomas Trant,
Hemsworth; Mrs Juliana Dodd, Swallowfield; Mrs West, Barnet.
‘Hospital’ and ‘hospital’
In order to avoid confusion, Foundling Hospital with a capital H refers to the charity as an
organization and the charity’s hospital in London is normally referred to as the London
hospital, with a lower case h, since the London Hospital was an ordinary medical hospital
unconnected with this charity.
Spelling and punctuation
No changes have been made to the spelling and punctuation of the documents quoted.
Percentages
Percentages have been corrected to one place of decimal.
UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL
The following unpublished typescripts are in the library of the London Metropolitan Archives:
D. S. Allin, The Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century: Some Facts and Figures.
R20.751 ALL.
D. S. Allin, The Early Years of the Foundling Hospital, 1739-1756. R. 20.751 ALL.
1
CHAPTER ONE
THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
INTRODUCTION
The desertion of babies by their parents is so rare these days that it is hard for us to
grasp that vast numbers were abandoned in the past. Whether for good or ill foundling
hospitals played a crucial role in caring for such children from the Middle Ages to the
early twentieth century. If we were to count all the institutions, large or small, that took
in foundlings at some time in the Western world, including those that took in orphans
and other destitute persons as well and those that were mere reception centres, then
the number would run into the hundreds. Millions of deserted children passed through
these institutions.
THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL IN LONDON
England lagged far behind Western Europe in making special provision for foundlings.
By the time the London Foundling Hospital was established in 1739 there were
foundling hospitals in Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Madrid, Lisbon, Oporto, Lyons
Paris, Limoges, Toulouse, Marseilles, Amsterdam and in many other cities of Western
Europe. 1
1
For general surveys see
Léon Lallemand, Histoire des Enfants Abandonnés et Delaissés (Paris, 1885).
John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers (London, Penguin Press, 1988).
Brian Pullen, ‘Orphans and Foundlings in Early Modern Europe,’ in B. Pullen, Poverty and Charity in
Europe (Aldershot, Variorum, 1994).
H. Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500’ (1988), pp.20-21, 91-96 and
113-132.
David I. Kertzer, Sacrificed for Honor (Beacon Press, Boston, 1993), Chapter One.
For particular periods and individual institutions see Pier Paolo Viazzo, Maria Bortolotto and Andrea
Zanotte, ‘Five centuries of abandonment, care and mortality’ in Catherine Painter-Brick and Malcolm
T. Smith, eds. Abandoned Children (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000) [Florence].
Philip Gavitt, Charity and children in Renaissance Florence: the Ospedale degli Innocente 1410-1536
(Ann Arbar, University of Michegan Press, 1990).
David I. Kertzer, ‘The Lives of Foundlings in Nineteenth Century Italy,’ in Painter-Brick and Smith,
op.cit. [mainly Bologna].
Joan Sherwood, Poverty in Eighteenth Century Spain: The Women and Children of the Inclusa
(Toronto, Toronto University Press, 1988). [Madrid].
Isabel dos Guimaraes Sá, ‘Circulation of Children in Eighteenth Century Portugal,’ in Painter-Brick
and Smith op.cit. [Oporto].
There is an account of the Marseilles hospital in the Foundling Hospital archives – A/FH/A1/4/1.
2
Foundling hospitals had also been established in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies
in the New World in Mexico City, Lima, Bogota, Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro
and in the Portuguese settlements in Asia at Goa and Macao and in Luanda in West
Africa. 2
England was not even the first country in the British Isles to have a foundling hospital.
In 1730, nine years before the Foundling Hospital was established in London, the
Dublin Workhouse was turned into the Dublin Workhouse and Foundling Hospital.3 In
the century or so that it took in foundlings it probably accepted about 100,000 children,
far more than the London Hospital. [In 1735 the Irish Parliament authorized the setting
up of a foundling hospital in Cork, but it did not open until 1747. It was a much smaller
concern than the Dublin Hospital.]4
The London Foundling Hospital does not even have the distinction of being the last
foundling hospital to be established in Europe. The Moscow, St. Petersburg and
Vienna hospitals were founded several years after the London Hospital.5 These
gigantic institutions took in far more children than the London Foundling Hospital.
Between 1764 and 1913 1,055,910 children entered the Moscow foundling hospital and
between 1770 and 1915 the St. Petersburg hospital accepted 709,908.6 In about 1909
the Vienna hospital was looking after more than 30,000.7
2
A. J. R. Russell-Wood, Fidalges and Philanthropists: the Santa Casa de Misericórdia of Bahia,
1550-1755 (London, Macmillan, 1968).
3
J. Robins, The Lost Children: a Study of Charity Children in Ireland, 1700-1900 (Dublin, Institute
of Public Administration, 1980), chapter 1.
See also W.D. Wodsworth, A Brief History of the Ancient Foundling Hospital in Dublin (Dublin,
1876).
4
Ibid.
5
D.Mansel, Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia (Princeton, Princeton Unoversity
Press, 1988).
Lallemand, Vol., p.486.
6
Ibid.
7
See article by John A. Ryan in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909), vol.6. p.159.
3
The London Foundling Hospital was, however, the only institution of its kind to be
established in Great Britain. No other such charity was set up in England and no
hospitals for deserted children were ever set up in Scotland or in Wales.
THE MAIN PHASES OF THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL’S HISTORY
The London Foundling Hospital had much in common with some of the foundling
hospitals on the Continent, but no other foundling hospital in the eighteenth century
witnessed such dramatic changes in the numbers accepted. The Hospital’s history in
the eighteenth century falls into three quite distinct phases.
The first phase of the Hospital’s history, when it was financed by legacies, donations
and subscriptions in the same way as many of the other new major charities in the
early eighteenth century, lasted until 1 June 1756. The very first foundlings were taken
in at the Foundling Hospital’s temporary headquarters in Hatton Garden on 25 March
1741; the last foundlings taken in before the General Reception were received at the
purpose-built hospital in Lamb’s Conduit Fields on 8 May 1756.8 From 25 March 1741
to 8 May 1756 1,384 children were taken in. 9
In order to encourage parents to send their children to the Hospital rather than
abandon or murder them no questions were asked of those handing over children. No
children over two months old and no children who had the ‘French Pox, Evil, Leprosy or
Diseases of the like Nature’ were accepted.10
During these pioneering years the Hospital was perhaps the most fashionable of all the
major new charities in London. No doubt the fact that foundlings were innocent victims
8
Gen.Reg. – A/FH/A9/2/1 – microfilm X41/10.
9
See Appendix A Table 1.
10
Nichols and Wray, The History of the Foundling Hospital (London, O.U.P., 1935), p.30.
4
of circumstances helped, but the support of Hogarth and other leading artists and of
Handel must have added to the attractions of the charity.11 Large sums were raised
from legacies and from the contributions of governors and other well-wishers and
smaller amounts from other sources. But the Foundling Hospital never had enough
money to be able to take in all the children brought to its headquarters.
Each time there was a new intake the governors had to turn some of the children away.
[In October 1742, the governors therefore introduced a system of selecting children by
lot in order to do away with any possibility of favouritism.12] The governors therefore
took the momentous step of appealing to Parliament for help.13
In 1756 the House of Commons agreed to finance the venture provided the governors
took in all children sent to it under the age to be specified by the charity. At first the
Hospital kept to the two month limit. From the 19th of January 1757, however, the
maximum age at what a child would be accepted was raised to six months and from
the 29th of June to twelve months.14
This period of indiscriminate admission, usually known as the General Reception,
marks the second phase of the Hospital’s history in the eighteenth century. It lasted for
only three years and ten months (2 June 1756 to 25 March 1760), but its impact on the
Hospital was startling, for in that short period 14,934 children were accepted.15 From
taking an average of 90 children every twelve months, the Hospital now took in 3,895.
Since those children taken in during that period that survived had to be cared for until
11
For the contribution of Hogarth and his friends see R. Harris and P. Simon, eds., Enlightened
Self-Interest. The Foundling Hospital and Hogarth (London, Thomas Coram Foundation, 1997),
which has some excellent illustrations in colour, and B. Nicholson The Treasures of the Foundling
Hospital (Oxford, O.U.P., 1972).
For Handel’s role see McClure, op.cit., pp.69-71 or any of the standard biographies.
12
See G.Cttee, Wednesday October 27 1742 – A/FH/K02/001 (p.249), microfilm X041/014. See
McClure, op.cit., p.72, for a print showing women taking part in a ballot.
13
The petition is printed in Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.48.
14
An Account of the Hospital, 1759, p.XXII – A/FH/A1/005/002.
15
Appendix A,Tables 1 and 2.
5
they were old enough to be apprenticed, it was some years before the charity ceased
to care for the ‘parliamentary children,’ as they were sometimes called.
From being a charity that had served the London area, the Foundling Hospital had
become of national importance. [The only other major new London charity that had
much impact on the rest of the country, except by way of providing an example to be
followed, was the Marine Society]. Large numbers of babies were now brought from the
provinces to the charity’s London headquarters; some came from Wales. Thousands of
wet nurses and hundreds of extra volunteer inspectors had to be enrolled to supervise
them. So many ‘grown children’ had to be looked after when they returned from their
nurses that six branch hospitals had to be set up:
Ackworth
1757 – 1773
Shrewsbury
1759 – 1772
Aylesbury
1759 – 1767
Westerham
1760 – 1769
Barnet
29 Dec 1762 – 1768
Chester
1763 – 1769
The 31st of July 1773, the date on which the last children arrived back at the London
hospital from Ackworth, the last of the branch hospitals to be given up, can be taken as
marking the end of the period in which the Hospital had to cope with ‘parliamentary
children’.
When the House of Commons brought the General Reception to an end on 25 March
1760, it continued to grant funds to cover the cost of maintaining the ‘parliamentary
children’ that had already been accepted (the last grant was made in 1771). In the
period 1756 to 1771 the Hospital’s total income was £700,468, almost £550,000 of
which came from Parliament. 16 But all children accepted after the 25th March 1760
16
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/12. The money paid by the London parishes from
1767 under Hanway’s Act has been omitted, since these pauper children were not classed as
‘children of this Hospital’.
6
had to be financed out of the charity’s own funds. It reverted to being a private venture.
In the period 26 March 1760 to the end of 1800 only 2,301 children were accepted.17
There was now a complete break with the practice of admitting children with no
questions asked. From 1760 to 1762 only children who had ‘lost their Parents, either in
Battle or by Sickness’ in the war with France (i.e. the Seven Years’ War) were
accepted. From 1763 onwards other children were taken in, but now those who wanted
to hand them over had to present a petition and they had to come from the London
area.18 These petitions provide valuable information about the reasons for handing over
children though we have to remember that the petitioners may have been tempted to
exaggerate their misfortunes in order to win the sympathy of the governors.19 *
In this third phase of the Hospital’s history it took on average only about 38 a year, less
than half the number taken in each year on average in the first stage and a very small
number when compared with the General Reception. In the period from 1767 to 1798 it
also took in 822 children by arrangement with the London Poor Law authorities.20
These were not, however, classified as ‘children of this hospital’. Even if we included
these children, however, the number taken in each year on average, would still be less
than in the first phase.
The history of the Foundling Hospital in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
seems uneventful when compared with the eighteenth century. What we may call the
fourth phase in the Hospital’s history began in 1801 with the decision that ‘the principal
17
Appendix A, Table 1.
18
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.81-85.
19
R. B. Outhwaite, ‘Objects of Charity’: Petition to the London Foundling Hospital, 1768 to 1772,
Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 32, 4, Summer 1999 pp.498-570, Tanya Evans, Unmarried
Motherhood I Eighteenth Century London. (Unpublished London University Ph.D., 2001.) Chapter
Four analyses the petition from 1763 to 1801. All the petitions from 1768 onwards survive.
* In the period 1756 to 1800 a few children were accepted with donations of £100. See McClure,
op.cit., p.139.
20
Register of Parish Children – A/FH/A9/3/1.
7
object of this Hospital is the maintenance and support of illegitimate children.’ The
Hospital kept to this decision right up to 22 December 1950, when the last foundling
was taken in. 21 From 1801 to 1950 only 6236 children were accepted, giving an annual
average intake of only just over forty.
In 1926 the charity sold the London hospital and the children were moved to temporary
quarters at the St. Ann’s Schools, Redhill. In 1935 they were transferred to new
purpose-built accommodation in Berkhamstead – the Thomas Coram School. In 1954
this was sold to Hertfordshire County Council (re-named Ashlyns School) and the
children were sent to foster homes. The year before the charity had changed its name
to the Thomas Coram Foundation.
The charity, now known as the Coram Family, is still engaged in helping children and
young persons, but it no longer provides residential care for babies and infants.22
It is obvious from this brief outline how overwhelmingly important the General
Reception was. In all 24,855 foundlings were taken in between 1741 and 1950.
Astonishing as it may seem sixty per cent were accepted during the three years and
ten months of the General Reception from 2 June 1756 to 25 March 1760. For this
reason more space will be devoted to this period than to the early years of the charity.
21
A/FH/A09/002/006/1 – This information was supplied by Mr Tim Harris of the London Metropolitan
Archives, as members of the public are not permitted to consult recent registers, in order to
protect the privacy of ex-foundlings and their relatives.
22
Today it receives some of its funds from the public sector and some form voluntary contributions.
8
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LONDON HOSPITAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Some of the larger foundling hospitals on the Continent took in far more children than
the London Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century. The Inclusa in Madrid
accepted about 60,000 children between 1730 and 1800.23 The Milan hospital took in
73,170 between 1700 and 1799.24 As far as we can tell, however, only the Paris
foundling hospital took in more children each year during the General Reception. It was
not until the early nineteenth century that the Moscow and St. Petersburg hospitals
took in more each year than the London hospital had during the short period from 2
June 1756 to 25 March 1760.25
The following figures show how dramatic the changes were in the London hospital
when compared with the Paris hospital in the period 1750 to 1764.
Admission to the London and Paris Foundling Hospitals, 1750-1764
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
London
Paris
120
199
160
120
80
104
1823
3727
4143
3957
1333
11
6
41
99
3,789
3,783
4,127
4,329
4,231
4,275
4,725
4,969
5,082
5,264
5,032
5,418
5,289
5,254
5,538
15,923
71,105
a
b
26
a 40 before the General Reception; 1783 after the beginning of the General Reception.
b 1324 in the last months of the General Reception; 9 after the ending of the General
Reception
23
This estimate is based on the figures in Sherwood, op.cit., Table 5.1, p.113.
24
Lallemand, op.cit., vol.2, p.413.
25
Ransel, op.cit., Appendix.
26
Appendix A, Table 1 (London) and Lallemand, op.cit., vol.2, Annexe 3, p.371 (Paris).
9
THE SOURCES
Most of the evidence is taken from the Foundling Hospital’s archives, now housed in
the London Metropolitan Archives. There are inevitably some matters for which the
records provide little direct evidence. We would, for example, dearly love to have some
reminiscences or letters of ex-foundlings which would help us to see what they thought
of their time under the care of the Foundling Hospital. Yet the student is more likely to
be daunted by the sheer bulk of the archives than discouraged by the gaps in the
evidence. A few years ago they took up some 800 feet of shelving and an estimated
ten tons of paper. They are even more extensive now. In September 1995 the
Ackworth Hospital archives were brought down from Ackworth and added to the
collection. Recently the fair copies of the General Court and General Reception
minutes have been transferred to Clerkenwell from the charity’s headquarters in
Bloomsbury (the London Metropolitan Archives already had the rough minutes). The
excellent catalogue runs to three substantial volumes.
A wide variety of Foundling Hospital documents has been consulted. Amongst the most
important are the minutes of the General Court, the General Committee and the SubCommittee in London and the minutes of the Ackworth, Shrewsbury, Chester and
Westerham branch hospitals. The minute book of the Aylesbury hospital has not
survived but one of the Hospital’s documents reproduces minutes of some of the
Aylesbury meetings. It is likely that no minutes were kept for the Barnet hospital.
Considerable use has been made of the Secretary’s extensive correspondence with
the inspectors and with the branch hospitals.
Some of the statistical evidence comes from the Hospital’s own summary, the State of
the Children Quarterly and then Annually. Other statistics have been compiled by
analysing the billet books, the memorandum books, the disposal books and the
Hospital’s registers, including the general registers, the London grown children register,
the registers of the Ackworth, Shrewsbury, Chester and Westerham hospitals and the
10
registers of apprentices. Registers for the Aylesbury and Barnet hospitals* have not
survived, but it has been possible to reconstitute them by combing through the general
registers. It would not have been feasible to reproduce all the statistical tables. Many of
them, though, have been reproduced in the typescript now in the library of the London
Metropolitan Archives.27 Some minor corrections have been made to those figures.
*
No official register may have been kept for the Barnet hospital as it was treated as an outpost of
the London hospital. Some record, though, must have been kept at Barnet of the number of
children there. Almost certainly there was an official register at Aylesbury.
27
R20 – 761 ALL – see p (iii).
11
CHAPTER TWO
LONDON’S FOUNDLINGS IN THE EARLY AND MID EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
THE NUMBER OF DESERTED CHILDREN IN LONDON BEFORE THE GENERAL
RECEPTION
One of the most sickening sights in Hanoverian London must have been that of
deserted babies. Thomas Coram’s friend and biographer Dr. Brocklesby recalled that
‘While he [Coram] lived in that part of the metropolis which is the common residence of
seafaring people [probably Rotherhithe], he used to come early into the city, and return
late, according as his business required his presence; and both these circumstances
afforded him frequent occasions of seeing young children exposed, sometimes alive,
sometimes dead, and sometimes dying, which affected him extremely.’ It was the
shock of seeing these children that led Coram to campaign for a foundling hospital in
London. 1 Thousands were abandoned (or ‘dropt’) in London in the early eighteenth
century. It was quite common for the newspapers to report such cases.2
We know that before the commencement of the General Reception on 2 June 1756 the
Foundling Hospital often had to turn children away. From 1 September 1749 to 8 May
1756, for example, 803 were accepted and 2005 rejected. Thus about 400 children a
year were brought to the Hospital in that period.3 Most of the babies probably came
from the London area, since it is unlikely that many people would have brought children
from a distance when there was no guarantee that they would be accepted. [It is
1
Brocklesby, Private Virtue and Public Spirit display’d in a Succint Essay on the Character of
Thomas Coram (1751). There is a copy of this little book in the Foundling Hospital archives. It
was reprinted in John Brownlow, Memoranda, or, Chronicles of the Foundling Hospital (London,
Sampson Low, 1841), p. 116.
See also H.F.B. Crompton, Thomas Coram, Churchman, Empire Builder and Philanthropist
(London, S.P.C.K., 1918). For a more recent biography of Coram see Gillian Wagner, Thomas
Coram, Gent (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2004).
2
See R.W. Malcolmson, Infanticide in the eighteenth century, in J. S. Cockburn, ed., Crime in
England 1550-1800 (London, Methuen & Co., 1977), p.189.
3
Adrian Wilson, Illegitimacy and its Implications in mid-eighteenth century London: the Evidence of
the Foundling Hospital, in Continuity and Change, vol.4 (1989), pp.103-164.
12
reasonable to assume, though, that a few of the babies ‘drop’t’ in London before the
General Reception had been born in the provinces. In a village or small town, where
everyone knew everyone else’s business, it would have been hard to conceal such a
crime. Contemporaries do not seem to have considered abandonment a major problem
for the Poor Law authorities in the provinces. There may also have been cases where a
pregnant girl came to London with the intention of abandoning the child as soon as
possible.] 4
In estimating the number of London foundlings we have also to take into account not
only all the children sent to the Hospital (whether or not they were accepted) but also
children not sent to the Foundling Hospital. There must have been many such cases
before the General Reception, either because they had been taken to the Poor Law
authorities instead or because the babies were too old to be considered by the time the
Hospital opened its doors again for the next batch of babies.
As we have seen, the age limit at first was two months. Wilson suggests that, had the
days of reception been regularly spaced at, say, five week intervals, the number of
foundlings brought would perhaps have been about 600 per year. He also argues that
some mothers may have been deterred from bringing children on the days of reception
because they would attract the interest of onlookers. He believes that our estimate of
the number of potential foundlings should therefore be raised, conservatively, to 1000 a
year. 5
4
This may explain why two of the most recent general surveys of the Old Poor Law, Paul Slack’s
The English Poor Law, 1531-1782 (Studies in Economic and Social History, 1990) and Lynn
Hollen Lees’s The Solidarities of Strangers: the English Poor Law and the People (Cambridge,
C.U.P., 1998) do not mention foundlings at all. A rather older book, G.W.Oxley’s Poor Relief in
England and Wales, 1601-1834 (Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1974) also ignores
foundlings.
5
Adrian Wilson, loc.cit., p.110. But in some years the days of reception were spaced at fairly
regular intervals, e.g. 1741, 1751 and 1752.
13
Valerie Fildes’s research into London and Westminster baptism and burial registers,
suggest that Wilson’s estimate may not be far from the mark.6 If they are not too far
from the truth, then it is easy to understand why Thomas Coram began his campaign
for a foundling hospital in the 1720s.
INFANTICIDE
Some of the babies discovered in the London streets and alleyways were dead. Some
of them may have been still-born or have died of natural causes. Some, though, had
probably been killed. 7 In an article in The Guardian in 1713 Addison had claimed that
‘There is scarce any Assizes where some unhappy wretch is not executed for the
murder of a child.’8 In most cases it was the mother who had committed the crime and
in most cases she was unmarried. In 1728 Daniel Defoe wrote that ‘not a Session
passes but we see one or more merciless Mothers try’d for the Murder of their Bastard
Children’9. Both Addison and Defoe advocated the setting up of a Foundling Hospital in
the hope that mothers might hand their children over rather than abandoning them or
killing them. A writer in the Northampton Mercury in 1738 declared that infanticide is ‘a
crime to the scandal of our country little known but in Great Britain, where more
murders of this nature are committed in one year than in all Europe besides in seven.’ 10
Addison, Defoe and the Northampton journalist, however, almost certainly exaggerated
the number of trials for infanticide. As Malcolmson points out, there were quite a few
6
V. Fildes, Maternal Feelings …. in Valerie Fildes, ed., Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial
England.
7
R. W. Malcolmson, loc.cit. Malcolmson’s study of eighteenth century infanticide is mainly based
on court records and newspaper reports.
8
Joseph Addison, The Guardian, No.105, 11 July 1713. Reprinted in John C. Calhoun Stephens,
ed., The Guardian (Lexington, U.S.A., University of Kentucky Press, 1982).
9
D. Defoe, Augusta Triumphans: Or, the Way to Make London the most flourishing City in the
Universe’ p.9. of the 1729 edition which was probably just a reprint of the 1728 version.
Incidentally in this pamphlet Defoe advocated setting up a university in London and an academy
of music.
10
Northampton Mercury, 3 July 1738. Quoted in Malcolmson, loc.cit. p.187. [It is hard to believe that
the Northampton journalist had all the facts about infanticide on the Continent to hand.]
14
assizes in the eighteenth century where no trials for infanticide took place. At the
Surrey assizes in the period 1700 to 1802 there were 39 indictments for infanticide, but
only 29 women were sent to trial by the grand jury and only three were found guilty and
hanged. 11 Infanticide seems also to have been rare in the provinces. Between 1720
and 1820 200 women were indicted for infanticide in the Northern Circuit assizes courts
of Yorkshire, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland, but only 6 of these were
found guilty and only two were hanged.12 Infanticide was a difficult crime to prove,
however, and some babies were probably killed without anyone being brought to
justice.
Probably most of the dead babies had been abandoned rather than murdered,
presumably with the hope that someone would find them before they died and take
them to the Poor Law authorities. As the merchant philanthropist Jonas Hanway said,
‘it is much less difficult to the human heart and the dictates of self-preservation to drop
a child than to kill it.’
13
Hanway, in fact, believed that infanticide was a very rare crime:
‘I thank God I have not so mean an opinion of human nature, as to think this
[infanticide] is the case in half so great a degree as is commonly supposed.’14 It is
possible, though, that some of the babies listed in the Bills of Mortality as ‘Abortive and
Stillborn’ or ‘Overlaid’ had been killed.15 Dr. Fildes points out, however, that almost all
the foundlings for whom details are given were abandoned in places where they were
11
J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986),
Table 3.6, pp.115-116.
12
Mark Jackson, New-born Child Murder-Women, illegitimacy and the courts in eighteenth century
England (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996), p.3.
13
J. Hanway, An Earnest Appeal for Mercy to the Children of the Poor (1776), p.212, quoted by L.
Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800, p.475.
14
J, Hanway, A Candid Historical Account of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1760), p.44.
15
Caulfield, The Infant Welfare Movement in the Eighteenth Century (New York, Paul B. Hoeber,
1931), p.9 and 9.14.
15
likely to be found, such as near the front door of a house, by a church door, or near a
hospital or in the Inner or Middle Temple.16
DESERTED CHILDREN
We do not have as much firm evidence about why children were abandoned in the first
half of the eighteenth century as we would wish. Those who abandoned infants before
the Foundling Hospital was established naturally did their best to conceal their crimes.
In a few cases, however, notes were left with the babies explaining why they were
being abandoned. Dr. Fildes has unearthed some of these in the parish records of St,
Martin–in-the-Fields.17 We have rather more information once the Foundling Hospital
opened its doors in 1741. The porters, nurses and receiving clerks were forbidden to
question those bringing infants to the Hospital, but some of these voluntarily handed in
written notes (usually today called written tokens), so that the children could be
identified should they wish to reclaim them later. These written tokens were pinned to
the children’s billets (the form filled in for each child by the receiving clerk). The billets
were bound into books and carefully preserved. Eighteen of these billet books cover
the pre-General Reception period. 18 The surviving evidence for the General Reception
is more abundant. There are written tokens for about half the children in the General
Reception period. Nearly all these written tokens have survived.19 All the 10,500 or so
billets for the period 2 June 1756 to 21 February 1759 have been examined to see
which billets had written tokens and to see what light they throw on the reasons for
child abandonment. Many of them merely give the child’s name, but two or three
hundred show why the child was handed over and some of those written by parents
16
Fildes, op.cit., p.151.
17
Ibid., pp.152-158.
18
A/FH/A/9/1/1 – A/FH/A/9/1/18.
19
Billet books A/FH/A09/1/19 – A/FH/A/09/1/121. See Wilson, loc.cit., Table 6 on p.143 for a
valuable chart showing what information was recorded on the billets from the opening of the
Hospital in 1741 to the end of the General Reception.
16
also show how they felt about parting with their children. There are not enough of these
informative tokens to provide a valid statistical sample of all the foundlings and we
cannot in any case assume that those who wrote notes were typical of those who
handed in children, but they are nevertheless revealing. For the period after the
General Reception we have the petitions sent to the Foundling Hospital by those
hoping to persuade the charity to take a child in.
The billet books of the General Reception tell the same story as those for the preGeneral Reception period. By combining Dr. Fildes’ evidence with that of the billets and
the petitions and by taking account of the views of contemporaries we can build up a
picture of the circumstances that led to child abandonment in early and mid-eighteenth
century London. For the General Reception period billets of London children, rather
than children from the provinces, have been used as examples.
REASONS WHY BABIES WERE DESERTED: CALLOUSNESS?
Linda Pollock has shown, by a systematic study of diaries and autobiographies in
Britain and North America, that there is little to be said for the old idea that before the
eighteenth century the upper and middle classes had little affection for their children. 20
The fact that many of those sending children to the Foundling Hospital left no means of
identification, however, might seem to support the views of Edward Shorter and
Lawrence Stone that the poor cared little for their children. Edward Shorter declared
that ‘in traditional society, mothers viewed the development and happiness of infants
younger than two with indifference.’ Shorter based his conclusion mainly on French
sources but argued that this generalization was valid ‘from Cornwall to Lettland.’ 21
Lawrence Stone argued that the poor were often cruel to their children or at best
20
Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge,
Cambridge Press, 1981).
21
Edward Shorter. The Making of the Modern Family (London, Collins, 1976), p.168 and p.169.
17
indifferent to them. ‘It is evident that many families lived so close to the absolute
poverty line that they could not be expected to regard their children as much more than
either impediments to the earning capacity of the wife, or hungry mouths to be got rid of
as soon as possible.’22 Some of the children who arrived without tokens would
presumably have been sent by parish Poor Law officers, but some of them had almost
certainly been handed in by their mothers or fathers. These parents had not even left a
note of the names they had given the children. They had also thrown away the
opportunity of ever reclaiming them. [The Hospital encouraged those handing in
children to leave such notes so that the child could be identified if it was reclaimed.
There was apparently a statement over the entrance door about this.23 Many of the
parents were probably illiterate, but they could surely have found someone to write a
name on a scrap of paper for them. Failing that they could have, as many others did,
left a piece of cloth or some other suitable object by which the babies could be
identified later.] About 5,000 small pieces of cloth were left. Professor Styles has
pointed out that those consisting of ribbons and heart-shaped motifs would have been
understood to be expressions of love. 21a
A number of the written tokens clearly show that some parents were deeply upset at
having to give up their children. Some state that parents hoped that they would be able
to claim their children later. Three examples will suffice, two from before the General
Reception and one form the General Reception period:
21a
John Styles, Threads of Feeling, the London Foundling Hospital’s Textile Tokens, 1740-1770 (The Foundling
Museum, 2010).
22
L. Stone, op.cit., pp.470-471.
23
‘And if any particular Marks, Writing or other thing shall be left with the Child great care will be
taken for the preservation thereof.’ G-Cttee, Wednesday January 30 1744/5 – A/FH/K02/002,
p.27 – microfilm X041.014.
See foundling number 2810 – billet book FH/A9/1/34. But the children were invariably given a
new name by the Hospital. These names would not have been revealed to those who brought
them to the Hospital. The Hospital’s own policy may have therefore led some uneducated parents
to believe that handing over children was an irrevocable step.
18
Boy (Foundling Hospital number 497)
Date of Reception 31 March 1749
Gentleman
I do most Humbly request you to preserve this writing, as a Mark that my
Child may be known, having a most dear and Tender regard for it. For wch
reason I have trusted it to a Charity establish’d upon so good a Foundation
as knowing my circumstance will not permit me to take so great a Care of it,
as my Duty requireth.24
Girl (F.H. no. 340)
D. of R. 17 July 1747
this Child was born the 24 of May about Eleven o’Clock in the Evening, and
was Christened the first of June by the name Elizabeth Green, if it should
have the Good fortune to get into this House, the Parents desire this paper
may be preserv’d with the Cloths, as they are in Great Hopes some part of
their lives, they may be in such Circumstances as to enable them to own
it.25
Boy (F.H. No.4478)
D. of R. 14 May 1757
To the Honourable Governors and Gentleman of the Foundling Hospital
We present unto Your Care and Protection a Poor Destitute Infant Void of
any hopes of being Preserved from the Calamities of want and Money
unless provided for by the most compassionate of all the Charity the
Donors of this Hospital the Child’s Not Baptized but we humbly Beg of you
to name it by the name of Jo Isac Walker Being the Same Name of the
parents and they expect to see it again if fortune should turn to them once
More as they Expect.
And Your Petitioners Shall in Duty
Bound for Ever Pray
May 14 1757
P.S. …. the Child has a King Charles Penny, Bearing Date 1688 about his
Neck.26 [St. Luke’s, Old Street].
Sadly, only six of the 1384 children taken in before the General Reception and only 146
of the 14,934 taken in during the General Reception were claimed. In a few cases
those who wrote notes may have said that they would reclaim their children if possible
in the hope that this might persuade the Foundling Hospital authorities to accept them,
not realizing that the system did not give the charity’s officers any discretion as to
which children were accepted. Some of these written tokens ring true, however, and we
must assume that far more of the parents who wrote them intended to reclaim the
24
A/FH/A/9/1/6
25
A/FH/A/9/1/4
26
A/FH/A9/1/55
19
children than were able to do so. In some cases they hoped for improvement in the
parents’ circumstances may not have materialized. In the early years parents who
wanted to reclaim children had to reimburse the Hospital for the expense it had been at
in looking after their children. For poor parents at least this would have been a major
obstacle to reclaiming a child. [In some cases where the children had died by the time
the application was made, the parents would still have been expected to reimburse the
Hospital.] Hanway later criticized the policy of demanding payment as discouraging
parents from reclaiming their children. [We should not assume, of course, that all those
who handed over foundlings were poor. Some of the billets were evidently written by
well educated people. If they were the work of the parents themselves, they may well
have been better off than many of the labouring poor.]
The comments of one writer in 1740 support the idea that some parents who
abandoned their children did so out of desperation.
‘Sometimes, indeed, the deep poverty of the parents overcomes the normal
dictates of nature, and rather than their children shall remain with them a
continual burden, and be the subject of daily starving with themselves, they
will throw them on the mercy of providence, and the uncertain compassion
of others, and venture to expose and desert them, with the hope that some
will be found to receive and cherish them.’27
They may have felt they were doing what was best for the children. The account of the
Daily Committee of the first day of reception at the Foundling Hospital on 25 March
1741 does not suggest brutal indifference on the part of the mothers:
‘On this Occasion the Expression of Grief of the Women whose Children
could not be admitted were Scarcely more observable than that of some of
the Women who parted with their Children, so that a more moving Scene
can’t well be imagined.’28
27
Some consideration on the Necessity and Usefulness of the Royal Charter Establishing an
Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and deserted young Children (1740), p.3.
Quoted by Malcolmson, loc.cit., p.339.
28
See Nicholls and Wray, op. cit., p.39.
20
The fact that some of the nurses who looked after foundlings in the country districts
became fond of their charges and reluctant to part with them also suggests that Shorter
and Stone were wrong in suggesting that the poorer classes cared little for children.
ILLEGITIMACY AND CHILD ABANDONMENT
We know that some of the deserted children were illegitimate.* Some of the unmarried
mothers may have been milliners or seamstresses, occupations that must have
employed large numbers in the eighteenth century. The majority, though, were almost
certainly maidservants, if only because this occupation employed far more young
women than any other.
Some of them had probably been seduced and then
abandoned when they became pregnant.
Rogers has shown, however, that the
examinations of mothers of the illegitimate children by the Justices of the Peace for
Westminster reveal that most cases of illegitimacy they dealt with were not due to
casual seduction, but to the ending of partnerships that had lasted some time.
29
There
is no way of telling, however, whether the same generalisation would hold for those
who abandoned their children without seeking the help of the Poor Law authorities.
Some mothers may have managed to conceal their pregnancy from their employers.
R. B. Outhwaite, however, has shown in his analysis of the petitions to the London
Foundling Hospital in the period 1768 to 1772 that many employers were ready to help
their servants in their pregnancy and lying-in, 30 and offered to give them employment in
the future provided the Foundling Hospital would take the children. There is no reason
to believe that the attitude of the employers would have been any different in the
General Reception period. Indeed, it would have been harder for the mothers to resist
*
See Appendix B for the question whether illegitimate foundlings outnumbered legitimate ones.
29
See N. Rogers, Carnal Knowledge: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth Century, Westminster in Journal of
Social History, vol. 23 (1989), p. 369.
30
R. B. Outhwaite, loc. cit., pp. 504-505.
21
the pressure to give up their children during the General Reception, since she could be
sure that the Foundling Hospital would take them.
These employers behaved
generously but the mothers would have almost certainly have been dismissed if they
had not abandoned their babies and would also have had very little chance of getting
another post in a respectable household. Moreover, it is unlikely that they would have
been able to find husbands while they were bringing up illegitimate children. The fact
that there were more women than men of marriageable age must also have limited
their chances. Their prospects would be very bleak. The best they could hope for if
they kept their babies would be such poorly paid work as that of washerwomen or
street sellers. Some, in desperation, might be drawn to prostitution. Jurors sometimes
acquitted unmarried mothers of infanticide, even when the evidence pointed to their
guilt. This suggests that although they must have been shocked at the crime, they
realised what a nightmarish position these young women were in.31
In some cases, mothers may have abandoned or even killed their babies because they
were too ashamed to seek the help of neighbours or their parents. In his The Fable of
the Bees, Mandeville even argued that the more respectable a girl had been hitherto,
the more likely she was to resort to desperate measures, since she would be more
conscious of disgrace.32 This assertion suited Mandeville’s satirical purpose but is not
very convincing. He almost certainly exaggerated the importance of shame in driving
unmarried women to kill or abandon their children.
Those women who took their
babies to the Foundling Hospital from 1741 onwards must either have felt no shame or
else have been ready to endure it. It is true that the Hospital did not interrogate those
who had brought babies about the circumstances that had led to the birth, but in many
cases the mothers would have had to look after their babies for several days or even
31
See Malcolmson, loc. cit, for a good discussion of this point.
32
Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (Oxford, O.U.P, 1924), p. 74-75.
22
several weeks before handing them over. [Until the General Reception it might be
weeks before the next day of reception at the Hospital]. This means that in many
cases everyone who had anything to do with them would know that they had had an
illegitimate child.
In 1732 John Macky argued that the reason there were no hospitals for illegitimate
children in London ‘as in Italy: not but that they get Bastards here, as well as in other
Countries; but People are not ashamed here of taking care of their own children.’33
No doubt, though, many parents were upset if their daughters had illegitimate children,
but the blow to family pride does not seem to have been so severe as it was in the
Catholic countries of Southern Europe, where one function of foundling hospitals was
to protect families from shame by providing places where unmarried girls could send
their babies.
The need to preserve family honour certainly seems to have been
important in Spain and Kertzer has shown that in Italy great pressure was put on
mothers to hand over their illegitimate babies to foundling hospitals. 34
In the four petitions presented to the Foundling Hospital’s General Committee on 7
February 1767 on behalf of mothers of illegitimate children, poverty, not shame, is
given as the reason for begging the Hospital to take the children. Here is one example:
Mary Lincoln setting forth the that she has had the misfortune to have a Child by a
Man who has left the Kingdom, that she is reduced to the greatest Distress being
long out of place before she was brought to Bed, and in order to support herself and
Child since has been obliged to pawn almost every individual of her wearing
Apparel, that could she succeed in her Petition a Lady who knows her Misfortune
and Distress would immediately take her into service.35
33
John Macky ‘A Journey Through England…’ Fifth ed., 1731, vol. 1, p.273.
34
Kertzer (1), op. cit., Chapter Two.
35
G. Cttee 7 February 1767, p. 158 – A/FH/K02/010.
23
POVERTY AND CHILD ABANDONMENT
Sheer poverty was probably the reason for most of the children being abandoned, both
before and after the Foundling Hospital was established. It certainly seems to have
been an important factor on the Continent. Gavitt has pointed out that many historians,
following the work of Carlo Corsini, accept that parents in Florence abandoned their
children to the Innocenti in hard times in order to keep from falling into abject poverty. 36
Sherwood has shown that the number of foundlings sent to the Inclusa in Madrid
increased every time the price of grain went up.37 Hufton notes that in France ‘The
increase in the number of abandoned children roughly coincides with the onset in each
province of long-term deteriorating conditions’38 Delaselle’s study of the Paris foundling
hospital and Peyronnet’s account of the Limoges hospital lend backing to this
generalization. 39 In the New World, too, poverty could lead to child abandonment.40
Valerie Fildes points out that more babies were abandoned before the General
Reception in years when conditions were particularly hard for the poor than in more
prosperous times. There is a close correlation between a rise in bread prices in London
and a rise in the number of foundlings. This does not prove that the one led to the other
but it is certainly suggestive. Adrian Wilson argues, less convincingly, that there was a
similar correlation during the General Reception.41 It is certainly true that that the
beginning of the General Reception coincided with a time of high bread prices. On this
argument,
36
Quoted in the article by Viazzo et al. Painter-Brick and Smith, ed., op.cit., p.72.
37
Sherwood, op.cit., p.5, p.32 and 114.
38
Olwen Hufton The Poor in Eighteenth Century France, 1750-1782
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976), p.332.
39
C. Delaselle, ‘Les Enfants Abandonnés à Paris au XVIIIe siecle,’ Annales, vol.30 [1], 1975, p.207.
Jean-Claude Peyronnet, ‘les enfants abandonnés et leurs nourrices à Limoges ou XVIIIe siecle,
Review d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol.23 (1976), especially pp.419-423.
40
Russell-Wood, op.cit., p.309.
41
Fildes, op.cit.,pp.155-157 and especially the graph on p.156.
24
though, there should have been a decline in the numbers sent to the Foundling
Hospital when prices fell from late 1757 to 1760, but numbers were in fact higher than
in the first year or so of the General Reception.42 The most likely explanation is that the
effect of falling bread prices was more than offset by the fact that, as the months
passed, more and more people would have become aware that the Foundling Hospital
was obliged to take in all children sent to them under the specified age. It must have
taken some time for the fact to have reached the more remote areas. We know that the
proportion of foundlings from outside London increased from 29.7% in the period June
– August 1756 to 49.9% fro the period June – August 1757. Unfortunately we have no
evidence for the relative numbers of London and non-London foundlings from
September 1757 onwards.*
Well-informed contemporaries were well aware of the appalling conditions under which
the very poorest Londoners lived. In a well-known passage Henry Fielding wrote that ‘if
we were to make a progress through the outskirts of this town, and look into the
habitations of the poor, we should there behold such pictures of human misery as must
move the compassion of every heart that deserves the name human.’43
Jonas Hanway wrote that
‘These Cities [i.e. London and Westminster], which are the Seat and Pride
of Empire, and the Glory of the Earth, are also the Sink of Misery, Iniquity
and the Reproach of human Nature.’44
42
Wilson, loc.cit., pp.128-137. See Appendix A.. B.R. Mitchell’s Phyllis Deare, eds., Abstract of
British Historical Statistics (1971), p.498.
*
The relative importance of London and non-London foundlings will be examined more thoroughly
in a later chapter, where the sources will be given.
43
Henry Fielding, A Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor (London, 1753).
Reprinted: The Complete Works of Henru Fielding, vol.XVIII, Legal Writings (London, Heinemans,
1903). See especially p.146.
44
Jonas Hanway, Serious Consideration on the Salutory Design of the Act … For a … Register of
the Parish Poor (London, 1762). The above quotation is on p.84.
25
Richard Burn said much the same thing:
‘It is a most affecting scene, to a heart tinctured with the least degree of
sensibility, to walk thro’ the streets of London and Westminster, and there
to behold the utmost affluence and splendor, on the one hand; and the
extremist wretchedness, on the other, that human nature is susceptible of in
a free country,’45
The evidence collected by Valerie Fildes and that provided by the billet books and the
petitions suggest that Fielding, Hanway and Burn were not exaggerating the
wretchedness of the poor. Many of those who left written tokens with the children they
abandoned or petitioned for help were clearly in a desperate situation.
This note was attached to a child left at a gentleman’s door in the parish of St. Martinin-the-Fields in June 1709:
‘This child was borne the 11 of June 1708 of unhappy parents which is not
abell to provide for it …. pray belief that it is extreme necessity that makes
me do this ….’46
The following note was attached to the billet of a baby handed in to the Foundling
Hospital on 28 June 1755.
Sattarday June the 28th 1755
George Man, Son of Wm Man, Shoemaker in thrift Street in the parish of
St. Anns Soho. the Babe is Recommended by her Lady Ship the
Honourable Lady Heroitt the father being a verry Elding [elderly] man and
the mother having a verry Bad Brest – and have 3 more small children and
being Brought Lo in the world favour had not Been Desirid.
Kind worthy Gentlemen
I remain your most obedient and humble
servent.
Wm Man.47
These people formed what the late Victorians would have called the ‘submerged tenth’
of London’s population. It is not suggested that all foundlings were children of families
45
R. Burn, History of the Poor Lawa, with Observation (1764), p.225. Burn was a Westmorland J.P.
See also Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, Kegan Paul, 1930).
46
Fildes, op.cit., p.153.
47
A/FH/A/9/1/15. The petitioner was obviously unaware that the Foundling Hospital selected
children by ballot in this period.
26
who were always desperately poor. There must have been many families who in good
times were on or above the subsistence level, but had nothing to cushion them from
poverty if some disaster hit them.
CALAMITIES THAT COULD LEAD TO A CHILD BEING ABANDONED
There are cases of mothers being unable to look after their babies because their
husbands were at sea. Here is one of the fourteen petitions considered by the General
Committee on Saturday 7 February 1767:
Isabella Wilson setting forth that her Husband is at Sea, that she was lately
delivered of a Female Child, is totally destitute of Money and Friends, that
her Settlement is in far off Berwick upon Tweed, and her Husbands
settlement unknown to her, that she is liable every Hour to be turned into
the Street with her Infant without knowing where to seek relief, and
therefore praying her Child may be received…48
Some of the babies were abandoned by mothers who had been deserted by their
husbands or lovers.
Here is a case from 1757.
Boy F.H. No.4327
30 April 1752
…. the child David Cropley Born in wedlock in Honton…. its father leaving
its mother She was not capable of taking care of it its fathers name is
Christopher Cropley a Shoemaker prentis at St. Edmundsbury in Norfolk.
and I humbly pray to God to Bless the Child Both in Soul and Body. Amen
and Amen. [Shoreditch]. 49
The following petition comes from 1767.
Elizabeth Brown setting forth that she is a poor distressed Woman whose
Husband has abandoned her and a Child of 4 Months Old, improvided for,
that she is destitute and forlorn, wanting the necessaries of Life, and none
to apply to for relief…50
48
G. Cttee – A/FH/K02/010, p.158 – microfilm X041/016.
49
A/FH/A/9/1/9.
50
A/FH/A/9/1/55.
27
There are quite a few cases where written tokens refer to the death of the mother or
father. 51 The death of a parent of a young baby must have been a common occurrence
in the eighteenth century. Wilson has argued that in many cases neighbours, friends or
relatives often would have helped the surviving parent. No doubt this was the case, but
presumably not every widow or widower had help when it was needed.
In one case in 1767 both parents had died:
Mrs James of Haydon Square representing the unhappy Case of 2 Orphan
Children, whose Father (late of the Tryall Sloop) died lately on the coast of
Guinea, and the Mother died on her passage form New York, where she
and her Children were born; that the Children are now with their aged
Grandmother who is in the most deplorable situation, and a Stranger in this
Country, and therefore entreating the Committee to take the youngest Boy
aged about 3 Years into Hospital…52.
[During the Seven Years’ War a number of children who had been orphaned were
taken in.
In a letter of 4 November 1762 to Trafford Barnston, who was taking a
leading part in getting the branch hospital at Chester set up, Taylor White, the
Treasurer, said that many of the foundlings were ‘The children of Soldiers and Sailors
whose parents have lost their lives in the Service of there (sic) country].53
FAILURE OF THE POOR LAW TO PREVENT CHILDREN BEING ABANDONED
The obvious step for anyone finding a baby that had been abandoned would have been
to take the child to the overseers of the poor of the parish.
Each parish was
responsible for the foundlings discovered within its boundaries.
51
Examples:
Death of the mother –
Girl F.H. No. *3337 D.of R.** 1 Feb 1757 (A/FH/A9/1/41).
Boy F.H. No. 5093 D.of R. 12 July 1757 (A/FH/A9/1/49). [East Ham]
Death of the father –
Girl F.H. No. 1637 D.of R. 10 June 1756 (A/FH/A9/1/20). [St. Martin’s parish]
Girl F.H. No. 5457 D.of R. 15 August 1757 (A/FH/A9/1/66). [St. Clement Danes]
* Foundling Hospital number.
** Date of Reception.
52
G. Cttee, 7 February 1767, p.160 – A/FH/K02/010 microfilm X041/016
53
Copy Book of letters, No.3, p. 204 – A/FH/A/6/2/1. This letter is not initialled, but it was clearly
written by Taylor White. Actually the number of such children taken in was quite small.
28
At first sight it is hard to understand why people with babies they were unable or
unwilling to support did not just take them to the overseers rather than run the
horrifying risk that no one would find them until it was too late. Some may have been
deterred by the fact that the overseers would not simply have allowed them to hand
over the child to the parish with no questions asked. The only way parents could rid
themselves of all responsibility for the child was by making a cash payment, usually of
about £10. In return for this payment, the parish undertook to bring up the child and, if
it survived, to see that it was apprenticed. This scheme seems only to have applied to
illegitimate children
The money was normally paid by the father
This might have
been the way out for a rich young man who had seduced a house-maid, but many
fathers of illegitimate children would have been too poor to find the money. The mother
could sometimes get the Poor law authorities to force the alleged father to pay
maintenance costs for the child. The mother would then of course, be expected to
keep the baby.54
In the no doubt common situation where the father was not to be found, the mother, if
she was entitled to relief, would either have been given a small sum of money each
week or each month and perhaps some other help in kind so that she could keep the
baby in her own home (out-relief) or she would have been compelled to enter the
workhouse with her child. 55
We have already argued that in most cases it was probably poverty rather than
callousness which led to child abandonment, but in some cases the wretchedness of
the lives of deserted mothers may have made them so callous that they did not care
what happened to their children and therefore did not appeal to the overseers for help.
54
See Dorothy Marshall The English Poor in he Eighteenth Century (Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1969) pp. 213-217.
55
Ibid., pp. 216-224.
29
A few mothers may have been the sort of gin-sodden inebriates Hogarth portrayed –
women who hardly knew what they were doing.
In other cases, though there may have been no hope of getting help from the parish.
Not everyone living in a parish was entitled to poor relief, however desperate their
circumstances.
LAMENTABLE CONDITION OF LONDON’S PAUPER INFANTS
It was certainly an act of desperation to abandon a foundling, even if it was done in
such a way that someone was bound to discover it almost straight away. The record of
London’s Poor Law authorities in dealing with foundlings was lamentable. Foundlings
would either be sent out to be cared for by parish nurses or put in the parish
workhouse, if there was one. It was common knowledge that very few foundlings sent
out to parish nurses survived. According to a Parliamentary Report of 1716, ‘A great
many poor infants and exposed bastard children are inhumanly suffered to die by the
barbarity of nurses, who are a sort of people void of commiseration or religion, hir’d by
the church wardens to take off a burthen from the parish at the cheapest and easiest
rate they can, and they know the manner of doing it effectually.’56
Two attempts towards the end of the seventeenth century had been made to find a
better way of dealing with London’s foundlings and other pauper children. A College of
Infants had been set up in Clerkenwell in 1685 but it closed soon after it moved to
Hornsey in 1691.57 In 1698 the Bishopsgate Workhouse was funded by the London
Corporation of the Poor. It was a much larger institution than the College of Infants but
56
House of Commons Journal, 8 March, 1715-16. Quoted in George, op. cit., p. 217.
th
57
Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society (London, Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1969) vol. 1, p. 149.
30
was no more successful in the long run. 58 The parish workhouses set up under the Act
of 1723 were meant to take a fresh start. ‘All the poor children now kept at parish
nurses, instead of being starv’d or misus’d by them, as is so much complained of, will
be duly taken care of, and be bred up to Labour, Industry, Virtue and Religion …’59 It
soon became clear, however, that the new workhouses had as bad a record as the
parish nurses in failing to keep children alive.
THOMAS CORAM’S PLAN FOR A FOUNDLING HOSPITAL
These failures must have convinced Thomas Coram that a completely new institution
separate from the Poor Law was needed to tackle the problem of deserted children.
He planned ‘to prevent the frequent murder of poor miserable infants at the birth’ and
‘to suppress the inhuman custom of exposing new babies to peril in the streets’ by
providing a hospital where mothers could leave their babies without questions being
asked.
Neither the official nor the unofficial name of Coram’s charity was really
appropriate, therefore: he aimed to prevent children from becoming foundlings. The
money was to be raised from the public, not from the poor rates or from national taxes.
Coram was aware that those foundlings who, against the odds, survived, had the worst
possible start in life. The petition which he persuaded twenty one aristocratic ladies to
sign refers to ‘the putting out such unhappy foundlings to wicked and barbarous
nurses, who undertaking to bring them up for a small and trifling sum of money, do
often suffer them to starve for want of due sustenance or care, or if permitted to live
either turn them into the street to beg or steal, or hire them out to loose persons by
58
Ibid. pp. 149-159.
The later history of the Bishopsgate Workhouse is obscure. Joanna Innes refers to attempts in
the late eighteenth century to reorganize ‘the much reduced but surviving Corporation of the
Poor.’ Innes, op. cit., p. 166. Apparently it was dissolved and the workhouse sold early in the
nineteenth century. See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government, English Poor
Law History, Part One. The Old Poor Law (London, Longmans, 1927), p. 118.
59
Case of the Parish of St. Giles in the Fields … ‘ Quoted in Dorothy George, op. cit. p. 218.
31
whom they are trained up in that infamous way of living and sometimes are blinded or
maimed and distorted in their limbs to move pity or compassion and thereby become
fitter instruments of gain for those vile merciless wretches.’60
In his own petition to the King, Coram referred to ’that Idleness, Beggary or Stealing in
which such poor Foundlings are Generally bred up.’61 Coram’s aim, then, was not just
to save lives: he wanted to save the children from swelling the wretched ranks of crime
and destitution. By being given a proper training the children could be brought up to be
honest, hard-working, useful members of the community.
It took Captain Coram over seventeen years (from spring of 1722* to October 1739) to
get the Foundling Hospital established and it was another year and a half before the
first foundlings were taken in.
Coram’s dogged determination eventually paid off,
however, and, as Dr. Brocklesby said, ‘even people of rank began to be ashamed to
see a man’s hair turn grey in the course of a solicitations by which he could get
nothing.’62
60
The key section of the Ladies’ Petition is reprinted in Dorothy George, op. cit., p.43.
61
Coram’s own petition is printed in Nichols and Wray, op. cit., pp. 16. The Ladies’ Petition seems
to refer to children who were sent to private nurses or to parish nurses in return for a lump sum.
Note that an anonymous writer had said such the same thing as Coram. He noted that such
children [i.e. parish paupers] are often sent a Begging, and found Pilfering to supply their
Necessities, and what is likely to be the end of many of them, one cannot but dread to think of An
Account of the Corporation of the Poor of London (London, 1713), p.19. Quoted in Pinchbeck
and Hewitt, op. cit., p. 159.
*
Strangely enough, Coram continued his campaign even after the Workhouse Act of 1723 had
been passed and did not wait to see if it would be successful.
62
Brocklesby, op. cit., reprinted, Brownlow, op. cit., p.116.
32
CHAPTER THREE
REASONS FOR BACKING A FOUNDLING HOSPITAL
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Some historians have suggested that the eighteenth marked a new stage in the history
of foundling hospitals.1 Under the influence of Enlightenment ideas about the possibility
of producing an ideal society, some rulers and administrators saw the foundling
hospitals as laboratories for experiments in social engineering. Catherine the Great
certainly seems to have been inspired by the strange notion of the perfectibility of Man.
She was strongly influenced by Ivan Ivanovitch Betskoi, the man who did most to get
the Moscow and St. Petersburg hospitals established. Betskoi had spent many years in
exile in Western Europe and had absorbed Enlightenment ideas. When he returned to
Russia he saw an opportunity to put these ideas into practice. He believed that the
foundlings could be trained in such a way as to form then nucleus of a new urban class
of artisans and clerks, which would help Russia to catch up on the West.2
The
Emperor Joseph II of Austria was also influenced by the Enlightenment. He had
ambitious plans to modernize his territories and to improve the lot of the poor. The
Foundling Hospital in Vienna was only one of a number of major charities he
established financed by money he seized when many of the monasteries were
dissolved. 3 Joan Sherwood has argued that the members of the Junta de damas, who
took over running of the Inclusa in Madrid at the end of the eighteenth century, were
also inspired by Enlightenment ideas. She points out that the leading Bourbon
administrators in the late eighteenth century believed they could transform Spain if they
1
See Otto Ulbricht, ‘The Debate about Foundling Hospitals in Enlightenment Germany: Infanticide,
Illegitimacy, and Infant Mortality Rates,’ in Central European History, vol.18 (1985), pp.211-256.
For a general discussion of Enlightenment ideas in England see Roy Porter, Enlightenment,
Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, Allen, Lare, Penguin Press, 2000).
2
Ransel, op.cit., pp.31-38.
3
S. K. Padover, The Revolutionary Emperor: Joseph II of Austria (Eyre and Spottoswoods,
London, 1967). p.162.
33
could only solve what they saw as the main problem for her poverty – under population.
The Inclusa and other foundling hospitals in Spain could help by saving the lives of
children who would otherwise die in infancy.4
In England, as we shall see, there was also a belief that the country needed more
labourers if it was to be prosperous and safe from its enemies, but there is no evidence
that the governors of the Foundling Hospitals in London were consciously applying
Enlightenment notions in order to transform the country.*
The only country in the British Isles in which foundling hospitals were used as part of a
deliberate policy to bring about radical change was Ireland. One reason for establishing
the Dublin and Cork foundling hospitals was the hope that by bringing up the children
as Protestants the hold of the Catholic Church in Ireland would be weakened and the
Protestant Ascendancy strengthened. It is hard to bring this policy under the heading of
the Enlightenment, however.5
Incidentally these attempts at using the foundling hospital to bring about major social
changes in Russia, Spain and Ireland all failed.
AN AGE OF ‘BENEVOLENCE’ AND ‘SENSIBILITY’
Probably most of those who subscribed to the Foundling Hospital or to other new
charities founded in the eighteenth century were motivated primarily by the wish to
reduce the amount of suffering they saw around them. This is, after all, presumably the
main motive of most people who give to charities today. As the Bishop of Worcester,
Dr. Isaac Maddox, said in a charity sermon in 1739, men cannot ‘without doing
4
Sherwood, op.cit., especially pp.180-183.
5
See Robins, op.cit., & Wodsworth, op.cit.
*
See Appendix L for Thomas Day’s experiment in training two girls from the Foundling Hospital, so
that he could select one of them to be his wife.
34
Violence to their own Nature, be insensible and untouched at the Distress and Misery
of their Fellow Creatures.’6
Contemporaries prided themselves on living in an age of ‘benevolence’ and ‘sensibility’
in which greater efforts were made to help the poor then ever before. A writer in The
Idler of 1758 declared that ‘no sooner is a new species of misery brought to view, and a
design of relieving it professed, then every hand is open to contribute something, every
tongue is busied in solicitations, and every act of pleasure is employed for a time in the
interest of virtue.’7 David Spadafora has pointed out that even the Revd. John Brown,
the author of the very pessimistic Estimate of the Manners and principles of the Times
(1757-1758), praised his contemporaries for their efforts to help the poor.8 Oliver
Goldsmith, in his Life of Nash (1762) said: ‘If I were to name any reigning and
fashionable virtue in the present age, I think it should be charity. The numberless
benefactions privately given, the various public solicitations for charity, and the success
they meet with, serve to prove, that though we may fall short of our ancestors in other
respects, yet in this instance we greatly exceed them.9 Whether they were right in
thinking their age was doing much more then earlier generations is, perhaps
debatable, 10 but it is certainly clear that large sums were given to charity. People gave
generously to all sorts of causes. In 1734, for example, the freedom of one hundred
and thirty five Britons who had been enslaved by the pirates of the Barbary Coast was
purchased. 11 Many people gave money to secure the release of men imprisoned for
6
Isaac Maddox, James Street Infirmary Sermon. [Westminster Hospital], (1739), p.9.
7
The Idler, 16 May 1758. Quoted in David Owen, op.cit., p.12.
8
David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth Century Britain (New Havens London, Yale
University Press, 1990), pp. 213-220.
9
Oliver Goldsmith, Life of Nash, 1762, in the Miscellaneous Works (Globe Estates, Macmillan,
1876), p. 538.
10
See David Owen, English Philanthropy, 1660 - 1960 (Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press
1964), W. K. Jordan The Charities of London, 1480 - 1660 London, George Allen and Unwin,
1960).and Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class, pp. 316-319.
11
David Owen, op.cit., p.65.
35
debt – often for quite small sums – or to make their living condition more tolerable in
gaol. [One of the motives of General Oglethorpe and the other trustees in founding the
colony of Georgia in 1732/3 had been to give these unfortunate people a chance to
make a fresh start, though admittedly strategic considerations were also important.]12
People also helped those who had suffered from fire, shipwreck or natural disasters. It
was accepted that the poor should be helped in hard times. In a letter from Colnbrook
in February 1740 Lady Hertford wrote to Lady Pomfret, then in Florence, that ‘The
severity of the weather has occasioned greater sums to be given in charity than ever
before.’13
One reason why so many people were ready to support the Foundling Hospital, in spite
of fears that it might encourage fornication and bastardy, was no doubt the fact that the
foundlings were, like these victims of natural disasters, in no way responsible for their
plight.
In a few cases some event in the philanthropist’s own life may have made him
particularly sensitive to the plight of abandoned children. In 1760 Jonas Hanway wrote
that, ‘I lost my father by an accident, ‘ere I was well taken from my mother’s breast; she
behaved with great piety and fortitude through a long series of misfortunes, and was
remarkably tender of her children, and she will live in my memory, whilst my memory
lasts: but still I have great reason to lament my father’s death… As I lamented my own
loss so very early in life, I feel the more for children who are already cut off from all
connection with parents; and I cannot help wishing it were possible for me to become a
12
See A. A. Ettinger, James Edward Oglethorpe, Imperial Idealist (Oxford O.U.P. 1936), chapter 4
or Leslie F. Church, Oglethorpe, A Study of Philanthropy in England and Georgia (Epworth Press,
1932), chapter 7.
13
George Paston, Little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century (London, Dutton & Co., 1901), p.18.
36
father to them, by every action of parental care. I feel their wants more than they can
feel their own.’14
Many of those who gave to charity may have been influenced by the teaching of the
Church. Thomas Coram was a devout Churchman and his religious beliefs may well
have strengthened his resolve. Parts of Hanway’s Serious Considerations reads like a
religious tract rather than a political pamphlet: ‘Whilst we have time, let us do Good
unto all Men, Evil unto None… the love of God and the love of Man, in the Sum and
Substance of Religion.’15 A large number of the printed sermons of Anglican clergy and
Dissenting ministers in the eighteenth century emphasized the duty of the rich to help
the poor.16 Dr Andrew points out that eighteenth century theologians, though they
differed amongst themselves on the exact nature of the obligations, all agreed that the
rich must help the poor. Preachers were not afraid to remind their congregations that
they would have to account for the stewardships of their wealth at the Day of
Judgement.17 Presumably even those who had never read a sermon in their lives and
allowed their minds to wander while the parson was preaching would have been
familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan.18 The Charitable Proposal for Relieving
the Poor and Needy and other Distressed Persons specifically referred to this
parable. 19 Charity sermons were well attended and often raised large sums for medical
hospitals and charity schools. Thousands of pounds were raised to build the
14
Jonas Hanway, A Candid Historical Account of the Hospital for the Reception of Exposed and
Deserted Young Children (London, 1759), p.51. Hanway was elected a governor on 12 May
1756, a fortnight or so before the General reception commenced. Nichols and Wray, op.cit.,
p.367.
15
Hanway, Serious Considerations on the … Act of Parliament For a … Register of the Parish Poor
(London, 1762), Letter 2, p.85.
16
See Donna Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989).
17
St. Matthew, chapter 10 verses 31-46.
18
St. Luke, chapter 10, verses 25–37.
19
W.G. Spencer, Westminster Hospital, an Outline of its History (London, Henry J. Glaister, 1926),
pp.31-32. This proposal led to the setting up of the Westminster Hospital in 1719.
37
Foundling Hospital chapel and the Hospital had no difficulty in renting pews. The
baptism services for foundlings usually attracted a large congregation, though it must
be admitted that some may have attended these services out of curiosity as much as
piety.
NEED FOR A LARGE AND INDUSTRIOUS WORK FORCE
But there were also purely secular reasons for supporting charities. People believed
that by saving the lives of infants, by training children to be honest, hardworking and
contented with their lot, and by restoring adults to health so that they could get back to
work, they were benefiting the nation as well as the poor themselves. Everyone
accepted that the country’s prosperity depended on the existence of a large and
industrious work force. In 1714, for example, John Bellers, the Quaker social reformer,
wrote that ‘regularly labouring People are the Kingdom’s greatest Treasure and
Strength, for without Labourers there can be no lords; and if the poor Labourers did not
raise much more Food and Manufacturers than what did subsist themselves, every
Gentleman must be a Labourer, and every idle Man must starve.’20 A writer in the
Gentleman’s Magazine in 1756 declared that the ‘rich stand indebted’ to the poor ‘for
all the comforts and conveniences of life.’21 Jonas Hanway made the same point. ‘As
the true foundation of riches and power is the number of working poor, every rational
proposal for augmentation of them merits our regard. The number of people is
confessedly the national stock: the estate, which has no body to work in, is so far good
for nothing; and the same rule extends to a whole country or nation… It seems to be a
general [?] that we want people; and indeed, considering our extensive commerce; the
smallness of this island compared with his Majesty’s dominions abroad; and the
20
John Bellers, An Essay Towards the Improvement of Physick, Quoted in R.W. Malcolmson, Life
and Labour in England, 1700-1780 (London, Hutchinson, 1981), p12.
21
Quoted in Malcolmson, op.cit., p.12.
38
formidable neighbour who is ever meditating our limitations [France], we had need to
promote population by all rational and pious means.’22
A writer in the Annual Register in 1759 declared that ‘We live in an age of commerce
and computation’23 and Hanway, and other merchants as well, were perhaps
influenced by the contemporary interest in ‘political arithmetick’. Hanway often made
elaborate calculations of the losses the country sustained by the death of young
children before they were old enough to work.24
J. S. Taylor has pointed out that Hanway’s philanthropic endeavours were all
concerned with promoting the national interest. ‘What concerned him were poor boys
who might become sailors, prostitutes who might become mothers, foundlings who
might become productive subjects, domestic servants who might become parents, and
sailors and soldiers upon whom the immediate security of the state depended.25
If we accept the argument that the prosperity of the country depended on a large labour
force, then contemporaries had some justification for their anxiety. Living conditions
were so bad in the capital that the London death rate was substantially higher than the
London birth rate. For the period 1700 to 1750 the ratio of burials to baptisms recorded
in Anglican churches within the area covered by the London Bills of Mortality was
22
Jonas Hanway, A Candid Historical Account of the hospital for the Reception of Exposed and
Deserted Young Children (London), pp. 10-11.
23
Annual Register for 1759, p.429.
24
See for example, A Candid Historical Account, pp. 80-83.
Sometimes his enthusiasm for numbers led to some strange conclusions. On visiting Stonehenge
he calculated that heaven and hell must contain some 52,941,000,000 souls. See P. Langford,
op.cit., p.486.
25
James Stephen Taylor, ‘Philanthropy and Empire: Jonas Hanway and the Infant Poor of London,’
in Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 12 (Spring 1979), pp. 285-305.
39
roughly 3:2.26* The death rate in London was almost certainly much higher than the
death rate in the countryside. Dr. Short in 1750 estimated the death rate per annum in
a healthy country parish at 30 per 1,000 and the death rate in London at 50 per
1,000.27 The London death rate was also probably higher than the death rate in most
other English cities and towns. The death rate in some continental cities seems to have
been lower than in London. According to Hanway, ‘the Rate of Mortality here (i.e.
London) seems to exceed that of all other Cities in the World, not absolutely infected
with Plague’.28 London was clearly one of the unhealthiest cities in Western Europe.
Moreover, the death rate in London seems to have been higher in the early eighteenth
century than in the seventeenth century. It was only in the late eighteenth century that
the situation began to improve.29
Londoners, then, were dying at a truly alarming rate in the early eighteenth century. Yet
in spite of the excess of births over deaths, the population of London increased, though
only at a moderate rate. Wrigley thinks London grew from about 575,000 in 1700 to
about 675,000 in 1750.30 This growth can only have been achieved by constant
migration from the rest of the country. Towards the mid-eighteenth century perhaps
26
*
M.C. Buer, Health, Wealth and Population, 1760-1815 (London, Routledge, 1928). The clerks in
these one hundred and forty seven parishes had to make regular returns of the number of burials
and baptisms to the Company of Parish Clerks. There were, of course, as contemporaries
realized, obvious difficulties in estimating the total number of births and deaths in London from
figures for Anglican burials and baptism. Miss Buer gives a clear account of the deficiencies of the
parish registers (pp.16-18). The gap between Anglican burials and baptisms is so wide, however,
that we can be sure that there were far more deaths than births in London in the early eighteenth
century. Mortality rates for children will be considered in Chapter Seven, pp. 105-106.
See Appendix K. and Chapter Seven, pp. 106-107.
27
Thomas Short, M.D., New Observations on the Bills of Mortality (London, 1750), quoted in Buer,
op.cit.,p.29.
28
J. Hanway, Serious Considerations…. p.67.
29
John Landers, Death and the Metropolis (Cambridge, C.U.P. 1993), Part II. See especially Table
4.3 on p.136. Landers has based his conclusion on an analysis of death rates amongst London
Quakers in two selected areas of London as well as on the London Bills of Mortality, using the
sophisticated technique of modern demography.
See Appendix K.
30
E.A. Wrigley, A Simple Model of London’s Importance…1650-1750, Past and Present, no.37,
1967, p.44.
40
10,000 more people were entering the capital each year than were leaving it. Miss Buer
put the point vividly: ‘London destroyed half a million population from the rest of the
country during the first fifty years of the eighteenth century.’31
Great Britain seems to have grown only slowly in the early eighteenth century, as the
following estimates suggest:
1700
c.6,750,000
1750
c.7,500,00032
We can now see one other reason, quite apart from the desire to reduce the amount of
suffering in the capital, for the alarm at the terrible waste of life in London. Corbyn
Morris wrote in 1751: ‘The loss within so short a term, within the memory of thousands
living, at present, of no less than 600,000 people, who might now in themselves and
their children have subsisted in this nation, will at length be viewed with horror and
amazement; a loss wholly owing to the continual destruction of infants and adults in the
slaughter-house of London.’33
MANNING THE NAVY AND THE ARMY
There was also a patriotic reason for supporting those charities that aimed to save the
lives of children or to restore poor adults to health. It was believed that Great Britain
needed a large population so that the Army and Navy could be properly manned in
31
See Buer, op.cit., p.33 and Wrigley, loc.cit., p.45. See also Dorothy George, op.cit., for the
grimmer side of London life.
Dorothy Marshall, Dr. Johnson’s London (New York, Wiley, 1968) and George Rudé Hanoverian
London 1714-1800 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1971) deal with all
aspects of London life.
32
R.A. Houston, The Population History of Britain and Ireland, 1550-1750 (Cambridge, C.U.P.,
1972), p.16.
B.R. Mitchell, ed., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, C.U.P.,1971), p.5.
Note that little information is available for Scotland in 1700, but these estimates are probably fairly
close to the truth.
33
Corbyn Morris, Observations on the Past Growth and Present State of the City of London
(London, 1751), p.108. Quoted in Donna T. Andrews, op.cit., p.55.
Notice that Corbyn’s estimate is rather higher than Miss Buer’s.
th
Incidentally, Corbyn became a governor of the Foundling Hospital on December 26 , 1744.
41
time of war. In a debate in the House of Commons on 7 May 1750 Robert Nugent
pointed out that the governing classes not only owed their ‘riches and splendour’ to the
labouring poor, but also ‘it is to their courage [in the Army and the Royal Navy] all of us
owe our security.’34
Everyone was conscious of how wealthy and populous Britain’s great rival was. The
population of France was probably more than three times larger than that of Great
Britain in the mid-eighteenth century:
France in 1750
Great Britain in 1750
c.24,000,000
c. 7,500,00035
This patriotic motive for supporting charities no doubt had less weight in the long peace
after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 which ended the War of the Spanish Succession, but
it became important from 1739 when the War of Jenkins’ Ear ushered in a period of
conflict (with only a few years of uneasy truce) which lasted until Great Britain’s final
victory over France and Spain with the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War in 1763.
The original plan for the Foundling Hospital was that most of the boys would be
apprenticed, if possible, either to farmers or to the sea service, which suggests a
patriotic motive. These wars were part of a great struggle for trade and empire in the
New World and in India and they deeply affected the fortunes of the London mercantile
community.36
34
Parliamentary History, vol.15 (1753-65), col.17. Quoted in Malcolmson, op.cit.,p.12.
35
For the estimate for Great Britain, see note 32.
For France, see the article by Louis Henry, reprinted in D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley, eds.,
Population and History (London, Edward Arnold, 1965), chapter 18, pp.434-456.
36
For the difficulties of manning the Royal Navy and the merchant marine in time of war, see
W.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London, Collins, 1985),
chapter 5, and Peter Earle, Sailors – English Merchant Seamen, 1650-1775 London, Methuen,
1998), chapter 12. Britain was also dangerously short of soldiers at times, as the Forty-Five
rebellion showed.
42
‘CHARITY, HUMANITY, PATRIOTISM AND OECONOMY’
To sum up, contemporaries believed, in the words of the pamphleteer and statistician
Joseph Massie, that ‘Charity, Humanity, Patriotism and Oeconomy [might] be made to
go Hand-in-Hand.’37 Hanway, the only London merchant to write at length in support of
philanthropy, often jumbled together these various justifications for charity.38 He
probably believed that, since both the individual and the nation would benefit from well
thought out schemes, there was little point in discussing the relative importance of
these objectives. This mixture of philanthropic, economic and patriotic motives seems
to have inspired many of the new charities of the eighteenth century, including that of
the Foundling Hospital itself.39 Thomas Coram, like other leading philanthropists of the
age, was almost certainly inspired by patriotic as well as humanitarian motives. In his
memoir of his friend, Dr. Brocklesby said that Coram ‘thought it would do honour to the
nation to show a public spirit of compassion for children thus deserted, through the
indigence or cruelty of their parents, and this, rather because this was already done in
other countries.’40 In his petition to the King, Thomas Coram declared that he wanted
‘by an Early and Effectual Care of their Education,’ to make the foundlings ‘useful
37
Joseph Massie, A Plan for the Establishment of Charity Houses for Exposed and Deserted
Women and Girls and for Penitent Prostitutes (London, 1758), p.9. Quoted in McClure, op.cit.,
p.80. Massie, however, believed that the Foundling Hospital did more harm than good.
See Massie, Farther Observations concerning the Foundling Hospital (London, 1759).
38
See, for example, his Letters on the Importance of the Rising Generations of the Labouring Part
of Our Fellow Subjects (2 vols., London 1767).
39
See Andrew, op.cit., for a thorough analysis of the secular as well as the religious arguments
used by contemporaries for supporting charities.
See also Betsy Rodgers, op.cit., pp. 7-13.
40
Brocklesbury, op.cit.
43
Members of the Common Wealth.’41 Coram’s biographer, the Revd. H.F.B. Compston,
entitled his book Thomas Coram, Churchman, Empire Builder and Philanthropist, which
sums up his life admirably**.
41
For Coram’s petition, see Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.16-17. There are good brief accounts of
Coram’s life in Nichols and Wray and in McClure, op.cit. See also Wager, op.cit., for a full-scale
biography.
*
For a discussion of other possible motives for supporting charities in the eighteenth century, see
Appendix C.
44
CHAPTER FOUR
THE EXTENT OF SUPPORT FOR THE HOSPITAL
THE GOVERNORS
Like the other major charities in London and the provinces the Foundling Hospital
depended upon public support. Only Guy’s Hospital had no need to appeal to the
public for funds. At first the Foundling Hospital relied totally on legacies and on the
generosity of governors and others. During the General Reception period, much of the
income, of course, came from parliamentary grants, but these were only forthcoming
because enough M.P.s were in favour of this venture. The withdrawal of the
parliamentary grants, which meant an end to indiscriminate admissions, was due to
growing disillusionment about the charity’s work.
The Foundling Hospital certainly had a large number of governors. Here are the figures
for the period 17 October 1739 to 31 July 1773:
(i)
376 were named in the royal charter of 17 October 1739;
(ii) 565 were elected by 1 June 1756;
(iii) 276 were elected during the General Reception (2 June 1756 to 25 March
1760);
(iv) 487 were elected in the period 26 March 1760 to 31 July 1773.1
By 31 July 1773, therefore, 1704 men had been governors at one time or another. On
that day there were still 942 ‘on the books.’ In 858 cases their addresses were given:
476 had London addresses and 382 were living outside London.2 This is certainly an
1
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.345-385.
2
The number is taken from a list of governors from April 1774 – A/FH/A1/6. The four governors
appointed after 31 July 1773 have been omitted. The last page of this list is missing, but the gap
has been filled from another list of 1784 – A/FH/2/1/1 – again omitting the governors appointed
after 31 July 1773. It is possible that one or two errors may have crept into the April 1774 list. It is
surprising to find John Wilkes listed as a governor, since his misappropriation of the funds of the
Aylesbury branch hospital had come to light about ten years earlier. Probably even Wilkes would
not have had the effrontery to consider himself a governor after that discovery.
45
impressive number, but it would not have seemed that remarkable to contemporaries.
In the period from June 1756 to 15 November 1759 the Marine Society enrolled 1292
governors. 3
We need to be careful about drawing conclusions about the extent of support for the
Hospital from the large number of governors. Strange as it may seem, not all the 375
men listed as governors in the royal charter had been asked if they wanted to support
the charity. Mrs McClure points out that Thomas Coram had only secured the consent
of 172 of them by 13 February 1739. It is hardly surprising to discover, therefore, that
many of the governors listed in the charter took no part in running or financing the
charity. Even those governors whose consent had been obtained had not committed
themselves to paying an annual subscription or to making a donation, though many of
them did help to finance the charity. On 19 February 1740, for example, donations from
thirty governors were listed. The minimum sum, given by thirteen of them, was £50.4
On the same day, four governors agreed to pay annual subscriptions, the sum varying
from £10 to £25.5
Once the charity got under way, new governors were usually appointed because they
had given a lump sum (from 1747 this was fixed at a minimum of £50),6 in which case
they became governors for life, or because they had agreed to give a fairly substantial
annual subscription (in practice, it was usually necessary to have promised to give £5
or more), in which case, in theory, they were supposed to keep up their subscription if
they wished to remain governors*. Even those governors elected by 1 June 1756 who
took little interest in the charity had therefore made some contribution to its success.
3
Jonas Hanway, An Account of the Marine Society (London, 1759)
4
G.Ct. A/FH/K01/001 – microfilm X041/010.
5
A/FH/B3/19/1.
6
G.Ct., Wednesday 13 May 1747, A/FH/K01/001. P.155 – microfilm X041/010.
*
Though no examples of defaulters being struck off the list of governors have been discovered.
46
The election of 763 governors during the General Reception and its aftermath might
seem to indicate that there had been no loss of enthusiasm for the charity. A number of
the new governors were elected, like their immediate predecessors, after making a
substantial donation or after committing themselves to an annual subscription. But
these accounted for only a small minority of the new governors.
Such entries as the
following in the General Court minutes for 23 April 1766 are rare in this period:
‘Mr. Nugent paid the Treasurer fifty pounds being the Benefaction of Monkhouse
Davison. Esq.
Resolved
To elect the said Monkhouse Davison, Esq. a Governor and Guardian of
the Hospital,’ 7
Over 500 governors were elected in the hope that they would help to run the branch
hospitals in their areas. Apparently very few gave any money to the charity. Many of
them also took little or no part in running the branch hospitals, as we shall see later. In
their failure to contribute either time or money to the charity they resembled that of
some of those named in the royal charter of 17 October 1739.
In 1772, the year after the last parliamentary grant was handed over, the General Court
‘Resolved,
That an annual Subscriber of three guineas, or a Donor of thirty guineas,
may be proposed to be elected a governor of this Hospital.’8
The Hospital was clearly endeavouring to get back to the pre-General Reception
system, where governors were expected to give money to the charity.
Given that the Hospital no longer expected men to help the charity’s finances before
being appointed governors, income from donations and annual subscriptions fell
dramatically in the period 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773.
7
Gen.Ct. – A/FH/K01/001, p.260 – microfilm X041/010.
8
Gen.Ct., Wednesday July 1st 1772 – A/FH/K02/003, p.126 – microfilm X041/010.
47
THE ROLE OF THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE ‘MIDDLING RANKS’ IN RUNNING
AND FINANCING THE CHARITY
The list of the three hundred and seventy six governors in the royal charter granted on
17 October 1739 reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the 1730’s, containing as it does the
names of Frederick, Prince of Wales (the heir to the throne), the Archbishops of
Canterbury and York, the Bishop of London, twenty three dukes, thirty five earls, seven
viscounts, twenty one barons, and forty five baronets and knights. (At the very end of
the list was Mr. Thomas Coram of Allhallows, London Wall.)9
At first sight the fact that the charter listed so many dukes, earls, viscounts and barons
might be held to support the idea put forward by J.C.D. Clark that, however wealthy the
middling ranks may have been by this time, they were still living in a country dominated
by a landed aristocracy. 10 The aristocrats might be thought of as the charity’s officer
class and the untitled as comprising the ‘other ranks.’ Certainly the fact that Thomas
Coram had persuaded a number of aristocrats to sign the petitions for a charter must
have helped, but an examination of the Foundling Hospital’s records suggest that
aristocrats did not play a dominant role in running the charity. On the contrary, the
evidence supports David Owen’s belief in the important role played by the middling
ranks in eighteenth century philanthropy.11
The situation was quite different from that in Portugal, for example, where all the key
posts in the misericórdia were reserved for noblemen.12 The most important post a
governor could hold in the Foundling Hospital was that of Treasurer, yet not one of the
first three Treasurers, covering the period 1739 to 1772, had a title. Of the twenty eight
9
See Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.329-336, for the Royal Charter and pp. 345-367 for the list of
governors.
10
J.C.D. Clark, English Society: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancient
Regime (Cambridge, 1985)
11
Owen, op.cit., chapters 1 and 2.
12
Isabel dos Guimares Sà, ‘Child Abandonment in Portugal: Legislation and Institutional Care’ in
Continuity and Change, vol.9(1), p.81.
48
governors who were Vice-Presidents at one time or another in the period 1739 to 1773
only eight held peerages or courtesy titles, five were baronets or knights and the other
fifteen were untitled.13 Of the first six vice-presidents named in the charter one, Micajah
Perry, had been Lord Mayor of London for 1738-39 and three others – Sir Joseph
Eyles, Pete Burrel and James Cook – were merchants. 14 There were occasions when
the chair at a General Committee meeting was taken by a commoner even though
some titled governors were present. On June 8 1742, for example, John Milner, who
had become one of the vice-presidents two years before, acted as chairman; amongst
those attending were the Earl of Abercorn, the Earl of Findlater and Lord Charles
Cavendish.15
In volume 42 of the Foundling Hospital Library there is a list of 113 men who it was
proposed to nominate in the Charter as governors of the Foundling Hospital. It was
presumably drawn up by Thomas Coram. The occupations of 90 of the 113 men were
given. They included 56 merchants, 9 alderman of the City of London, a director of
East India Company, a bookseller, a stationer, a brewer, the two Chief Justices of the
King’s Bench and the Common Pleas, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, a Master in
Chancery, two barristers, nine physicians, four surgeons and one druggist.16
Dr. Andrew has pointed out that about half of the Foundling Hospital’s General
Committee in 1745 were prosperous merchants and financiers. They included four
directors of the South Sea Company, an important government contractor and a
governor of the Royal Exchange Company.17
13
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.412-413.
14
Wagner, op.cit., pp.133.
15
G.Cttee, 8 June 1742 – A/FH/K02/001, microfilm X041.014.
16
A/FH/M01/23, pp.54-59.
17
Donna T. Andrew op.cit., p.65.
49
THE ACTIVE GOVERNORS
In order to assess the relative importance of the aristocracy and the ‘middling order’ in
running the charity, though, we need to distinguish between active and inactive
governors by looking at attendance records. As one would expect, the work of running
the charity was carried out by a relatively small group of governors who were prepared
to give time as well as money. Most of the active governors were commoners. The
Duke of Bedford was President of the Foundling Hospital from 1739 to 1771, yet he
only attended twenty three meetings. He did not attend a single meeting once the
General Reception commenced. Some other peers had much better attendance
records, but many of the untitled governors were far more conscientious then even the
most active titled governors, as the following figures show:
Attendance of Some Leading Governors at Committee *
Before the
General
Reception
(to 1 June 1756)
Aristocrats
Duke of Bedford
First Earl of Abercorn
Earl of Macclesfield
Lord Charles Cavendish
Untitled
Dr. Charles Morton
Theodore Jacobson
Robert Nettleton
James Mead
Jonas Hanway
Dr. William Watson
Charles Child
Taylor White
George Whatley
The General Reception After
and its Aftermath
31 July
(2 June 1756 to
1773
31 July 1773)
Total
23
48
54
68
!
!
5
6
!
!
!
!
23
48
59
74
4
389
190
238
!
1
221
499
268
250
7
229
189
854
413
911
1019
1522
102
!
!
!
51
526
44
!
1735
356
396
419
427
905
940
1176
1518
3525
*
Attendances at ad hoc committees have been ignored. Only attendances at the General Court,
the General Committee and the Sub-Committee have been counted.
18
G. Ct. A/FH/K01/001-004 – microfilm X041/016.
G. Cttee. A/FH/K02/001-018.
Sub-Cttee A/FH/A03/005-014.
18
50
It would be easy to find other examples of very conscientious untitled governors. In the
period 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773, eight governors, in addition to those listed in the
above chart, attended more than two hundred meetings:
William Harrison
Thomas Nugent
Edward Hunt
Peter Wyche
Alexander Scott
Henry Raper
William Sotheby
The Revd. Dr. Charles Plumptree
698
585
494
474
459
290
270
204
Some of these governors also attended meetings before 2 June 1756 and some after
31 July 1773. Not all were governors for the entire period.
Businessmen played a prominent part in running the charity. Thomas Coram himself
was a retired shipwright and semi-retired merchant when he began his campaign for a
foundling hospital.19 The Hospital’s first Treasurer, Lewis Way (1739-1741), was a
director of the South Sea Company and apparently an important figure in the City. 20
Theodore Jacobsen, the architect of the new purpose-built Foundling Hospital in
Lamb’s Conduit Fields, had practised as a merchant in the Steelyard in his early days.
He was one of the governors nominated in the royal charter. He attended 396
meetings. 21 Charles Child was probably an underwriter.22 He was elected a governor
on1 April 1747. 23 He served as one of the six vice-presidents from 1760 to 1777. 24 He
attended his last meeting on 12 October 1774. By that date he had attended 1176
meetings. The governor with the most outstanding attendance record was George
19
See Crompton, op.cit. and Wagner, op.cit..
20
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.312.
21
Alan Borg, ‘Theodore Jacobsen and the building of the Foundling Hospital, The Georgian Groups
Journal, vol. XIII, 2003, pp. 12-31. See also Wagner, op.cit., p.59.
22
In Kent’s Directory for 1770 his address was given as the Insurance Office, No. 88, Cornhill.
23
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.360.
24
Ibid., p.413
51
Whatley. Whatley became a governor on 9 May 1750
25
(the same day as Handel). In
1772 he was appointed one of the six vice-presidents and in 1779 he became
Treasurer, a post he held until his death in 1791.26 In the course of his forty years as a
governor he attended the astonishing total of 3523 meetings. George Whatley was
listed in various London directories as a merchant.27 The best known of all the
businessmen involved in running the Foundling Hospital is, of course, Jonas Hanway –
if only because he is credited with introducing the umbrella to London! He was a
member of the Russia Company.28 He was elected as a governor on 12 May 1756. He
held the post of Vice-President from 1772-1782. In all he attended 905 meetings.
Businessmen were also involved in several of the other new London charities. As Dr.
Hancock points out, of the 138 donors who gave to at least three of London’s major
charities between 1740 and 1770, more than half were businessmen.29 Two of the
charities were actually founded by merchants. The Magdalen Hospital was founded by
the merchant Robert Dingley with the help of his fellow merchants, Jonas Hanway and
Robert Nettleton The Marine Society was founded by Hanway, Charles Dingley’s
brother Robert and a number of other London merchants.30
The Foundling Hospital was also supported by professional men as well as
businessmen. Dr. Robert Nesbitt was one of the most active governors in its early
days. Dr. James Mead attended 427 meetings, 238 before 2 June 1756 and 189 after
25
Ibid., p.363
26
Ibid., p.412-413
27
The first reference to Whatley is in Kent’s Directory for 1759. His name also appears in the New
Complete Guide in 1777 and in Lowndes’ Directory for 1779. These directories give no details
about his commercial interests.
28
See James Stephen Taylor, op.cit.
29
D. Hancock, Citizens of the World (Cambridge, C.U.P., 1955). p.309. There was nothing new in
London merchants playing a prominent part in philanthropic ventures. See W.K. Jordan, The
Charities of London, 1480 – 1660 (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1960) especially chapter V.
30
See James Stephen Taylor, op.cit., chapter VI.
52
the commencement of the General reception. He was one of the Vice-Presidents from
1755 to 1763. Dr. Watson, one of the Hospital’s physicians, attended 413 meetings in
the period of the General Reception and its aftermath and 526 after the 31st July 1773. !
Clergymen, though, played little part in running the London hospital, though the Revd
Dr. Timothy Lee played an important part in running the Ackworth branch hospital and
the Revd Dr. Adams was a most active governor of the Shrewsbury branch hospital, as
we shall see later. The only clergymen to attend many meetings of the London hospital
was the Revd Dr. Plumptree. He attended 204 meetings after the commencement of
the General Reception.
The professional man to whom the Hospital surely owed most was the barrister Taylor
White. He was one of the original governors named in the charter. He held the post of
Treasurer from 1745 to his death in 1772. Although his work took him away from
London for part of each year, he attended 1518 meetings. [Only George Whatley had a
better attendance record.] Taylor White seems to have been a man of great energy and
ability, judging from his correspondence with the branch hospitals.!!
THE ROLE OF UNTITLED GOVERNORS IN FINANCING THE FOUNDLING
HOSPITAL
!
Plus one meeting before the General Reception. See Chapter Ten, pp. 164-165 for Watson’s
career and his work for the charity.
!!
See Appendix O: Taylor White, 1701-1772.
53
Not only did the untitled governors play a crucial role in administering the charity, but
they also provided much of the Hospital’s funds. The vast majority of the men who
gave donations or agreed to pay subscription became governors. Some just gave lump
sums; some just gave annual subscriptions; others gave lump sums and annual
subscriptions.
The analysis which follows covers the whole period down to the end of 1773, though it
will be recalled that most of the money was given in the pioneering years before the
commencement of the General Reception. Gifts from women have been included for
the sake of completeness even though they were barred from becoming governors.
The table is based on the evidence in the General Court (for donations) and on the list
of annual subscriptions. 31 They account for about three-quarters of the money listed
under the headings of General Donations and Annual Subscriptions in the Accounts
Audited. 32
Contributions to the Foundling Hospital to 31 December 1773
Group
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Peers and holders
courtesy title of lord.
Peeresses
Baronets and knights
Untitled men
Untitled women
Bishops
Clergymen
Anonymous
of
Numbered
Donors
28
8
22
328
16
2
(1 anon) 4
6
414
Total Amount *
Given
4151
1529
1912
16,631
438
100
47
256
25,064
* In pounds, to the nearest pound.
Some of the governors who were peers or who held courtesy titles gave generously.
The Duke of Bedford, for example, though he took little interest in the work of the
Hospital, gave a donation of £500 in 1739 and regularly pain an annual subscription of
£20; in all he gave £890. The Duke of Portland gave £400, the Duke of Richmond
31
G.Ct. – A/FH/K01/001-001, microfilm X041/010. List of Annual Subscriptions – A/FH/B3/19/1.
32
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2.
54
£315, Lord Charles Cavendish £228.12.6d, Lord Lovell (later Earl of Leicester) £220
and the Earl of Macclesfield (a Vice-President from 1750 to 1764) £228.12.6d.
Some peeresses also gave large sums. The Princess of Wales gave £830, Lady Betty
Germain £252, the Duchess of Bedford £203.15.0d. and the Duchess of Richmond
£110.5.0d.
The peers and peeresses normally gave more per person than those below then in
rank, though some non-aristocratic donors also gave very large sums. Sir John
Heathcote gave £500, Sir Jacob Bouverie to £350 and Sir James Lowther £250. Some
untitled governors also gave generously. Richard Buckley, for example, gave £235 and
Lt. Gen. Honeywood £220.
Although the untitled gave less per person on average than the peers or peeresses,
they provided far more money in aggregate – they contributed about two thirds of the
total. They also accounted for about 80% of all donors in this period. The charity could
perhaps have managed to survive without the contribution of peers, but not without the
money provided by commoners. It is also clear that the bulk of the money came from
those with London addresses.
Most of the money from legacies also came from commoners. The Legacy Book lists
99 legacies that were handed over to the Foundling Hospital by 1 June 1756: three
were bequeathed by peers, five by baronets or knights, 77 by untitled men and 14 by
untitled women. The untitled men accounted for over 80% of the money left to the
Hospital. Much of the money was left by non-governors, though by far the largest
bequest, Thomas Emerson’s (£11,593), was from a governor.33
33
Legacy Book – A/FH/A/6/14/001/1 –
55
For the period 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773 the Legacy Book records bequests from 82
men and 20 women. 34 The list includes one baronet and one knight, but no peers or
holders of courtesy titles. All the women were untitled. Sixty eight of the bequests came
from wills drawn up in this period which suggests that the charity was still thought of as
one worth supporting. It must be admitted, though, that gifts made by the living are a
better test of the popularity of the charity.
There is really nothing surprising in the role of the ‘middling ranks’ in London’s
eighteenth century charities. There is no need to assume that they were trying to raise
their status by showing that they were capable of disinterested service without any
hope of material reward, nor should we assume that they were consciously trying to
challenge the role of the aristocracy in society.35
Their motives were probably no
different from those of the aristocracy, though those who were merchants may well
have put more emphasis on the need for a large population. The real reasons why the
‘middling ranks’ played such an important role in financing and running the Foundling
Hospital and London’s other major new charities are surely that they now had enough
wealth and leisure to devote to these new ventures and that the new system of
‘associated philanthropy’ made it easy to support them. Many men could afford to
make a lump sum payment or give an annual subscription and they could devote as
much time, or as little time, to the charities as they chose.
POPULARITY OF THE NEW VENTURE
In its early years the Foundling Hospital received wide support. By the end of 1755 the
Hospital had raised £114,829 from the governors and other well-wishers.36 The new
purpose-built hospital in Lamb’s Conduit Fields became a fashionable place to visit and
34
Ibid.
35
Elizabeth Einberg, ed. Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting 1700-1760, London,
Tate Gallery, 1987), however, has suggested that Hogarth may have used his magnificent portrait
of Thomas Coram to assert the importance of the middling ranks. See Einberg, op.cit., p.172.
36
Accounts Audited (1741 – 1781) – A/FH/A/4/2. For further details see Appendix D.
56
probably few visitors failed to make some contribution to the Hospital’s funds. One of
the attractions was simply to look at the children, but some of the credit for its
popularity must go to Hogarth and Handel.
Hogarth was one of the original governors. In 1740 he gave his superb portrait of
Thomas Coram to the charity. Soon after the move to the Lamb’s Conduit building in
1745, he persuaded the sculptor Michael Rysbrack and a number of leading painters to
donate works of art, knowing that this was bound to attract visitors (the only other place
in London where members of the general public could see the work of contemporary
British painters was Vauxhall Gardens).
Hospital’s celebrated art collection.
This was the beginning of the Foundling
By 1751 some of Britain’s best artists had
contributed. In the Court Room, where the governors met, were works by Highmore,
Gainsborough, Richard Wilson and Hogarth himself, as well as by others less wellknown today.
There were some other fine works in the building, including Allan
Ramsay’s portrait of Dr Mead and Highmore’s portrait of Thomas Emerson. Hogarth’s
‘March to Finchley’ had been won in a lottery in 1750. In 1754 the Hospital acquired
Charles Brooking’s magnificent seascape, ‘A Flagship Before the Wind and Other
Vessels’. None of these pictures cost the charity a penny.37
In 1749 Handel gave his first concert in the chapel to raise money for its completion.
This programme included music from the Royal Fireworks, the Dettingen Te Deum,
extracts from the oratorio ‘Solomon’ and the Foundling Hospital Anthem.
Handel
continued to support this charity right up to the year of his death (1759). The first
performance of ‘Messiah’ in the chapel took place on 1 May 1750. As some people
had to be turned away, another performance was given a few days later. These two
performances raised £969.7s.0d. after expenses had been paid. Even when he was
no longer able to conduct (he was losing his sight), the concerts continued under the
37
See R. Harris and R. Simon, Elizabeth Einberg and B. Nicholson, op. cit.
57
direction of his assistant, John Christopher Smith, who was appointed organist at the
chapel in 1754.
The chapel was always crowded for these performances.
In all
Handel raised over £6,000 by the time he died.38
LOSS OF POPULARITY DURING THE GENERAL RECEPTION AND ITS
AFTERMATH ?
The Hospital seems to have been less popular during the General Reception and its
aftermath. In the period 1756 to 1773 only £51,582 was raised from the public.39
The novelty of seeing the children in their new home had no doubt worn off. The
attraction of the art collection must also have been diminished when the Society of
Artists was founded in 1760 to display the works of contemporary British artists. Its
importance must have been weakened further in 1768 when the Royal Academy was
set up. The Foundling Hospital was no longer the only place in London where the
public could view recent works of art.
After Handel died, Smith kept up the performances of ‘Messiah’ with fair success, but in
1769 he withdrew his support and the concerts in the 1770s attracted fewer and fewer
people. The last concert was held in 1778.
There was growing unease about the Hospital’s record.
Stories about the large
number of infant deaths must have worried men and women who would otherwise have
been willing to contribute. The decline in the amount donated by the public should not
be seen as evidence of complete disillusionment, however.
It was only after the
experience of three years and ten months that Parliament brought the General
Reception to an end. Moreover since the taxpayer provided almost £550,000 in the
period 1756 to 1771 many people probably felt there was less need for the public to
38
Foundling Hospital Library, vol. 37-A/FH/A14/20/1. See also Jacqueline Rising, The Purest
Benevolence: Handel and the Foundling Hospital. (Handel House Museum, 2002) or Handel the
Philanthropist (Foundling Hospital Museum, 2009), chapter 3 by Donald Burrows.
58
support the Founding Hospital and that it was better to give to other institutions that
received no State support. After all, few of us send cheques to the National Health
Service.
39
Ibid.
59
CHAPTER FIVE
THE ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE FOUNDLING
HOSPITAL, 1739/41-1773
BOLDNESS OF THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL ENTERPRISE
Looking back, we cannot help being impressed by the boldness of the enterprise.
The
governors were no doubt encouraged by the success of the Westminster Hospital and St.
George’s Hospital, since these charities had been financed by voluntary subscription. But the
examples of the College of Infants and the London Corporation of the Poor’s Bishopsgate
Workhouse experiment can hardly have been encouraging. It is unlikely that the governors
knew much about the foundling hospitals in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New
World. The Dublin Foundling Hospital had only just been founded and it would have been too
early to judge whether the scheme adopted there was likely to be a success.
In its early years, as we have seen, the governors had no help from the State and relied just
on their own contributions and on the benevolence of the public for funds, yet they were taking
on far greater obligations than the ordinary hospitals. A poor patient of St. George’s Hospital,
for example, might be there for only a few weeks and at most a few months. Those foundlings
that survived would have to be looked after for many years until they were old enough to be
apprenticed. Moreover, had one of the great London hospitals been forced to close for want
of funds (none did close, as it happens), the patients might have found another hospital to
take them in – at the very worst they could have gone home
Had the Foundling Hospital
closed, the children would have been helpless – they would not even have been entitled to
poor relief.
This is because an Act of Parliament passed in 1740, the year before the
Foundling Hospital opened, laid it down that no child or employee of the Foundling Hospital
should acquire a settlement in the parish where the Foundling Hospital was situated by virtue
60
of living in the Hospital.1 It had been passed to reassure the local overseers of the poor that
they would not be swamped with foundlings.
THE HOSPITAL’S PLAN FOR LOOKING AFTER THE CHILDREN
The governors were able, of course, to draw on the experience of foundling hospitals on the
Continent. The organization of these hospitals, however, varied, so that the governors had to
decide which examples to follow. In most institutions babies were first given to resident wet
nurses but then sent as soon as possible to wet nurses in the country who then looked after
them in their own homes. Some hospitals kept many of the children in the country until they
were old enough to fend for themselves. This was the practice, for example, at Lyons and in
some of the Italian cities.2
Many, however, brought them back to the hospital (often at ages
ranging from five to seven years) to live there until they could be found apprenticeships or
suitable jobs to go to. The length of time children were under the care of hospitals in the
eighteenth century varied. Boys in the care of the Inclusa were normally returned to Madrid at
seven years old and girls at eight.3 They were then transferred to a Madrid orphanage which
was separate from the inclusa. In most cases, though, children spent some years in the
hospitals.
In the Hôpital des Enfants Trouvés in Paris the boys and girls were often kept
there until they were fifteen or sixteen.4
1
See Nichols and Wray, pp. 340-341.
2
Maurice Gordon, Lyons et les Lyonnais au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970).
3
Sherwood, op.cit., p.104 and p.107.
4
An Account of the Foundation and Government of the Hospitals for Foundlings, in Paris (London 1739).
This account had been drawn up for Queen Caroline but was not published until two years after her death.
61
We know that the governors had received reports from Paris, Amsterdam and Lisbon by 1740,
but it is not clear how much they knew about the organization of other hospitals.5 There is
also an undated account of the hospital in Venice in the archives. The governors had also
asked for reports from Turin and Florence, but there is no evidence that they were sent.6
There is one curious feature about the reports collected from the Continent: they say little or
nothing about the death rates of foundlings. The report written for Queen Caroline ignored the
subject and the Memorial merely mentioned that ‘one third of them die before they come to
three years of Age.’ One cannot help thinking that information should have been collected
from as many Continental hospitals as possible before a decision was made to campaign for
one in England. It would also surely have been wise to find out just how many children were
abandoned each year in the major foundling hospitals.
The London governors seem to have modelled the Hospital to a large extent on the Paris
Foundling Hospital, though most children that survived while in the care of the Hospital left at
ten, eleven or twelve years rather than at fifteen or sixteen. The Hospital’s plans were set out
in a report of the General Court on 1 October 1740.7 In 1749 the charity published a most
useful account of its purpose and organization.8
5
The following reports had been received 1740.
Memoire concernant les Enfants Trouvés de la Ville de Paris – A/FH/A1/4/1 (Foundling Hospital Library.
Vol 3) pp. 12-15.
Translation of the King of France His Edict in June 1670 Ibid., pp. 1-5.
Decree and Rules of the Council of State in Pursuance of the said Edict for Foundlings pp. 8-10.
Berigt Weges Het Aslmoenseniers Weasluys de Stadt Amsterdam. February 1740. pp. 65-116.
Regulations of the Hospital at Lisbon.
6
Epillogo de Statuti del Pio Spedale della Pieta di Veneza. Ibid, pp. 339-349.
7
G. Cttee, Wednesday 16 July 1740 and Wednesday 20 August 1740 – A/FH/K02/001,
microfilm X041/014.
G. Ct., Wednesday 1 October 1740 – A/FH/K01/001, microfilm X041/010.
There are extracts from the report in Nichols and Wray op. cit., pp. 29-33.
8
An Account of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted
Young Children, (London, 1749).
62
It soon became the policy to send the children to wet nurses in the country for their first few
years. The plan was that on their return to the hospital they would be given a training that
would make them desirable apprentices. ‘As soon as they attain proper ages, the Boys shall
be put to Husbandry, other labour or the Sea Service; and the Girls be employed in the House
or placed out at Service; the General committee taking care that they be furnished with
Cloaths and Necessaries and that proper Contracts be made, with their Masters and
Mistresses to prevent any abuse.’9
THE TASKS FACING THE HOSPITAL
In the pioneering period before the General reception the governors had to build up the
Hospital from scratch.
They not only had to recruit enough paid nurses in he country and
enough voluntary inspectors to supervise them, but they also had to build a permanent
hospital in London. They did have two advantages, however: they were able to control the
number of foundlings accepted and to set the days on which they could be taken in. This
made it possible to plan in advance. They could also reject infants suffering from serious
infectious diseases.
During the General Reception the Hospital could exercise almost no control over the numbers
received. The governors were now responsible for looking after thousands of children, not
hundreds.
Several thousand new nurses and several hundred new inspectors had to be
recruited and six branch hospitals had to be set up to cope with the number of ‘grown
children’. In the period before the General Reception only 59 children were apprenticed. In
the period of the General Reception and its aftermath (to 31 July 1773) the number
apprenticed was almost 4,800.
9
1740 report – see footnote 7.
63
The following chart shows how dramatic the changes were:
Number of Children in the Foundling Hospital, 25 December 1741 to 31 December 1773.
Date
At Nurse
25 Dec 1741
25 Dec 1743
25 Dec 1745
25 Dec. 1747
25 Dec 1749
25 Dec 1751
25 Dec 1753
25 Dec 1755
1 June 1756 eve of the
General Reception)
2 June 1756
31 Dec 1756
31 Dec 1757
24 June 1758
31 Dec 1759
29 Sept 1760
29 Sept 1761
31 Dec 1762
31 Dec 1763
31 Dec 1764
31 Dec 1765
31 Dec 1766
31 Dec 1767
31 Dec 1768
31 Dec 1769
31 Dec 1770
31 Dec 1771
31 Dec 1772
31 Dec 1773
In London
Hospital
Branch
Hospitals
Total
39
82
71
134
222
329
400
422
16
12
46
71
89
151
187
189
-
55
94
117
205
311
480
587
611
405
403
1,463
3,611
4,544
5,814
5,527*
5,003*
4,414*
3,912*
3,323**
2,713**
,279**
,800**
981**
259**
153**
94**
129**
182**
207
326
301
316
258
270
263
170
262
333
407
357
400
425
374
352
175
180
218
227
20
57
209
278
442
684
926
1,301***
1,549***
1,624***
1,569***
1,228***
530***
267
224
82
1
612
729
1,764
3,947
4,859
6,293
6,068
5,615
5,360
5,171
5,031
4,619
4,303
3,794
2,583
1,141
595
498
429
41010
* Includes London grown children in the country for their health.
** Includes children sent from Ackworth Hospital to nurse.
*** Excludes children sent from Ackworth Hospital to nurse.
In spite of the fact that about three-quarters of the Foundling Hospital’s income in the period
25 March 1756 to 1771 came from the State, Parliament did not interfere in the day-to-day
running of the charity, though the House of Commons did from time to time require details of
10
Memorandum Book covering the period March 1741 to February, 1757 – A/FH/A09/005/001/1-.
The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/1 and A/FH/A9/12/2. The figures for
31 December 1759 come from a report to the House of Commons – see Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p. 55.
64
the way the parliamentary grants had been spent and ask for returns giving the number of
‘parliamentary’ children cared for. Both the supervision of the administration of the Foundling
Hospital and the setting up of the six branch hospitals were left to the governors.
THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL’S ‘CENTRAL GOVERNMENT’
The system for managing the charity was much the same as that of the subscription hospitals
set up in London and the provinces in the early eighteenth century. In these institutions the
governors exercised a close control, even dealing with matters that might well have been left
to the paid administrators.
As with the other major charities, the bulk of the work of supervision was carried out by a
minority of governors who were prepared to give time as well as money. We have already
remarked on the outstanding attendance records of men like George Whatley, Taylor White,
Charles Child and Jonas Hanway. They and other almost equally conscientious governors
ran the charity mainly through three bodies – the General Court, the General Committee and
(from December 1748), the Sub-Committee, though ad hoc committees were also set up from
time to time to look at particular questions.
The General Court, which was open to all governors, usually met five times a year. It mainly
dealt with formal matters, such as electing new governors on the advice of the General
Committee or issuing new regulations.
The General Committee consisted of governors
selected each year by the General Court.
administration.
It was responsible for most of the routine
The Sub-Committee dealt with matters delegated to it by the General
Committee. Before the General Reception the General Committee and the Sub-Committee
usually met about once a fortnight. During the General Reception and its aftermath they
normally met about once a week.
65
Before the General Reception these London-based bodies were responsible not only for
running the London hospital itself, but also for the welfare of the children at nurse. Even when
the branch hospitals were established most of the ‘inspections’ were supervised from London.
The London governors also had authority over the six branch hospitals.
Although these
hospitals, plus, in some cases the children at nurse in their localities, were supervised by local
committees of governors, their committees had to accept directions from London on matters of
policy and practice.
The minutes of the General Court, the General Committee and the Sub-Committee provide
ample evidence of the conscientiousness of the leading governors. There were ninety-three
meetings of the General Court before the General Reception, the first being held on 20
November 1739 and the last on 12 May 1756. Only three of these meetings lacked a quorum
of thirteen. The fair copy of the minutes runs to 342 pages.11 Down to the eve of the General
Reception 484 meetings of the General Committee were called. Only twenty-eight meetings
could not conduct business for lack of a quorum of seven governors and in most cases these
meetings were only one short of the required number.
volumes and part of a fifth and take up 1,423 pages.12
The minutes filled four massive
One hundred and sixty five meetings
of the Sub-Committee were held before the General Reception. The minutes take up 342
pages.
During the period of the General Reception and its aftermath (2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773)
1,894 quorate meetings were held (107 for the General Court, 881 for the General Committee
and 906 for the Sub-Committee). 13 The minutes of the three bodies cover 5,735 folio pages
11
G. Ct – A/FH/K01/001, microfilm X041/010.
12
G. Cttee., vol. 1-4 (A/FH/K02/004) microfilm X041/014 plus part of vol. 5 – A/FH/K02/005, microfilm
X041/015.
13
All the statistics in this section are based on an analysis of the following minute books:
G.Ct.
A/FH/K01/002
microfilm X041/010.
66
(489 for the General Court, 3,302 for the General Committee and 1,944 for the SubCommittee).
Other major subscription charities such as the London Hospital, had an equally impressive
record. 14 The Directors of the Paris Foundling Hospital met once a week.15
The fact that there were such a large number of meetings does not, of course, prove that the
Hospital was well run, but if very few meetings had been held it would have been reasonable
to take this as evidence of slackness. [One of the reasons why the Dublin Foundling was
often so mismanaged was no doubt the fact that the governors did not meet sufficiently
often.]16 When the minutes are examined, however, it becomes clear that few matters of any
importance can have escaped the attention of the governors.
The minutes form only part of the Hospital’s elaborate records. The books were kept so well
that it is possible to find out what happened to nearly all the children. It was not unusual in
this respect.
Jean-Claude Peyronnet has shown, for example, just how carefully the
administrators at Limoges kept their records in the early eighteenth century.17 The records at
Florence and Paris were also very well kept.18 (This is presumably one reason why so much
has been written about the Innocenti and the Paris Hospital).
G. Cttee
Sub. Cttee
A/FH/K01/003
A/FH/K02/005 to
A/FH/K02/009 to
A/FH/K02/012 to
A/FH/A03/005 to
A/FH/K02/008 - microfilm X041/015.
A/FH/K02/011 - microfilm X041/016.
A/FH/K02/014 - microfilm X041/017.
A/FH/A03/005/011.
14
See A. E. Clark-Kennedy, op. cit., vol. 1.
15
A/FH/M01/005, p. 167.
16
See Robins, op. cit., chapter 1 and Wodsworth, op. cit..
17
Jean-Claude Payronnet, ‘Les enfants abandonnés et leurs nourrices à Limoges au XVIIle siècle.
Review d’histoire moderne et contemporaire. Vol. 23 1976), pp. 418-9.
18
See for example C. Delaselle, Les Enfants Abandonnes a Paris au XVIIIe siecle. Annales, vol.30 [1].
(1975).
67
THE SUPERVISION OF THE NURSERIES AND THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
The Hospital’s correspondence makes it abundantly clear that the London governors
exercised a close control of the inspectors who supervised the nurses and over the branch
hospitals.
Soon after the opening of the Hospital there are references in the General
Committee minutes to letters to the inspectors.19 The Memorandum Book refers to many
letters from inspectors, mainly reporting the death of children at nurse.20 From 1749 the
Secretary began to keep incoming letters and from 1759 all such letters were carefully
arranged in alphabetical order, according to the surname of the correspondent. Many of these
letters are from inspectors. For the period 1749 to 1773 thousands of these letters to the
London headquarters have survived.21 Dr. Clark has transcribed and printed 530 or so letters
from the Berkshire inspectors alone for the period 1757 to 1768.21a. A large number of letters
were also received from the branch hospitals. The three letter books at Ackworth contain
copies of 438 letters sent from there and the vast majority went to the London headquarters
(only 29 of these were sent after 31 July 1773).22 Many letters from Ackworth would have
been sent to London before the first letter book was started in January 1762. There were
also, of course, many letters from the other five branch hospitals. The governors made sure
that they were kept informed.
19
See, for example, G. Cttee, August 26 1741, p. 169, September 1741, p. 171, October 1741, p. 174, and
January 13 1742, p. 192 (letters to and from Mrs. Bissell, who supervised nurses at Staines and Egham –
A/FH/K02/001, microfilm X041/014.
20
Memorandum Book – A/FH/M011/8/1-371.
21
See volume 1 of the index to the Foundling Hospital Archives, pp. 52-98.
21a.
Gillian Clark, Correspondence of the Foundling Hospital Inspectors in Berkshire (Berkshire
Record office, 1994)
22
A/FH/Q/10, 18 January 1762 to 4 February 1766 (116 letters);
A/FH/Q/11, 25 February 1766 to 13 December 1770 (201 letters);
A/FH/Q12, 12 January 1771 to 14 March 1777 (121 letters, 92 before 31 July 1773).
68
On Wednesday July 20 1757 the General Committee decided
That all Letters wrote to any of the Officers of the Hospital, except those which are to
serve as Vouchers for the Stewards Accounts, be directly on receipt carried to the
Secretary that they be laid before the Committee, and what relates to the Children
noted.23
Most of the letters were addressed to the Secretary.
The governors also kept a close control of all the letters sent out by the Secretary on the
instruction of the General Committee. There are even occasions when they told the Secretary
the precise wording to use.24
On Wednesday October 26 1757 the General Committee ordered
That all Letters wrote by order of the General, or any of the Sub-Committees, be
copied in a Book kept expressly for that purpose. 25
Unfortunately the first two letters books have not survived but the third, fourth and fifth letter
books cover our period. They have copies of 3,610 letters sent out from London from 4
September 1760 to 31 July 1773.26
The amount of work the Secretary had to get through during the period of the General
Reception and its aftermath is quite extraordinary. The charity probably owed as much to
Thomas Collingwood, who took over as Secretary on 29 June 1757 and served until 1790, as
it did to governors such as George Whatley or Taylor White.27
23
G. Cttee, July 20 1757 – A/FH/K02/005, p. 289, microfilm X041/015.
24
See, for example, a letter sent to the Revd Sir Nathaniel Edwards. G. Cttee August 15 1759 A/FH/K02/007.p. 125, microfilm X041/015.
25
G. Cttee, October 26 1757 - A/FH/K02/006. p. 3 ,microfilm X041/015.
26
Copy Book of letters, No. 3 (4 September 1760 – 19 November 1767) - A/FH/A/6/2/1 – 1,773 letters..
Copy Book of letters, No. 4 (26 November 1767 – 14 June 1770) - A/FH/A/6/2/2. – 1,308 letters.
Copy Book of letters, No. 5 (19 June 1770 – 1 October 1785) – 715 letters. (529 to 31 July 1773).
One circular letter sent on 21 September 1767 to those inspectors who were looking after parish pauper
children as well as the Hospital’s own foundlings has been omitted from the count because there is no
indication of how many copies were posted.
27
Sub-Cttee, 29 November 1757 - A/FH/A03/005/004 p. 120.
69
In addition to dealing with such matter as sending children to the country, arranging for their
return to the House, dealing with queries from inspectors who were not sure what to do when
the children were sick and keeping a record of all those children that had died at nurse, the
Secretary had also to carry out the order of the General Committee concerning children at
nurse. For example, when the governors were wondering whether it would be better to pay
the nurses an extra 3d a week on condition that they buy clothes for the foundlings, rather
than have them supplied by the Hospital, it was the Secretary who had to canvass the views
of inspectors. 28
It is estimated that about 2,900 of the letters in the three surviving letter books were sent to
inspectors (i.e. subtracting those known to have been sent to the branch hospitals and making
an allowance for those letters sent to those who were not inspectors).
It might be thought that the Secretary’s workload would be greatly reduced as the number of
children at nurse declined in the early 1760s.
But as the number of children at nurse,
declined, the numbers in the branch hospitals increased. It was only in the late 1760s and
early 1770s that the numbers at nurse and the numbers in the branch hospitals both declined.
In the 1760s, therefore, much of the Secretary’s time must have been taken up with
correspondence with the branch hospitals. The three letter books have 847 letters to the
branch hospitals.29
Ackworth
No.3
No.4
No.5
28
Shrewsbury
164
101
66
331
Aylesbury
110
49
64
223
Clark, op. cit., Examples:
J Bunce (15 October 1759) – p.8.
Dr. John Collet (23 August 1759) – p.17.
Mrs Juliana Dodds (11 September 1759) – p.26.
29
See footnote 25.
19
17
Nil
36
Westerham
56
51
11
118
Barnet
Chester
48
16
4
68
41
30
Nil
71
70
Provided no letters were omitted by accident the three surviving letter books should contain all
the letters sent to Barnet and Chester hospitals because they were set up within the period
covered by the third letter book. In the case of the other four hospitals, there must have been
other letters in one or both of the two missing letter books. We know that 110 letters were
sent to Shrewsbury from London in the period before September 176030 so that the total
number of letters to Shrewsbury was 333, not 223. Unfortunately, we do not know how many
letters were sent to Ackworth, Aylesbury and Westerham before September 1760. In the case
of Ackworth, the first hospital to be opened, the number was probably large. We can be
almost certain that over 1,000 letters were sent to the branch hospital at one time or another.
The Copy Book of Letters No. 3 has copies of forty-eight letters sent to he branch hospitals in
1764. 31
Some matters were of such importance that it is not surprising that the London
authorities were involved. A letter to Roger Kynaston on June 9 1764, for example, deals with
the purchase of land and plans for building at Shrewsbury.32 On June 30 1764 a letter to the
Rev. Dr. Lee at Ackworth (probably written by Taylor White) explained how the girls were
trained in the London hospital and hinted that the Ackworth governors might consider the
merits of the London system.33 A few weeks earlier (March 24) Dr. Lee received a letter
discussing what clothes should be given when children were apprenticed.34 Other letters to
Ackworth requested that cloth manufactured at the branch hospital there should be sent to the
London hospital.35 Several letters to Ackworth dealt with sending indentures for apprentices. 36
30
They are in the following bundles - A/FH/D2/3/1/1 - A/FH/D2/3/2/1 – and A/FH/D2/3/3/1.
The correspondence starts in 1758 because many matters had to be settled before the Shrewsbury
hospital took in its first foundlings in 1759.
31
Copy Book of Letters, No. 3 - A/FH/A/6/2/1. pp. 258-306 – 15 to Ackworth, 11 each to Shrewsbury and
Chester, 5 to Barnet and 3 each to Westerham and Aylesbury.
32
Ibid., p. 273-276.
33
Ibid., p. 279.
34
Ibid., p. 263.
35
For example, Jan. 20 (Shrewsbury), p. 258 and March 10 (Ackworth), p. 261.
36
For example, March 24, p. 262 and April 14, p. 266.
71
Some letters were concerned with individual foundlings.37 As we shall see later, a determined
attempt was made to keep track of all the children and to control expenditure. There can have
been few topics of importance that were not dealt with in the Secretary’s correspondence.
This is not to argue that no mistakes were made. A number of the Berkshire inspectors, for
example, complained of delays in sending clothes or about sending the wrong type of
clothes. 38 A few Berkshire inspectors complained of delays in passing their accounts.39 The
majority of letters from inspectors and from the branch hospitals were dealt with quite
promptly, however, and we are more likely to be impressed at the amount of work the
Secretary and his clerks got through than shocked at occasional lapses. Even the meticulous
way in which many of the letters from inspectors and from the branch hospitals were filed
suggests that the Secretary was on top of his work.
There can be little doubt, then, about the conscientiousness of the London governors and their
Secretary, but we need to see how well they administered the Hospital’s funds and how
successful they were in keeping track of the thousands of foundlings during the General
Reception and its aftermath.
37
For example, March 10, p. 261 (query re fate of a child), June 2, p. 272 (safe arrival of child in London), 25
August, p. 289 (request for return of a claimed child) – all Ackworth – and April 10, p. 265 (return of a sick
child to London from Westerham).
38
Clark, op. cit. Examples:
William Dawes (16 April 1759) – p. 22.
Mrs Juliana Dodds (23 January 1759) – p.24.
Naomi Southby (29 October 1760) – p. 109.
Mrs Spence (3 March 1761) – p. 116.
39
Ibid. Examples:
William Hignell (17 May 1759) – p.34.
Thomas Marsham (21 July 1759) – p. 60.
William Earles 13 January 1760) – p.104.
72
KEEPING TRACK OF FOUNDLINGS
All the foundlings had first to be received in London and the decisions about which children
should be sent to nurse and where they should go were made in London.
The London
authorities also decided when the grown children should be returned and whether they should
be sent to the London Hospital or one of the branch hospitals. This concentration of decisionmaking in London helped the Secretary to keep track of the children. An examination of the
general registers, the billet books, the disposal books and the apprenticeship registers shows
that the Hospital’s records were kept with great care. The register of grown children for the
London hospital can admittedly be confusing to use because a number of children were sent
from London to one of the branch hospitals only to be returned to London later. The clerks,
though, probably found it easier to use than we do today. The other London books present
comparatively few problems. It is possible to find the fate of the vast majority of the children.
A report to the General Committee of 4 July 1759 entitled ‘A list of children not to be found
and of those forcibly taken away from nurse’ lists only three children in the first category and
only two in the second.40 An analysis of the general registers for the General Reception
period yields the following results:
Total taken in
Died while in the care of the Hospital
Apprenticed
Claimed by parents
Discharged aged 21
Unaccounted for (i.e. blank in the registers)
14,934
10,413
4,339
146
26
10
41
One cannot help suspecting that the Hospital must have lost track of more than ten children.
It is likely that in some cases children listed as ‘Died’, especially where no date of death is
recorded, should really be in the last category. Nevertheless, it is clear that Collingwood did
his utmost to ensure that the registers were accurate. For example, in a letter to Mr. Roberts,
one of the two inspectors in the Barnet area, he drew attention to the fact that Roberts had not
40
See Volume 28 of the foundling Hospital library – A/FH/M05/11.
41
Gen. Reg. – A/FH/A9/1-4. See also Table 2.
73
claimed any money to pay for a child who, according to the Hospital’s records, was still alive
and asked him to ‘satisfie me in this particular’.42 On October 30, 1760 Collingwood pointed
out that Mr Kerr, the inspector of Dorking, had claimed for a child that had been returned to
London. 43
There are several letters to Mr Morgan, the secretary at the Shrewsbury branch hospital,
concerning children who were unaccounted for.
On November 8, 1760, for example,
Collingwood noted that ‘On examining the list of the Children at Nurse in the neighbourhood of
Shrewsbury (recd. from you lately) with the Books of the Hospital I find one Child mentioned
therein as living whereat it appears with us to have died….’ and another child ‘who on our
books appears to be still living is not mentioned in your list.’44 On several occasions Morgan
had to be reminded that he should provide figures for those at nurse in the Shrewsbury area
and those in the Shrewsbury Hospital.45 On 29 November 1763 Collingwood noted in some
exasperation that Morgan’s returns showed he must have removed children from the
Shrewsbury nurseries to the Shrewsbury Hospital without informing London. ‘Now in order to
make up our Acct for Parliament (at Xmas) as exact as possible, I should be glad if you will
send me a list (numerically) of all the children you have in your Nursery, also of those in the
Hospital.
This is annually done by the Gent in Yorkshire [i.e. Ackworth] so you see the
necessity of it, in order to make our Annual Accounts as Accurate as possible.’46
On 2
February 1764 Collingwood pointed out to Morgan that ‘the state of yr. Children as they
appear on our Books … differ from your Account.’47 In the end the Foundling Hospital had to
42
Letter dated October 11, 1760. Copy Book of Letters No.3 p. 22 - A/FH/A/6/2/1.
43
Ibid., p. 27.
44
Ibid., p. 31. For other examples of Collingwood’s attempts to keep the records with Shrewsbury accurate
see Ibid., p. 61. (March 21, 1761), p. 109 (Sept. 29, 1760), p. 195 (Sept. 23, 1762), p. 241 (June 28,
1763), p. 267 (May 17, 1764).
45
Ibid., p. 125 (November 26, 1761), p. 182 (July 24, 1762), p. 207 (November 12, 1762), p. 216
(December 28, 1762).
46
Ibid., p. 255.
47
Ibid.
74
dismiss Morgan for not keeping the Shrewsbury registers in the proper way. It is clear that
Collingwood was not to be fobbed off with inaccurate information.48
Richard Hargreaves, the secretary of the Ackworth hospital, and his son, John, who took over
when he died, seem to have been efficient administrators, but this did not stop Collingwood
from keeping a close check on them. On 20 May 1766, for example, he wrote to enquire
whether a ‘Cargo of Children’ sent to Ackworth were taken into the hospital there or sent out
to nurses in the neighbourhood.49 On January 5th 1767 he wrote that on examining a list of
children at Ackworth he found that eight children had been given the wrong Foundling Hospital
number and four had been given the wrong Christian names. Hargreaves was told to correct
his registers. He also noted that he could find no record in the London books of one child
listed by Hargreaves and that two children recorded as having been apprenticed were listed
as still being in the Ackworth hospital. 50 Mistakes did occur, then, once they were discovered,
however, a determined effort was made to make sure that every child was accounted for.
A comparison with the record of the Dublin Foundling Hospital brings out just how impressive
the Hospital’s record keeping was. The Irish House of Commons in 1797 found that of 12,786
babies admitted between 24 June 1790 and 24 June 1796 2,847 were unaccounted for.51
48
Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p. 267 and p. 269. See Appendix M.
49
Copy Book of Letters, No. 3. p. 345 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
50
Ibid., p.361.
51
It must be admitted, though, that during the 1770s and 1780s when Lady Arabella Denny introduced
reforms, the Dublin Hospital’s record was better than it was before or afterwards. A. D. Wodsworth, op.
cit.
75
CHAPTER SIX
THE HOSPITAL’S FINANCES
BEFORE THE GENERAL RECEPTION
By the end of 1755 the Hospital’s total income amounted to £115, 489.1
Legacies
General (donations)
Annual Subscriptions
Donations (to chapel)
Charity boxes
Money earned by the children
Miscellaneous
£46,369
£23,749
£8,067
£7,363
£2,780
£645
____£15
£115,489 *
*All sums have been rounded to the nearest pound. A loan of £417 from Charles Child has been excluded. This
gives an average twelve-monthly income of about £7830 for the period 25 March 1741 to 31 December 1755. For
comparison the London Hospital (now the Royal London Hospital) in the twelve-years 1742/3 – 1753/4 had a total
2
income of £51,243, or an annual average of £4,270.
On the 31 December 1755 the Hospital had a cash reserve of £641.
The Hospital had
therefore spent £114,848 by that date. Of the 1,244 children that had been taken in by that
date 5 had been claimed by their parents, 47 had been apprenticed and 611 were alive either
with nurses in the country or in the London hospital. The other 681 had died while in the care
of the Hospital.
For each of the 662 children that had survived, therefore, £175 had been
spent. This method of calculating the cost per child is admittedly open to objections, since
many of the children still in the care of the Hospital by this ‘cut-off’ date died later and since it
includes the cost of building the hospital in Lamb’s Conduit Fields and that, of course, was an
asset of permanent value to the charity. Even if we subtract the cost of the building, though,
we are still left with expenditure of £72,102 or about £109 per child that had survived by the
end of 1755.
1
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2. The income received prior to the opening on 25 March
1741 has been included here, because it was used for the maintenance of the children once the Hospital
was opened. The income from property in this period was mainly derived from selling securities.
2
David Owen, op. cit. p.37.
76
The Foundling Hospital had proved a very expensive project. The average cost of keeping a
child at nurse for four years (including the cost of transport) was stated to be £27.0.7d in
17513 (almost £7 a year). £27 would have been enough to keep a farm labourer and his
family for about two years.
THE GENERAL RECEPTION AND ITS AFTERMATH
For the whole period 1756 to 1773 (only very slightly longer than the period of the General
Reception and its aftermath) the total income of the Foundling Hospital was £745,516:
Parliamentary Grants
Income from Property
Legacies
Donations (general)
Money earned by the children
Miscellaneous
Annual Subscriptions
Donations (to chapel)
Charity boxes
£549,797 *
£137,698
£36,754
£9,610
£3,661
£2,778
£2,374
£2,177
___£667
£745,516 4
* To the nearest pound.
At first sight it might seem that Parliament had saddled the Foundling Hospital staff with an
impossible task.
The numbers taken in in the period 1756 to 1773 (including those taken in
after the ending of the General Reception) were about eleven times the numbers taken in
before 1755, but the income had only risen about six and a half times (from £115,489 to
£745,516).
When the accounts are looked at more closely, however, the Hospital’s financial situation
does not seem to have been as serious as the comparison suggests.
3
Based on returns given in the minutes of the General Committees for 29 September 1751 –
A/FH/K02/003 – microfilm X041/014.
4
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2. The £8771 paid by the London parishes in the period 1767
to 1773 under Hanway’s Act has been omitted, since these pauper children were not classed as ‘children
of this Hospital.’ The last parliamentary grant was made in 1771.
77
The Hospital spent £581,184 on the maintenance of the foundlings in the period 1756 to 1773.
The Founding Hospital’s Expenditure on the Foundlings, 1756-1773*5
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
Children at
Nurse
Cost of
Clothing
6,324
15,163
25,829
37,756
38,230
36,957
31,993
28,310
25,881
19,042
14,301
12,772
9,685
5,086
1,567
997
707
__1,018
311,618
1,586
2,748
2,107
2,201
1,333
1,274
1,280
2,102
1,829
2,009
2,618
2,176
1,589
1,459
521
501
407
__757
28,497
London and
Branch Hospitals
5,653
10,862
9,630
13,851
10,051
12,534
14,205
17,898
19,468
19,335
18,958
20,313
18,578
12,393
8,420
5,355
4,947
4,165
226,617
Apprentice
Fees
1,243
4,693
5,708
2,588
183
27
10
14,452
Total
13,563
28,773
37.566
53,808
49,614
50.765
47,478
48,310
47,178
40,385
35,877
36,504
34,545
24,646
13,096
7,036
6,088
5,950
581,184
*In pounds, to the nearest pound.
The £549,797 granted by Parliament was not far short of the £581,184 spent by the Hospital
on the children. In fact, the parliamentary grant may actually have exceeded the sums spent
on the 14,934 ‘parliamentary children.’ Some of the Hospital’s funds would have been spent
on the 612 children already in the care of the Hospital when the General Reception began or
on the 545 children taken in by the end of 1773 after the General Reception ended.
Parliament had not accepted responsibility for either of these groups. In any case, M.P,s
would have been aware that the Hospital had other sources of income in addition to the
parliamentary grant. The Hospital’s total income in the period 1756 to 1773, £745,516, was
substantially more than needed for the upkeep of the children. The very fact that the Hospital
was able to take in several hundred children in the period 26 March 1760 to 31 December
1773 shows that the Hospital had some funds in hand after the General Reception ended.
*Including one child provided for under a will.
5
Accounts Audited (1741- 1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2.
78
Since no one knew how many children would be taken in or how many children would die in
any given period, some guesswork must have been involved in estimating the amount
needed, based on the returns that the Hospital had to make to Parliament.
In a memorandum written in 1755 the governors had declared that ‘the Maintenance of a
Child, exclusive of servants of the Household is above £7 per annum, all expenses included
above £10.6 Parliament’s grants were based on the assumption that £7.10.0d. would be
enough to keep a foundling for a year.7 Presumably they took into account the likely cost of
looking after grown children as well as children at nurse. M.P.s were not prepared to give a
per capita grant of £10 per annum, understandably enough when £10 was a sum which,
according to Massie’s figures, it would have taken the average country labourer almost nine
months to earn.8
M.P.s may well have hoped that, as the numbers increased, the cost of looking after the
children would fall. On the eve of the General Reception, for example, there were only 207
children in the London hospital,9 yet it had been built to house about 400. It ought not have
cost twice as much to look after 400 as to look after 207. They presumably also allowed for
the fact that the running costs of the branch hospitals would be less than for the London
Hospital. In September 1761 Collingwood claims that children at the Shrewsbury Hospital
were ‘Clothed & maintained at 2s week.’10 This was less than it cost in most areas to keep a
child at nurse. This figure excludes the cost of building the Shrewsbury Hospital, but it seems
6
A/FH/M01/2/015.
7
Letter from Collingwood to Mrs. West, Sept 23, 1762. Copy Book of Letters, No. 3 p. 195 – A//FH/A/6/2/1.
8
Joseph Massie, A computation of the Money …. Raised upon the People of Great Britain (1760) See the
article by Professor Mathias in the Economic History Review, Second Series, vol. X, 1957.
9
Memorandum Book – A/FH/A09/005/001/1.
10
Colllingwood to the Revd. Mr. Hughes, 26 Sept 1761 Copy Book of Letters, No. 3 p. 108 - A/FH/A/6/2/1.
79
to have been accepted that the cost of building and equipping the branch hospitals should fall
on the Foundling Hospital’s own funds. When these hospitals closed the governors were
allowed to sell the land and buildings where the charity owned the freehold and to dispose of
the other assets.
The parliamentary grant was intended just to cover the cost of the
maintenance of the children. Parliament, though, must have given some consideration as to
whether the Foundling Hospital’s funds would be adequate to meet the cost of setting up the
branch hospitals since they were going to house the ‘parliamentary’ children.
When these points are taken into account, Parliament’s assessment of how much the
Foundling Hospital would need seems quite reasonable.11 At the end of the first six months of
the General Reception the Foundling Hospital had £2,700 of its £10,000 grant still in hand,
though admittedly not all the bills had come in.12 There were occasions, though, when the
governors felt Parliament had underestimated the Hospital’s needs. On May 11 1767 for
example, Taylor White informed the Rev. Dr. Timothy Lee, the leading governor at Ackworth,
that Parliament had granted only £29,500 for that year, though the governors had estimated
that they would need £31,387.10s. ‘on the lowest Calculation.’13
The Hospital was also
hampered by the fact that the Government often paid the parliamentary grant in arrears. In a
letter to Dr. Lee dated June 23 1761 Taylor White explained that ‘Our Governors have for
some time supported the Hospital by their own private Money, the Government owes us
£4,400 & have not paid a farthing of the Parliamentary Grant for this year.’14
The Hospital certainly suffered at times from what we would call cash flow problems. On
January 26, 1764, for example, Thomas Collingwood wrote to Sir Rowland Winn, the treasurer
11
Jonas Hanway noted that it cost £7.10s per annum to keep a child, without suggesting that the sum was
inadequate. In fact he was concerned at how much public money was being spent. See his A Proposal
for saving from £70,000 to £150,000 to the public…, (London, 1764), p. 17.
12
Gen. Cttee, Wed. Dec. 22 1756 - A/FH/K02/005, p. 174 - microfilm X041/015.
13
Copy Book letters, No. 3 p. 381 - A/FH/A/6/2/1.
14
Ibid., p. 89.
80
of the Ackworth branch hospital, begging him to keep his drafts on the Foundling Hospital as
low as possible, as the governors were so short of cash that they were having to sell stock in
the Funds at a great loss to raise money for expenses.15 At times the Hospital was forced to
borrow large sums. In 1759, for example, they borrowed £7,000 from the London Assurance
Company, £2,000 of which was paid back the same year and £5,000 in 1760. 16 In 1759 they
also paid back £5,620 lent by William Bilder, Esq. (this loan was free of interest).17 These
loans should not be taken as evidence of a desperate financial position. People would not
have lent money to the Hospital if they felt there was little chance of getting it back.
It is true that the Hospital sometimes had a surprising small balance of cash in hand at the
end of the year. On two occasions it was under £100 (on 31 December 1760 it was £4). On
seven occasions, however, it was over £1,000 (on 31 December 1,766 it was £4,974). These
figures give a misleading impression, however, because in most years the inspectors had
substantial amounts of money in hand to pay their nurses. At the end of 1763, for example,
the Hospital owed some inspectors £515, but other inspectors were holding £6,710 of the
Hospital’s money. It is hard to see how the governors could have avoided paying substantial
sums in advance to the inspectors. The inspectors were unpaid volunteers and it would not
have been reasonable to expect most of them to pay the nurses out of their own pockets
whilst they waited for the Hospital to reimburse them.18
Even though the Hospital was obliged to furnish the inspectors with large sums of money in
advance, the London governors sometimes had substantial sums to hand. They endeavoured
to make the best use of this cash. When they had a surplus they bought securities such as
15
Ibid., p. 259.
16
Accounts Audited (1741 – 1787) - A/FH/A/4/1/12.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid. All the sums of money in this section have been rounded to the nearest pound. The inspectors
were allowed to have one quarter’s advance. See Copy Book of Letters, No. 3 p.47 – letter to the Rev.
Mr. Hughes of 17 January 1761. (A/FH/A/6/2/1).
81
Bank Stock, Exchequer Bills and South Sea stock. When they were short of funds or when a
better yield could be had from some other security they sold them. In 1757, for example, they
bought 3% Bank Annuities for £2,715 and in 1762 Consolidated Bank Annuities for £15,963.
In 1760 they sold 3% Consolidated Annuities for £8,626 and in 1764 more were sold for
£3,542. As we have seen, the governors were not always able to choose the ideal time to
sell, but they did at least have resources that could easily be turned into cash when needed.
The branch hospitals and the inspectors were paid from the Foundling Hospital’s funds at the
Bank of England. Drafts drawn on the Hospital for cash could be sent in at any time. These
were submitted to the approval of the General Committee.19 Until the autumn of 1761 the
money was then issued by the Steward, but in November of that year it was discovered that
the then Steward, Lancelot Wilkinson, had defaulted to the amount of £600. The Hospital had
taken the precaution of getting sureties for the money, so those that had guaranteed the
Hospital against loss had to pay up.20
After that the money was issued by the Treasurer. 21
Only two other major scandals came to light. One concerned John Wilkes’ dishonest
appropriation of funds intended to pay those who had supplied the Aylesbury branch hospital
with goods. The other was the embezzlement of £92 by John Mitchell, the Treasurer’s clerk.22
The sums lost by the dishonesty of Wilkinson, Wilkes and Mitchell represented only a very
small percentage of total expenditure. As far as we can see, the system of financial control
usually worked reasonably well. The Hospital required the inspectors to submit accounts
once a year. 23
19
See letter to Dr. Lee, June 16, 1761. Copy Book of Letters No. 3 p. 86 - A/FH/A/6/2/1.
20
Ibid. Letter to Roger Pinder, Nov 7, 1761, p. 120. See also Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p. 270.
21
See letter to Dr. Lee, Nov. 10, 1761. Copy Book of Letters, p. 120.
22
See V. E. Lloyd Hart, John Wilkes and the Foundling Hospital at Aylesbury, 1759-1766 Aylesbury, H. M. &
M. Publishing, 1979)
Sub Cttee – 10 and 24 February 1759.
23
Collingwood to Dr. Lee, Oct 18, 1760. Copy Book of Letters, p. 24.
82
The branch hospitals had to make their returns every quarter.
24
Collingwood did his best to
get accounts submitted on time, partly because they were needed to make up the Foundling
Hospital’s General Account which had to be submitted to Parliament each year.25 The annual
General Account was printed.
The correspondence with the Berkshire inspectors shows that the Hospital succeeded in
supervising most of the inspectors quite closely. The Secretary (or sometimes Mr Blackbeard
on his behalf) was quick to spot errors in accounts. See, for example, his letter of October 2,
1760, to Thomas Marsham at Reading and that of October 4 to Mrs. Dodd at Swallowfield.26
This does not mean, of course, that there were no unsatisfactory Berkshire inspectors. In
particular, as we shall see later, the Rev Theophilus Hughes gave the Hospital a great deal of
trouble. His failure to pay his nurses in 1761 led to his inspection being ended.27 There were
also some inspectors elsewhere who failed to submit accounts when asked to do so and
ended up owing the Hospital substantial sums of money.28
The General Committee scrutinized the accounts of the branch hospitals carefully.
For
example, in one letter of 1 November 1760 to Sir Rowland Winn, the treasurer of the Ackworth
branch hospital, Collingwood pointed out that the General Committee had noted a mistake in
his accounts. 29
And on the 27th of the same month they asked him to send details of the
24
See, for example, Shrewsbury Hospital minutes for January 11, 3 April, July 2 and October 11, 1762 –
A/FH/D2/1/1.
25
See, for example, Collingwood’s letter of January 14, 1763 to Morgan, the Secretary of the Shrewsbury
Hospital. Copy Book of Letters, p. 219.
26
For others, examples, see Clark, op. cit.
J Bunce (6 February, 13 February 1769) – p.6.
Mrs Juliana Dodds (23 January and 7 October 1759) – p.24 and p.27.
Rev. John Price Jones 20 October 1759) – p.52.
27
Ibid., pp. XXII – XXIV. See also Chapter Six.
28
See also Chapter Six.
29
Copy of Book of Letters, No. 3 p. 28.
83
household expenses incurred by Richard Hargreaves, the Ackworth secretary.30 In a letter of
8 February 1766 to John Warde, the treasurer of the Westerham branch hospital, Collingwood
noted, ‘I have examined your Accounts and have met with some difficulty in making the
Balance agree with the Account on the Books of this Hospital.’ He went on to analyse the
returns in some detail. 31
He wrote a similar letter on March 26, 1767, to Mr Small, the
secretary of the Chester branch hospital and showed him how the accounts were to be set out
in the future. 32 The checking of accounts was clearly no mere formality.
The General Committee and the Secretary also tried to ensure that the cost of nursing
children was kept to a minimum. In a letter to Sir Kendrick Clayton, the inspector of the
Godstone area in Surrey, Collingwood asked him to make sure that the children to be returned
to the London hospital would be sent back ‘in the cheapest manner.’33 On 11 October 1760
he took Mrs Theobold, the inspector at White Waltham in Berkshire, to task for spending too
much on shoes and stockings and begged her to keep a closer watch on the nurses ‘as such
excessive charges cannot be tollerated.’34 On the same day he told Mr Roberts, one of the
two inspectors at Barnet, that he should not return some accounts that had been sent back to
him with corrections to save on postage.35 Where possible, the pay for nurses was reduced in
the 1760s (see Chapter Eight for details).
The Hospital was equally concerned to keep down the expenses of the branch hospitals. For
example, in a letter of September 11, 1760 to Hoath, the secretary of the Westerham branch
hospital, Collingwood asked that in future when he needed things to be sent from London he
30
Ibid., p. 29.
31
Ibid., p. 336.
32
Ibid., p. 374.
33
Ibid., p. 14.
34
Ibid., p. 21.
35
Ibid., p. 22.
84
would remember to include everything in one order ‘as the Expence of Carriage may thereby
be saved.’36
On 16 June 1762 Taylor White suggested to Roger Kynaston, that the
Shrewsbury governors were being overcharged for hiring horses for their caravan (the vehicle
used for transporting children). 37 In another letter to Kynaston, dated 25 October 1763, he
argued that a cheap wooden fence and a hedge would do just as well as an expensive brick
wall to protect the Shrewsbury hospital’s grounds.38
On July 1762 he wrote to Roger
Cumberbach to see whether he could buy some Irish linen at Chester fair for the Founding
Hospital ‘on better terms than we can have it here’ [i.e. in London].39
In a criticism of a report of 1771 on the Hospital’s finances Jonas Hanway argued that the six
officers in the London hospital were costing too much in view of the fact that the numbers in
the House were declining.40 The minutes of the General Court for Wednesday March 31 1773
certainly show that the cost of paying staff did not fall in proportion to the fall in the number of
children to be cared:
Number of children cared for
(Including parish children)
Number of officers
Number of servants
Salaries of officers
Salaries of servants
1771
1772
402 – 213
222 – 196
6
50 – 32
£226.4.0
£335.5.5
6
31 – 30
£226.4.0
£250.9.2 41
The General Court felt they could not dispense with the six officers, though the rather odd
suggestion that he apothecary might serve as secretary or steward was discussed.
36
Ibid., p. 8.
37
Ibid., p. 173.
38
Ibid., p. 253.
39
Ibid., p. 177. This was before the Chester hospital was opened, but it illustrates Taylor White’s concern
for economy.
40
Hanway’s examination of the London part of the Special Committee’s report is in A/FH/MO1/8/109-122.
Although the report was printed it has not been possible to find it in the foundling Hospital archives and
there is no copy in the British Library.
41
Gen. Ct. – A/FH/K02/003. p. 143 –microfilm X041/010.
85
Hanway also argued that the bills for carpenters’ work at the House seemed excessive. The
General Court was also concerned about this and wondered whether it should appoint a
surveyor to keep a check on costs. The charity spent £7,033 on the care of its children in
1771 and £6,071 in 1772. Even if the expenditure on staff and the maintenance of the House
could have been reduced, therefore, it would only have saved a small proportion of total
expenditure.42
Parliament can have had little cause to complain of in the way the Hospital administered its
funds.
42
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2 Sums not directly spent on the children, such as the
purchase of securities, has been omitted. Each category of expenditure has been rounded to the nearest
pound and the total expenditure has been based on these rounded figures.
86
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE EARLY YEARS OF THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL BEFORE
THE GENERAL RECEPTION
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter we will consider the Hospital’s achievements and failures in caring for
the children from the 25th March 1741, when the first foundlings were accepted, to 1
June 1756, the eve of the General Reception. We cannot assess the Hospital’s record
in the General Reception period fairly without some knowledge of the early years.
THE DECISION TO SEND INFANTS TO NURSES IN THE COUNTRY
In the first year or so after the Hospital opened in March 25 1741 in its temporary
headquarters in Hatton Garden quite a few of the babies were kept there rather than
being sent to nurse in the countryside. In September 1742, however, the General Court
received a report that apparently convinced the governors that the children should be
sent to the countryside whenever possible.1 Here are the figures from the report:
Intake
March 25 1741
April 17 1741
May 8 1741
June 5 1741
Feb 19 1741/2
To Country
17
20
16
6
21
Died in
Country
In House
8 (47.1%)
6 (30.0%)
7 (43.8%)
3 (50.0%)
5 (23.8%)
13
10
14
17
2
Died in
House
13 (100.0%)
9 (90.0%)
12 (85.7%)
10 (58.9%)
1 (50.0%)
In fact for the whole pre-General Reception period (25 March 1741 to 1 June 1756)
1326 of the 1384 children taken in (95.8%) were sent to the country. Only twelve
children taken in after February 19, 1741/2 were kept in the House.2
1
G. Cttee, 2 September 1742 – A/FH/K02/001, microfilm X041/014.
2
The State of the Children Quarterly then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/1.
Gen. Reg. – A/FH/A09/002/001 – microfilm X41/3.
87
Here are the key figures:
Number of Children sent to Nurse before the General Reception
1741
1742
1743
1744
1745
1746
64
46
23
Nil
44
50
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
97
80
100
120
199
160
1753
1754
1755
1756 (to
1 June)
120
80
103
40
1,3263
Number at Nurse, 25 December 1741 to 1 June 1756
24 June 1741
25 Dec. 1741
25 Dec. 1742
25 Dec. 1743
25 Dec. 1744
25 Dec. 1745
43
39
72
82
61
71
25
25
25
25
25
25
Dec.
Dec.
Dec.
Dec.
Dec.
Dec.
1746
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
81
134
176
222
267
329
25 Dec. 1752
25 Dec. 1753
25 Dec. 1754
25 Dec. 1755
1 June 1756
403
400
362
422
4064
In the first few months most of the children were sent to Egham and Staines. By 1 June
1756 the Hospital had been obliged to go further afield to find enough nurses and
enough inspectors: by that date nurses had been grouped into 53 nurseries, though
they were not all in existence at the same time.
Children Sent to Country Nurses, 1 June 1756.5
Cumulative Totals
Home Counties and
Southern England
Number of Nurseries
or ‘Inspections’
Number of
Children
Hampshire
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire
Hertfordshire
Essex
Kent
Surrey
Middlesex
2
3
3
2
13
4
5
15
36
108
148
8
202
68
322
213
Sub Total:
47
1105
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid., but excluding the General Register.
5
Ibid.
88
Midlands and the
North
Number of Nurseries
or ‘Inspections’
Lincolnshire
Staffordshire
Derbyshire
Yorkshire
Sub Total:
Total:
Number of
Children
1
3
1
1
10
42
37
132
6
53
221
1,326
The majority of the children had been sent to one of the 47 nurseries in the Home
Counties: three-quarters had gone to just five counties – Surrey, Middlesex, Essex,
Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. It was obviously sensible not to send children too far
away from London. The shorter the journey a baby had the better chance it had of
surviving. Moreover, transport costs would be kept down and it would be easier for one
of the Hospital’s officers to visit an ‘inspection’ if it should become desirable to do so.
The only really big inspection outside the Home Counties on 1 June 1756 was at
Hemsworth in Yorkshire, though a nursery at Chesterfield in Derbyshire had flourished
for a while.
The original plan was that the children would stay in the country until they were three
years old. Later on, though, the governors decided that it would be better for the
children to stay with their nurses until they were four or even five years old.6 The
governors’ plans were not followed rigidly, but the average length of time children spent
with their nurses did increase.
The ages of the first forty-four children returned to London (1 February 1742 – 14
November 1745) was as follows:
2 years and under
3 years
4 years
6
43.2%
47.7%
9.1%
See the report accepted by the General Court on 1 October 1740 (Nichols and Wray, op.cit.,
p.31.) On 12 April 1749 the Sub-Committee also recommended three years (Sub-Cttee.,
vol.1,p.27-A/FH/A3/5/1.) But the printed ‘Regulations for Managing the Hospital’ of the same year
suggested four years (A/FH/A1/5/2-P.9.)
89
The ages of the last forty-one children returned before the General Reception
(11 December 1754 – 25 May 1756) were:
3 years
4 years
5 years
2.4%
43.9%
53.7%
The ages of all the children returned to London before the General Reception were as
follows:
2 years and under
3 years
4 years
5 years
16.1%
37.5%
34.3%
12.1%7
PREFERENCE FOR WET NURSES
The question whether babies should be sent to wet nurses or to dry nurses aroused
considerable controversy, both before and during the General Reception, but the
governors were convinced that most babies had a better chance of surviving if they
went to wet nurses. 8 Usually only those babies who could not be breast-fed were sent
to dry nurses. Children normally stayed with the same nurse once they had been
weaned. Dr William Cadogan, whose book on the care of infants was published by the
Foundling Hospital in 1748, declared that ‘dry nursing is looked upon to be the most
unnatural and dangerous Method of all; and, according to my Observations, not one in
three survives it.’9 Sir Hans Sloane also claimed that wet nursing was much safer than
dry nursing. 10 Jonas Hanway, after quoting Sir Hans Sloane’s evidence with approval,
said ‘that it is absurd to attempt the preservation of infants by dry nursing where the
7
The ages have been calculated from the date of reception. See the Memorandum Book –
A/FH/A09/01/1.
8
An Account of the Hospital (1749), pp.X-XII. See Clark, op.cit., pp.Xl-XLI for a good summary of
the arguments used for and against wet nursing.
9
Cadogan An Essay upon Nursing, and the Management of Children, From their Birth to Three
Years of Age, p.25 (1748 edition). For Cadogan see Ernest Caulfield, The Infant Welfare
Movement in the Eighteenth Century (New York, Paul B. Hoeber, 1931), chapter IV or Morwenna
and John Rendle-Short, The Father of Child Care: Life of William Cadogan (Bristol, 1966). In
1754 Cadogan became one of the Hospital’s physicians.
10
See Brownlow, op.cit., pp.210-216.
90
breast can be had in proper manner.’11 Some critics, however, such as the noted
scientist the Rev. Stephen Hales and John Heaviside, an apothecary who was the
Hospital’s inspector at Hatfield, argued that the relative merits of wet and dry nursing
should be given a fair trial. 12
RECRUITING THE NURSES
England did not have such a strong tradition of wet-nursing as France, but Dr. Fildes
has argued that wet-nursing in England reached its height in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries.13 It was quite common, for example, for well-off London
parents to send their new-born children to be nursed in the country, partly to avoid the
inconvenience of having a baby to look after and partly to get the child away from
London’s unhealthy atmosphere. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, this practice
was under attack from doctors such as William Cadogan. It is likely, therefore, that
some women who would have preferred to look after the babies of wealthy parents now
had to consider taking foundlings instead. Some of the nurses who had previously
taken parish children may perhaps have switched to taking foundlings, though parish
nurses had such a poor record for keeping their charges alive that the governors would
probably have been wary of employing them.
Nurses employed by foundling hospitals on the Continent in the eighteenth century had
a deplorable reputation. They were usually badly paid. Valerie Fildes points out that in
France ‘Good wet nurses could get better money and better conditions form nursing a
11
Jonas Hanway, Letters on the Importance of the Rising Generation [London, 1767], vol. 1, letter
XXXIV, p.128-129.
12
For Hale’s arguments see Foundling Hospital Library, Misc. MSS, vol.35, pp.49-56. Quoted in
Fildes, op.cit., pp.161-163.
For Heaviside’s argument see his letter to the Secretary, 30 April 1757 – A/FH/A/6/1/10/7, also
quoted by Fildes (pp.165-166).
13
Fildes, Wet Nursing, p.79.
91
child from a wealthy family; only the poorest, and often diseased, offered themselves.’ 14
Dr. Sherwood makes the same point about the wet nurses employed by the Inclusa. 15
David Ransel has argued that Russian nurses were more concerned about the
economic benefit of fostering children than they were about doing the best for them. 16
Edward Shorter declared that ‘Traditional nurses as a rule were indifferent beyond
belief to the welfare of the babies they took in. Children were commodities to them.’17
There were certainly some bad nurses employed by the London Foundling Hospital,
but Shorter’s sweeping assertions cannot be applied to most of them.
The majority of Foundling Hospital nurses in England probably came from the poorer
classes, as did those of the Continental hospitals. Most were probably married to farm
labourers or village craftsmen. Most of the nurses seem to have been illiterate. The
Memorandum Book mentions only one letter received from a nurse in the period down
to 1 October 1745. 18 Lack of education did not, of course, stop a woman being a good
nurse. What the children needed was a good-tempered, sensible woman who had
brought up her own children successfully. Those women who were going to act as wet
nurses also needed to be healthy with a good supply of milk.
One reason why the nurses in England seem to have been better than those described
by Shorter was no doubt the fact that they were well paid. Most earned 2s 6d a week
giving an annual income of £6.10.0d. A number were paid 13s a month (£7.16.0d a
year). [The nurses in Derbyshire and Yorkshire were paid less than the others.] At a
time when, according to the contemporary statistician Joseph Massie, the average
14
Fildes, op.cit., p.157.
15
Sherwood, op.cit., pp.78-79.
16
Ransel, op.cit., p.220.
17
Shorter, op.cit., pp.185-186.
18
A/FH/M01/8/1 – 371 28 March 1743.
92
income of a husbandman was 6s a week (£15 a year) and that of country labourers 5s
a week, £6.10.0d would have meant a substantial increase to the family’s income.19
Jonas Hanway said that many labourers and husbandmen maintained ‘themselves, a
wife, and six children, for six, seven or eight shillings a week.’20
THE INSPECTORS
The inspectors had to recruit the nurses and make sure they were looking after the
children properly. They had to see that they were regularly paid, using the funds sent
from London for that purpose, and that they were given the clothes for the children
provided by the Hospital. They had also to ensure that when the children became ill
they got proper treatment and had to inform the Hospital if a child in their ‘nursery’ or
‘inspection’ died or was suffering from any serious illness, such as measles or
smallpox. In the large nurseries the work must have been quite demanding and timeconsuming.
By 1 June 1756 the Foundling Hospital had recruited more than fifty inspectors. It is
likely that many inspectors, especially those responsible for large numbers of children,
got some help from time-to-time from relatives or friends. Such informal assistance
would not be recorded in the Foundling Hospital books. But the inspectors were also
encouraged to appoint official deputies who could act on their behalf should they be
unable to carry out their duties for any reason. In fact an inspector who was planning to
go away for any length of time from his or her area would have to appoint a deputy, if
19
G-Cttee, vol.IV, 29 September 1751, p.273 – A/FH/K02/003 – microfilm X041/015.
G-Cttee, vol.V, 16 June 1758, pp.84-85 – A/FH/K02/005 – microfilm X041/015.
In 1760 Joseph Massie published his estimates of the income of various classes in a pamphlet
entitled A Computation of the Money that hath been exorbitantly Raised upon the People of Great
Britain by the Sugar Planters, in One Year from January 1759 to January 1760 … Professor
Mathias used Massie’s figures for an article in The Economic History Review (Second Series,
vol.X, 1957). In the 1750s and 1760s agricultural labourers in Hertfordshire usually earned about
6s a week – E.G. Cornell Hertfordshire Agriculture, unpublished M.Sc. dissertation, 1966 MRO
L699, 204/114B, pp.65-74, quoted by Valerie Fildes Wet Nursing, a History from Antiquity to the
Present (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988), p.176.
20
Hanway, A Candid Historical Account…, p.47.
93
only because the nurses expected to be paid every month. It may well be that about
one hundred men and women were involved in supervising the nurses before the
General Reception, if we include the official and unofficial deputies as well as the
inspectors.
The majority of inspectors came from the middle ranks of society. Only one inspector in
the period down to 1 October 1745, for example, had a title – Lady Vere Beauclerk, the
wife of one of the vice-presidents. Most of them seem to have carried out their duties
faithfully. Some inspectors were remarkably hard working. A Mrs. Helden, who had
initially assisted Mrs. Bissell at the Staines and Egham nursery, took over the nursery
when Mrs. Bissell died in 1748. She continued as an inspector for years. The last
foundlings sent to her were despatched on 30 December 1756. In all she supervised
the care of 237 foundlings.21 The Revd Thomas Trant had supervised 132 foundlings at
Hemsworth by 25 March 1756.22
THE GROWN CHILDREN AND THE LONDON HOSPITAL
Most people today would probably regard the setting up of a system of country nursing
as the most challenging task facing the governors in the eighteenth century. If
eighteenth century Londoners had been asked what had been the most notable
achievement, however, they might well have cited the building of the impressively large
hospital in Lamb’s Conduit Fields in Bloomsbury, then on the northern outskirts of
London. From the beginning the governors realized that the Hatton Garden premises
would prove too small and that they would need a purpose-built hospital. This would be
the headquarters of the charity, the place of reception for new foundlings and the home
for grown children brought back from the country until they were old enough to be
apprenticed.
21
Memorandum Book – A/FH/A09/005/001/1.
22
Ibid.
94
THE BUILDING OF THE NEW HOSPITAL IN BLOOMSBURY
Fifty-six acres of land were purchased from the Earl of Salisbury as a site for the new
hospital. The plan was to build a hospital that could accommodate four hundred
children. By the autumn of 1745 the west wing was finished and on 1 October 1745 the
twenty seven children at Hatton Garden and the staff who looked after them moved into
the new building. At the meeting of the General Court on 31 March 1756 it was
reported that ‘by the Diligence and Bounty of the Governors the Whole of this great
Work is nearly finished.’23 The building was rather plain, unlike some of the hospitals
built for the poor in such cities as Naples, Genoa, Turin and Rome, which were, Sandra
Cavallo argues, ‘clearly intended to celebrate the generosity and splendour of the
benefactors responsible for their erection’.24 [No doubt if these buildings had been
perfectly plain, some historians today would be suggesting that this was evidence of
the parsimony of the rich.] The governors, concerned about the health of the children,
had made sure that there was plenty of open ground around the hospital.
By the end of 1755 the total cost (including the cost of land, building and furniture)
amounted to £42,746. Such expenditure may seem rather extravagant, especially
when we consider that there were only 207 children there on the eve of the General
Reception. The cost of building the London hospital had accounted for about 37% of all
expenditure by 31 December 1755. Various alterations and additions were made
subsequently and it was not until 1765 that all building work ceased. By the end of that
year the total cost had risen to £48,541.25 For comparison, St. Thomas’s Hospital had
been largely rebuilt between 1693 and 1709 at a cost of just under £38,000 raised by
23
G.Ct., 31 March 1756, pp.332-3.
24
Sandra Cavallo, Charity as Boundary Making: Social Stratification, Gender and the Family in the
Nation States (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries), in H. Cunningham and J. Innes, eds.
Charity, Philanthropy and Reform – From the 1690s to 1850 (London, Macmillan 1998), p.117.
Some allowance, of course, must be made for different architectural fashions.
25
Accounts Audited (Estates Account) – A/FH/A/4/1/2.
95
around 450 subscribers. 26 The central block of the London Hospital or Infirmary in
Whitechapel, built between 1752 and 1759, cost only £18,000. By 1778, when the two
wings had been added, the total cost of the Whitechapel building was just over
£23,000.27 The Foundling Hospital’s branch hospitals at Ackworth and Shrewsbury, as
we shall see later, also cost far less than the London headquarters, though they were
of comparable size.
For many years the London hospital was nowhere near full.
The Number of Children in the London Hospital from
25 March 1741 to 1 June 175628
Date
In the Hatton Garden Building
25 March 1741
24 June 1741
25 December 1741
25 December 1742
25 December 1743
25 December 1744
1 October 1745
30*
24
16
12
12
21
27**
In the new purpose-built building
25 December
25 December
25 December
25 December
25 December
25 December
25 December
25 December
25 December
25 December
25 December
1 June 1756
*
**
1745
1746
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
46
59
71
76
89
92
151
156
187
238
189
207
As we saw in Chapter Five, thirteen of these children were immediately sent to nurse.
On this day the children were transferred to the new building.
26
F.G. Parsons, The History of St. Thomas’s Hospital, vol.2.
27
A.E. Kennedy – Clarke, op.cit., vol.1, p.145. This figure does not include the cost of land, but
even when that is allowed for, it cost far less then the London foundling hospital.
28
See Table 3.
96
However, once the General Reception began, and the number in the London Foundling
Hospital began to rise, the governors may well have felt that they had shown foresight
rather than extravagance in erecting such a large building.
The governors could also have justified their heavy expenditure on the new London
building by pointing out that, if all went well, the foundlings would spend a much longer
time there than they had spent with their nurses. For most of the children who returned
to London and lived to be apprenticed, the hospital did indeed become their home for
many years, as the following figures show:
Length of stay of children who returned from their Country Nurses to the London
Hospital and were Apprenticed by 1 June, 1756.29
3 years +
4 years +
5 years +
6 years +
7 years +
8 years +
9 years +
10 years +
11 years +
12
years +
*
BOYS
GIRLS
4
6
10
7
5
2
1
35
1
2
1
2
5
8
1
1
1
22
TOTAL
1
6
1
8
15
15
6
3
2
57*
Fifty-nine children were apprenticed by 1 June 1756. (One girl apprenticed in 1755 has been omitted
because she does not seem to have been sent to nurse and one boy apprenticed in 1756 because he
was sent back to the country for several months to regain his health.)
Only one of these children spent less than five years in the hospital and almost 72%
spent eight years or more there.
The governors must also have hoped that an impressive building would stimulate
interest and encourage respectable people to visit.
29
The Memorandum Book – A/FH/A09/005/001 – gives the date on which the children were sent to
the countryside. The dates on which the children returned to London have been taken from the
General Register, vol.1 – A/FH/A09/A02/001 – microfilm X41/3. The apprentices are listed in the
Apprenticeship Register – A/FH/A12/003/001.
97
Possibly the most important reason for putting so much effort into the building
programme, though, was that the hospital was to be a self-contained community. The
governors welcomed visits by well-wishers, but they were anxious to prevent the
children from coming into contact with undesirable influences in the outside world.
There was no question, for example, of the children going to one of the local charity
schools. Those children who were employed in making things for sale to the general
public did not go outside the hospital to work. The governors did not even send the
children to the local church (a chapel would have been necessary, therefore, even if it
had not been a way of attracting support for the charity). Almost everything the children
needed, then had to be provided in the hospital. It even had its own infirmary and at
times used various buildings in the area when it was desirable to isolate infectious
children. Strange as it may seem, some children may not have left the hospital grounds
from the time they entered until they were apprenticed.
TRAINING CHILDREN TO BE USEFUL MEMBERS OF SOCIETY
The governors probably believed it would be usually easier to apprentice children from
the London hospital than from their nurses, since potential masters or mistresses would
know where to go to secure foundlings as apprentices. In any case, presumably not all
nurses would have been prepared to look after their charges until they were old enough
to be apprenticed. But the governors no doubt thought that the training given in the
hospital would make them easier to place out as apprentices. It will be recalled that the
official name of the charity was the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of
Exposed and Deserted Young Children. The training provided may have been based
on that found in those charity schools where children were ‘Set to work’ as well as
being given religious instruction and taught to read.30
30
In the 1748 edition of Miege’s The Present State of Great Britain and Ireland six of the 130
London charity schools listed came into this category.
98
Until they reached the age of six, the children were to be ‘taught to read, to learn the
catechism, etc. and at proper intervals exercised in the open Air and Employed in such
a manner as may contribute to their Health and induce a habit of activity and labour.’31
From the ages of six to twelve both boys and girls were to be put to useful work – ‘the
Boys be employed in making of Nets, spinning of Packthread twine and small Cordage:
adapted to their several Ages and Strength’ and ’the Girls be employed in common
Needle work, Knitting and Spinning; and in the Kitchen, Laundry and Household work,
in order to make them useful Servants to such Persons as may apply to them.’32
A report submitted to the General Committee in January 1752 lists the way the children
were employed on the 18th of that month as follows:
BOYS
Working in the garden
Making Nets
Winding Twine
Filling Needles
Making Purses
Too young to work
Lame
Sick
3
13
1
4
27
27
1
1
77
GIRLS
Sewing (plain work)
Kitchen
Laundry
Too young to work
Lame
Sick
Blind
32
1
1
29
7
7
1
71
Thus just over half the children were at work on 18 January 1752.33
31
Sub-Cttee. vol.I, p.29 – A/FH/A3/5/1.
32
Ibid., p.28.
33
G-Cttee 22 January 1752, vol.IV, p.281 (A/FH/K01/004) – microfilm x041.014.
99
It seems wrong to us that children from the ages six to twelve should have to work, but
it would have seemed wrong to contemporaries if the foundlings had not been at work.
It was comparatively easy to train the girls in skills which would be useful to them later.
Almost all the jobs the girls did in the House, such as cleaning, helping in the laundry
and the kitchen, laying the table, mending old clothes or making new ones, must have
made them more desirable as household servants.
Providing suitable work for boys was more difficult. Although the report of 1740, which
set out the plan for the Hospital, mentioned ‘other labour’, the governors had clearly
hoped that most boys would be apprenticed to husbandry or the sea services. 34
Rysbrack’s marble overmantel in the Court Room of the London hospital erected in
1745 (now in the Foundling Museum) showed boys ‘engaged in husbandry and
navigation.’
Nevertheless, by the eve of the General Reception, thirty-six boys had been
apprenticed (twenty eight of whom were apprenticed to the sea service). Twenty-three
girls were also apprenticed by 1 July 1756. The girls’ occupations are not specified in
the register, but they were almost certainly apprenticed to household business.35 Fifty
nine apprenticeships may seem a rather small number, but only a few children were old
enough to be apprenticed by the early 1750s. No premium was given with these
children so that the fifty-eight masters and one mistress cannot have taken them for the
sake of a cash payment.
34
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.31.
35
Apprenticeship register – A/FH/A12/003/001.
100
The governors on the eve of the General Reception may have felt some pride in the
way the London hospital was run. They would hardly have appealed to Parliament for
financial help nor would they have encouraged the public to visit if they had felt they
had something to hide. The fact that the House of Commons took the almost
unprecedented step of making a grant to a private charity in 1756 suggests that M.P.s
also believed that the Foundling Hospital had shown its worth.
RESERVATIONS ABOUT THE HOSPITAL’S RECORD
The governors had certainly devised a system of dealing with foundlings that was to
stand the test of time and they had done the best they could to provide them with a
training that would make them, in the words of a Sub-Committee report of 1749, ‘useful
to the Publick and thereby answer the charitable intentions of the Benefactors.’36 But
many children had died while in the care of the Hospital.
THE LOSS OF LIFE OF CHILDREN AT NURSE
In spite of the fact that the ‘inspections’ seem to have been well organised, the loss of
life of children at nurse was appalling by our standards. Five hundred and sixty of the
1,328 children sent to nurse died by 1 June 1756 before they could be returned to
London (42.5%). 37 On almost every page of the Memorandum Book of Admissions and
Disposals there is a note from an inspector informing the Hospital of the death of a
child under his or her care. 38 In many cases the inspector gave the supposed cause of
death or some comment about the child’s previous health. Here are some examples –
‘having layn for some time in a languishing condition,’ ‘ulcer in her mouth and
convulsions,’ ‘mortification having been long ill,’ ‘violent looseness,’ ‘a poor decrepit
36
Sub-Cttee, vol.1, p.29 – A/FH/A/3/5/2.
37
Gen. Reg. – A/FH/A09/002/001 – microfilm X41/3.
The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/1.
Memorandum Book – A/FH/A10/003/001.
38
Memorandum Book – A/FH/A09/005/001/1.
101
and diseased child.’ The most frequently mentioned causes of death in the country
were convulsions (44 cases, including fits) consumption (17 cases) and whooping
cough (11 cases). Rather surprisingly, the inspectors listed only seven deaths from
smallpox.
The fact that over 40% of the children had died at nurse by 1 June 1756 would not
have seemed as shocking to contemporaries as it does to us. Everyone was aware
how dangerous the first few years of life were, even in upper class families. [The
second Duke and Duchess of Richmond, for example, had twelve children, only seven
of whom lived to maturity.]39
THE HEALTH OF THE GROWN CHILDREN
The death rate in the London Hospital was also alarmingly high, though the minutes of
the General Committee and the Sub-Committee show that the governors did their best
to keep the children in good health.40 A determined effort was made to prevent the
spread of smallpox. All the children that had not had smallpox ‘in the natural way’ were
to be inoculated at the age of three before they entered the hospital. A report to the
General Committee on Wednesday 10 September 1755 stated that by the end of April
1755 247 children had been inoculated and only one child had died as a result of the
inoculation. 41 The General Committee was so proud of this record that it ordered that
details should be sent to one of the newspapers for publication. Care was also taken
that the children should be well fed. At a meeting of the General Committee of
Wednesday January 8 1755, for example, they agreed a ‘Table of Diet’ drawn up by
the Sub-Committee, which had been asked to consult the Hospital’s physicians before
39
Stella Tilyard, Aristocrats (London, Vantage Books, 1995), p.12.
40
This paragraph and the one that follows is based on a report of 1749. It was meant as a guideline
for the future, but was presumably based on the Hospital’s existing practice. Sub-Cttee, vol.1,
p.27 (12 April 1749) – A/FH/A3/5/1.
41
G-Cttee, vol.1V, pp.312-313. A/FH/K02/004.
102
making their proposals.42 Their diet in the hospital was to be ‘plain and simple,’ but was
to include milk, meat and vegetable as well as bread. Although modern experts would
no doubt find deficiencies in this diet, it was probably better than that of many of the
children of the labouring poor in London. The governors even gave attention to the
children’s diversions. They were ‘to be innocent, Active and requiring Exercise.’43 In
spite of these efforts, 147 children died in the House or one of its infirmaries by 1 June
1756.
Here are the details for those dying in the London hospital:
Age
Up to 6 months old
From 6 months to age 3 years
Fourth year
Fifth year
Sixth year
Seventh year
Eighth year
Ninth year
Aged ten or over
Number that died
54
8
9
24
18
13
6
8
7
14744
The children who died under 6 months of age would have been those that had not
been sent to nurse. They account for over a third of all deaths in the London hospital by
1 June 1756. Most of these deaths occurred in the year the Hospital opened. As we
noted earlier fifty four of the 113 children taken in between 25 March 1741 and 5 June
1741 were not sent to nurse: forty four of these were listed as dead in September 1742.
Just over 80% of the children not sent to nurse had died. Their chances of surviving
would probably have been better if they had been sent to nurse. Of the 59 children sent
42
Gen.Cttee, vol.IV, p.245 – A/FH/K02/004, microfilm X041/014.
43
Sub-Cttee. vol.1, p29 – A/FH/A3/5/1.
44
The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually (A/FH/A9/12/1) for 25 March 1756.
The Memorandum Book (A/FH/A09/A05/001/0-) records no deaths at the London hospital in the
period 26 March – 1 June 1756.
103
to nurse in the same period, 27 (45.7%) were still alive on 2 September 1742.45 A few
of those kept back in the hospital may have been too ill to move, but the reason for
keeping most of them in the House seems to have been that the governors were not
yet sure whether children at nurse would stand a better chance of surviving than
children kept in London.
Most of the other ninety-three children who died in the London hospital by 1 June 1756
would have been returned from their nurse. They account for about 12% of all deaths,
whether at nurse or in London, by 1 June 1756. The fact that so many children past
what we would think of as the most vulnerable years died is rather disturbing. There is
some evidence that life expectancy for these age groups was greater in the country
than the hospital. On the 25th March 1756, for example, there were 98 children living in
the countryside and 190 in the London hospital who had been taken by the end of 1751
– these were, of course, at least four years old. By the same date, only seventeen
children had died in the country over the age of four; the figure for the London hospital
is seventy-six. 46
The causes of death in the hospital were not always listed. Amongst those recorded
were ‘violent fever,’ ‘cholick in his stomack,’ ‘complication of distemper,’ and ‘after a
long indigestion and a spitting of much Blood and Nastiness.’ The most frequently
listed causes of death in the hospital were consumption (10 cases) and measles (9
cases). 47 Consumption (T.B.) and measles are of course infectious diseases and it
must have been extremely difficult to stop such diseases spreading in an institution.
Children living in the country must have stood a better chance of escaping them.
45
C.Cttee., 2 Sept., 1742 – A/FH/K02/001, microfilm X041/014.
46
The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/1.
47
Memorandum Book – A/FH/A09/005/001/1.
104
There must have been many children in the London hospital who suffered ill-health
even though they survived. There were, however, periods when the hospital was free
of sickness. On the 14th and 21st April 1756 Dr. Morton, one of the Hospital’s
physicians, reported that all children were well and on 26 May 1756 he reported that
only one girl was in need of treatment.48
TOTAL NUMBER OF DEATHS
In adding up the number of deaths of pre-General Reception foundlings we have to
include those who died after the General Reception commenced as well as those who
had died by 1 June 1756.
Here are the figures:
Deaths of Children taken in before the General Reception
Died before 1 June 1756
Died after 1 June 1756
At Nurse
In the London
Hospital
560
36
596
147
137
284
Total
707
173
88049
Just over half (51.1%) had died by 1 June 1756 and the final death rate was 63.8%
(880 of the 1384 children taken in before the General Reception). Only just over a third
of the children survived their time at the Foundling Hospital.
It is not possible to make exact comparisons with other foundling hospitals in this
period, but the evidence suggests that the record of the London foundling hospital was
better than that of some of the major institutions on the Continent. Take, for example,
the Inclusa in Madrid:
48
Ibid.
49
Table 1.
105
Intake
Percentage that died at Nurse50
1730
1740
1750
67.2
87.3
75.6
In 1751 the Paris Foundling Hospital took in 3,631 children – 2,487 of them (68.9%)
died within a year of their reception. 51 Of the 627 infants taken in by the Innocenti in
Florence in 1755 455 (72.6%) died while in the care of the hospital.52
The death rate would almost certainly have been higher if the children had come under
the care of the London parishes. Between 1746 and 1750 106 children were either
born in the workhouse of St. Margaret’s, Westminster or admitted to it before the age of
twenty months. Of these seven were eventually apprenticed, sixteen discharged to
their families and eighty-three died. 53 In 1767 Jonas Hanway revealed the appalling
mortality amongst young children in fourteen London workhouses between 1750 and
1755. 54
We can be fairly confident, then, that the Foundling Hospital saved the lives of some
infants who would otherwise have been taken to the Poor Law authorities. The
governors were not, in fact, discouraged by the large number of deaths, nor did they try
to conceal the facts. On the contrary, they may well have felt they had done well in
saving as many children as they had. In a 1755 memorandum which was intended to
50
Sherwood, op.cit., Table 6.9, p.148.
51
Lallemand, op.cit., vol.1, p.109.
52
Gaetano Bruscoli, Lo Spedale di Santa Maria degl’ Innocenti di Firenze (Florence, 1900), p.290.
53
Tim Hitchcock, ‘Unlawfully begotten of her body’: Illegitimacy and the Parish Poor in St. Lukes,
Chelsea, p.77, in T. Hitchcock et al, Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the
England Poor, 1640-1840 (Basingstoke, 1997).
54
See Infra, Chapter 22, p. 380, for detailed figures, taken from Hanway’s The Importance of the
Rising Generation. Vol. 1., pp. 80-81.
106
be used as part of the case to be put before Parliament for financial help, they
emphasized that they had saved the lives of about half the children taken in.55
It is even possible that the Foundling Hospital may have saved the lives of a few
children whose parents would have tried to bring them up themselves if the charity had
been unable to take them. The mortality rates for children in London in the early
eighteenth century were alarmingly high.
From 1728 onwards the parish clerks in the Bills of Mortality area were asked to note
the age of death of people buried according to the rites of the Church of England:
46.9% of all the deaths recorded by the parish clerks in the period 1739 to 1757 were
of children under ten years old and 35.1% were of children under two.56 Two
contemporary statisticians, John Postlethwayt and John Smart, produced tables
showing the ‘Probability of Life,’ for the various age groups from birth to the age of
ninety-four, basing their calculations on the Bills of Mortality for the period 1728 to
1757. Postlethwayt concluded that 49.4% of Londoners died before they reached their
thirteenth birthday; Smart gave the figure as 52.1%. Thus both agreed that roughly half
the population would not reach the age of thirteen.57 Calculations based on the returns
of the parish clerks, however, seriously underestimate death rates amongst children.
The Bills of Mortality included all Anglican burials, not just burials of those born in
London. Large numbers of people flocked into London each year from the provinces.
The majority of these were probably young men and women. Their recorded ages of
death would therefore distort the Bills of Mortality figures, making London seem a
55
A/FH/M01/002/015/018.
56
See A Collection of the Yearly Bills of Mortality from `657 to 1750 inclusive (London, 1759). This
edition contains a very shrewd essay by Corbyn Morris, F.R.S. which shows that contemporaries
were well aware of the pitfalls in using the Bills of Mortality figures. The library of the London
Metropolitan Archive has a copy of this book.
57
Postlethwayt’s and Smart’s figures are bound up with the Collections, op.cit.
107
rather healthier place than it was. The percentage of London-born children dying under
ten years and two years respectively must therefore be higher than 46.9% and 35.1%.
The same argument applies to Smart’s and Postlethwayt’s calculations, since they
presumably calculated their ‘Probability of Life’ tables by noting the numbers that died
in each age group as a proportion of all deaths. The percentage of London-born
children dying before their thirteenth birthday must surely therefore been higher than
50% or so. Jonas Hanway said that fifty-six out of every hundred children died in the
Bills of Mortality area before they reached the age of two.58 According to Edward
Gibbon, ‘The death of a new-born child before that of its parents may seem unnatural
but is strictly a probable event; since of any given number the greater part are
extinguished before their ninth year.’59
John Landers’ calculation of mortality rates for children born to parents belonging to
two Quaker Meetings in London (Peel and Southwark) gives a very gloomy picture. Of
those born in the period 1700 to 1724 48.7 died before their second birthday. Only
about a quarter survived to the age of ten.60 Many of these Quakers were very poor so
it would be unwise to assume that other groups would have mortality rates as bad as
these, but they do show how shockingly high they were for some London communities.
When these points are considered, the governors’ conviction that the Foundling
Hospital was successful is easier to understand.
Yet it would be difficult to argue that the charity had done much to solve London’s
foundling problem. Even if we make the surely unreasonable assumption that all the
504 pre-Reception children that survived their time at the Foundling Hospital would
58
Jonas Hanway, A Reply to C-A (London, 1760), p.14. See also Landers, op.cit.
59
Edward Gibbon, op.cit., p.20.
60
John Landers, Death and the Metropolis (Cambridge, C.U.P., 1993), p.136. See Appendix M.
108
have died if they had not been accepted by the charity, only a small proportion of
London’s foundlings would have been saved. If Adrian Wilson’s estimate is roughly
right, then perhaps about 15,000 babies would have been abandoned in London in the
period before the General Reception (i.e. 25 March 1741 to 1 June 1756).
It was only when the policy of indiscriminate admission was followed (2 June 1756 to
25 March 1760) that the Foundling Hospital took in a substantial number of London’s
foundlings.
The rest of the book will be devoted to uncovering the impact of this
momentous change in the Foundling Hospital and its effect on both London and the
provinces.
109
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FATE OF INFANTS IN THE LONDON HOSPITAL DURING THE
GENERAL RECEPTION
DEATHS OF INFANTS IN THE LONDON HOSPITAL
Two thousand four hundred and seventy of the 14,934 General Reception children never
reached the country.1
Ten boys and eight girls were not sent to the country because they had been claimed by
one or both parents before the Hospital had had time to arrange for country nurses to
come up to London to collect them. As far as we can tell, all the other 2,452 children who
were not sent died in London while still in the care of the Hospital. This means that a
staggeringly high proportion of all the children taken in during the General Reception –
16.4% or almost one in six – died before they could be sent to nurse. The proportion of
children who died before they could be sent to nurse varied sharply, from a low of 4.1% for
the intake of June 1757 to a high of 35.2% for children taken in, in December 1759. It was
substantially higher in the last eighteen months of the General Reception than in the first
eighteen months. In the first eighteen months (June 1756 – November 1757) it was 9.5%;
for the last eighteen months (October 1758 – March 1760) it was 24.8%. In the first
period, therefore, over 90% of the children were sent to nurse; in the later period it was
only about three-quarters.
1
All the statistics used in the rest of this section are based on an analysis of the following
Disposal or Nursery Books.
No. 1
No. 2
No. 3
No. 4
A/FH/A10/3/4.
A/FH/A10/3/5
A/FH/A10/3/6
A/FH/A10/3/7.
All percentages have been corrected to one place of decimals.
110
It is not surprising, therefore, that there was mounting criticism of the hospital in 1759 and
1760. Jonas Hanway’s A Candid Historical Account of the Hospital, for example, was
written in 1759 and published in 1760.2
with horror.3
century.
Later generations looked back on these years
The criticisms made by contemporaries were repeated in the nineteenth
John Brownlow, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, said that during the
General Reception ‘instead of being a protection for the living, the institutions became, as
it were, a charnel house for the dead!’4
REASONS FOR THE LARGE NUMBER OF INFANT DEATHS IN THE LONDON
HOSPITAL
Some of the deaths may have occurred amongst infants who seemed reasonably healthy
when they were taken but who caught a fatal infection while they were kept in one of the
wards for infants until a nurse arrived to take them to the country. The governors had now
lost the right to reject children on the grounds that they suffered from an infectious
disease.
The majority of those who died, though, had probably been kept in London because they
were thought to be too ill to move. A large number of the babies that died in London had
been sent, on reception, not to the House, as the main part of the London Hospital was
usually called, but to one of the infirmaries.
In some cases the deaths may have been due to poor care. As Valerie Fildes has pointed
out, the London hospital’s apothecary, Robert McClellan, was at odds with the matron, Mrs
Brooks, over how the infants should be raised. He suspected that some of them had been
2
Jonas Hanway A Candid Historical Account of the Hospital for the Reception of Exposed
and Deserted Young Children (London 1760).
3
See for example, Thomas Bernard, An Account of the Foundling Hospital (1799 edition),
p.30.
4
Brownlow, Memoranda: a, Chronicles of the Founding Hospital (London, Samson, Low,
1867 edition) pp. 174-175.
111
‘overlaid’, i.e. suffocated by accident by their nurses at night because proper precautions
had not been taken. He also attacked Mrs Brooks for giving a mixture of rum and sugar
and brandy and sugar to children suffering from ‘gripes’.5
It looks as though the
enlightened methods suggested by Dr. Cadogan were not always followed.6
These
complaints seem to refer to the treatment of the babies waiting for country nurses, but it
may be that the babies in the infirmaries did not always get the best care. The crowding
together of sick babies in the infirmaries must have encouraged cross infection, though it
is not easy to see what the Hospital could have done to prevent this.
Probably most of the babies kept back in London would have died, however, even if they
had received the very best treatment then available. The majority died within a few days
or at most a few weeks of reception which suggests that they must have been in very poor
condition when they arrived. As Dr. Gillian Clark points out, in many cases the mothers
would themselves have been in poor health.7 Many of the babies must have spent the first
few days or weeks of their lives in squalid conditions at a time when they had no
resistance to disease.
In a letter to the Revd. Dr. Lee, Taylor White declared that ‘the
greatest part of our children were starved or diseased when reced.’8 A report of 1765
declared that ‘many died before they had attained the age of two months, being infected
with the worst of Diseases – many starved – many poisoned with Spirit and Opiates, or
covered with Leprosy or itch; so that they could not be sent to healthy Nurses in the
Country.’9
5
R. McClellan to the Secretary – December 1759. F. H. Misc. Mss, vol. 28, p.206. Quoted in Valerie
Fildes, Wet Nursing op.cit., p. 169.
6
Cadogan’s pamphlet, op. cit.
7
G. Clark, op. cit. pp. XXVIII – XXIV..
8
Copy Book of Letters No. 3, April 23 1761, p.66 – A/FH/6/2/1.
9
The Case of the Governors and Guardians …… A/FH/M01/4/14.
112
Most of the billets provide little information about the condition of the foundlings on
reception. Just occasionally, however, the receiving clerk made a note when the babies
were in rags. There were several cases, for example, in February 1757. One boy [F. H.
No. 3393] taken in on the 9th of that month was described as ‘Clothed with a pack of Rags
and greatly Deformed.’10 Another taken in on the same day [No. 3397] was described as
‘Clothed with Rags Swarming with Varmen.’11 The same description was given of another
boy [No. 3414] taken in on the following day12 and of one taken in on 17 March
[No.3781].13
A shocking case occurred on the 3rd March 1757.
Dorcas the Daughter of Lucy Smith [No. 3631]
John the Son of Mary Crook [No. 3632]
Mary the Daughter of William and Mary Angus
are recommended as proper Objects to partake of the Charity of the Foundling Hospital …
they are all under the Age of six Months.
Glemsford,
Suffolk
Robert Butt
Wm. Green
Edward Plume
Rich. Mariths
Rector
}
} Churchwardens
Overseer
All these were described by the receiving clerk14 as ‘Clothed with Rags Swarming’ [with
vermin]. There was no explanation as to why the Poor Law officers allowed the children to
be sent off in this state.
10
A/FH/A9/1/42.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
A/FH/A9/1/47.
14
A/FH/A9/1/45.
113
Some children were in a horrifying condition.
The following entry relates to a child from a parish near Guildford in Surrey:
Boy F. H. No. 4893. D. of R. 23 June 1757.
Almost starved.15
But some foundlings from London were in an equally bad state:
Boy F. H. No. 4360. D. of R. 3 May 1757. From St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
A Mear Skilinton Covered with Rags with a hole in the Roofe of the Mouth.
Sent to the brill.16
Girl F. H. No. 5309. D. of R. 2 August 1757. From St. Saviour’s Southwark.
The most miserable object Ever Received.17
We know that some babies were actually dying when they arrived. The clerk, for example,
noted that three children brought in in February and March 1758 were ‘naked and
perishing’. 18 In April a girl was ‘brought in dying’ and a boy ‘Brought in almost Naked and
Perishing’. 19 In May he wrote on the billets of one girl and two boys ‘brought in dyeing’. 20
FOUNDLINGS FROM THE PROVINCES AND FOUNDLINGS FROM LONDON
One explanation of the poor state of health of many of the foundlings that seems plausible
at first sight is that thousands of children now came from the provinces.
Before the
General Reception contemporaries seem to have given little attention to the problem of
foundlings outside London, which suggests that they cannot have thought that their
15
A/FH/AG/1/60
16
A/FH/A9/1/54
17
A/FH/A/0/1/64
18
Boy F. H. No. 7422 D. of R. 21 February 1758 (A/FH/A9/1/86).
Girl F. H. No. 7583. D. of R. 6 March 1758 (A/FH/A9/1/87).
Girl F. H. No. 7667 D. of R. 13 March 1758 A/FH/A9/1/88).
19
Girl F. H. No. 8026. D. of R. 8 April 1758 A/FH/A9/1/92).
Boy F. H. No. 8292 D. of R. 28 April 1758 A/FH/A9/1/94).
20
Girl F. H. No. 8530 D. of R. 15 May 1758 (A/FH/A9/1/97).
Boy F. H. No. 8612 D. of R. 20 May 1758.
Boy F. H. No. 8620 D. of R. 20 May 1758 A/FH/A9/1/98). Derby.
114
numbers were considerable.21 Probably few of the babies taken to the Foundling Hospital
had come from far afield. There would have been no guarantee that such children would
have been successful in the ballot and the expense of taking them to London might well
have been wasted. Moreover, before the General Reception the Hospital only took in
children on certain days which were advertised in advance.22 It is unlikely that people
living any distance from London would have known when these days were. When the
General Reception began, though, the Hospital had to take every child under the specified
age on whatever day it was brought.
We cannot tell exactly how many children came from outside London during the entire
General Reception period but from 2 June 1756 to 31 August 1757 the Hospital’s receiving
clerk recorded on the billets the place of origin of the children.
This information has
survived for 4,145 of the 4,200 foundlings taken in during that time.
21
This may explain why two of the most recent general surveys of the Old Poor Law, Paul Slack’s The
English Poor Law, 1531-1782 (Studies in Economic and Social History, 1990) and Lynn Hollis Lees’
The Solidarities of Strangers: the English Poor Law and the People (Cambridge, C.U.P., 1998) do not
mention foundlings at all. A rather older book, G. W. Oxley’s Poor Relief in England and Wales,
1601-1834 (Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1974) also ignores foundlings. Only a few of the
billets (the forms filled in for each child on reception) refer to foundlings in the strict sense of the word,
i.e. children who had been abandoned.
Examples:
Boy F. H. No. 1862 D. of R. 5 July 1756 A/FH/A9/1/21).
Boy F. H. No. 3125 D. of R. 25 Dec. 1756 (A/FH/A9/1/39).
22
In 1749, for example, the foundlings were admitted on five occasions in batches of twenty. Gen. Reg.
– A/FH/A9/1-microfilm X41/3.
115
Number of London and non-London Foundlings, 2 June 1756 – 31 August 175723
Periods
(inclusive)
June – August 1757
From London*
Number
% of
Total
573
70.3
445
71.1
503
70.4
573
53.5
461
50.2
TOTAL 2 June 1756 - 31 August 1757
2,555
2 June – August 1756
September – November 1756
December 1756 – February 1757
March – May 1757
61.6
From Outside London
Number
% of
Total
242
29.7
181
28.9
211
29.6
498
46.5
458
49.8
1,590
_38.3
* Bills of Mortality area. plus Marylebone and St. Pancras
Percentage of Foundlings from Each Region24
(Corrected to one decimal place)
Area
London
Inner Home Counties
Outer Home Counties
Southern England
West Country
Midlands
East Anglia
The North
Welsh Border
Wales & Monmouthshire
June - August 1756
June – August 1757
70.3
13.5
5.0
2.3
1.5
4.9
2.0
0.5
-
50.2
13.8
6.6
3.2
3.7
13.7
4.4
0.8
3.3
0.4
23
Sources: billet books A/FH/A09/001/015-053 (foundlings 1,385-5,604). The percentages refer to the
totals of those foundlings whose place of origin is known, not to the total of all foundlings taken in
during this period. In volume 35 of the Foundling Hospital Library the number of children from each
county and the number from London are recorded. This source has not been used here because it
only covers the first twelve months of the General Reception and merely records the totals for the
entire year – A/FH/8/39-41). Adrian Wilson made some use of this evidence, by means of sampling,
but this is the first comprehensive analysis of all the evidence. See Wilson illegitimacy and it
implications in mid-eighteenth century London: the Evidence of the Foundling Hospital, in Continuity
and Charge, vol. 4 (1989), pp. 103-164.
24
London – Bills of Mortality plus Marylebone and St. Pancras.
Inner Home Counties – Essex, Kent, Surrey and Middlesex.
Outer Home Counties – Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire.
Southern England – Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset.
West Country – Gloucestershire, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
Midlands – Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire,
Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire.
East Anglia – Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire.
The North – Lancashire, Yorkshire, Country Durham, Northumberland. No foundlings came from
Westmorland.
Welsh Border – Herefordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire.
Wales and Monmouthshire – Carmarthenshire, Breconshire, Monmouthshire, Caernarvonshire,
Flintshire. No foundlings came from the other eight Welsh counties.
Not available – area not stated (48), place not traced (16), billets missing (11).
116
There is no way of knowing how many foundlings came from the provinces after August
1757.
If we make the assumption, however, that the proportion of non-Londoners
remained the same as in the period June to August 1757 (i.e. 50%) then the total number
of foundlings from outside London for the whole General Reception period would be near
enough 6,950 (i.e. 1,639 plus 5,358). It seems likely that almost as many foundlings came
from the provinces as from London.
Critics of the Hospital alleged that many of these children were scandalously neglected by
those who carted them to London. According to Jonas Hanway
‘it was said at the beginning of 1758, that if care was not taken, the
foundling hospital would do mischief, by the number of children conveyed
to it in London from the country; many persons being employed for the
purpose who made a trade of it …. the word trade, being used in the
sense of traffic in human life, implying a great inattention whether it was
preserved or not….’25
As we have seen, the notes written on the billets show that some of the children were in a
deplorable condition, but we do not know what state they were in when they were handed
over to those who were to take them to the hospital.
We know that many children did not survive the journey to the Paris foundling hospital in
the eighteenth century and the agents who took them to Paris seem to have taken little
care of them.26 We have far less evidence for the London hospital. There is no way of
knowing how many children were not looked after properly while being conveyed to
London. The same three or four anecdotes, based on hearsay, were repeated again and
again by contemporaries and have been retold by modern writers.27 One cannot help
thinking that if large numbers had been treated in a brutal or callous manner we would
25
Jonas Hanway, A Candid Historical Account, p. 37.
26
Oliver Hufton, op. cit., pp. 344-348.
27
See Nicholls and Wray, op. cit., p. 57 and McClure, op. cit., pp. 100-101. The idea that babies were
murdered by those taking them to the Foundling Hospital even appears in a recent novel written for
children. See the Prologue to Jamila Gavin’s ‘Coram Boy’ (Mammoth, London, 2000), pp. 1-2.
117
have more evidence to go on, a point made by Taylor White in 1761 in a letter to the Revd
Dr Timothy Lee concerning untrue allegations that some children had been ill-treated on
their way from London to Ackworth:
‘You will observe from the transaction that if any such abuses had
happened in bringing Children to this Hospital as have been suggested by
our Enemies that of necessity they must have made equal if not much
greater noise than the Drunken Nurse has occasioned and our never
having met with any such Complaints nor having rec’ed any authentick
testimonials of any such is indisputable proof to me that very few if any
abuses of this sort ever did exist, but in the brains of foolish writers or
more foolish Senators.’28
In order to see whether children from outside London were less healthy than those from
London when they arrived at the London hospital, the billet books and the general
registers have been analysed to show what percentage of children died within four weeks
of their reception from London, the Home counties and elsewhere, whether or not they
died in the House or at nurse.
Foundlings that Died within Four Weeks of their Reception29
From London*
June - Aug 1756
Sept - Nov 1756
Dec 1756 – Feb 1757
March - May 1757
June - Aug 1757
Whole Period
No.
From the Home
Counties**
No.
Sent
Died
573
445
503
573
461
143
160
137
146
82
25.0
36.0
27.2
25.5
1 1 7.8
151
116
105
198
188
45
43
28
46
30
2,555
668
26.1
758
192
%
No.
Sent
No.
Died
%
From Elsewhere
No.
Sent
No.
Died
%
29.8
37.1
26.7
23.2
16.0
91
65
106
300
270
31
22
23
73
46
34.1
33.8
21.7
24.3
17.0
25.3
732
195
26.6
* Bills of Mortality area plus Marylebone and St. Pancras.
** Essex, Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.
28
Taylor White to Timothy Lee, op. cit., p. 57 and McClure, op. ct. pp. 100-101.
29
Billet books – A/FH/A09/001/015-053.
Gen. Reg. – A/FH/A09/002/001-002, microfilm X41/3.
See also footnote 15, Chapter Four.
118
One thousand and fifty five infants out of 4,045 (26.1%) died within four weeks of their
reception – a truly depressing statistic.
The results of the analysis by regions are rather surprising.
There was clearly little
difference in the percentage of infants that died in the three regions (at least after the
period June-August 1756).
The differences in mortality at different periods is much
sharper than the differences among the three regions. It would be rash to assume that
this means that transporting children from the country to London was not harmful. Life
expectancy was almost certainly greater in most villages and provincial towns than in
London. 30 The babies might well have stood a better chance of surviving if they had not
been sent to London. But the figures do suggest that the hardship they suffered on their
way to London may have been exaggerated.
As we have seen, the billets for later periods do not record the place of origin of foundlings
systematically, so that it is impossible to know whether any differences in the mortality
rates of children from the three regions appeared after August 1757.
The number of infants kept back in the London hospital was certainly alarmingly high.
Nevertheless the great majority of infants were sent to country nurses. The record of the
Hospital in looking after the thousands of children sent to nurse is therefore of the greatest
importance. We shall consider this record in the next chapter.
30
See J. Hanway, Letters on the Importance of the Rising Generation (London, 1767), vol. 1,
pp. 216-217. See Chapter Twenty Two, infra.
119
CHAPTER NINE
THE CARE OF INFANTS AND YOUNG CHILDREN IN THE
COUNTRY DURING THE GENERAL RECEPTION
THE NUMBER SENT TO THE COUNTRY NURSES
During the three years and ten months of the General Reception 12,464 ‘parliamentary
children’ were sent to nurses in the country – over nine times more than the 1,326 sent in
fifteen years and two months before the General Reception.
Finding nurses for their
thousands of children was the most pressing problem, a problem made harder to deal with
because the governors were anxious that the great majority should be sent to wet nurses.
The governors also had the task of recruiting inspectors to pay and supervise the nurses.
It was not only the fact that the Foundling Hospital had to cope with so many that made
the task of finding places in the country difficult. There was no way of predicting how
many children would arrive at the headquarters in London at any one time.
The following table shows the wide variation in numbers that were received.
Number of Children Received during the General Reception
On 4 days
On 5 days
On 93 days
On 695 days
On 40 days
On 205 days
On 50 days
40+ (on the first day, 2 June 1756, it was 117)
30-39
20-29
10-19
5-9
1-4
None.1
As we saw in the previous chapter an alarming number of children died before they could
be sent to nurse, but the governors had to ensure that enough country nurses arrived at
the Foundling Hospital to take all the children who were well enough back to their homes.
1
General Register – A/FH/A09/002.
120
Since the governors aimed to send the children to the countryside in as short a time as
possible, they had little time to arrange for nurses to come up to London. The Foundling
Hospital would not have been able to afford to keep country nurses waiting around in
London as a precaution in case a particularly large number of foundlings should be
handed over to the charity. In any case, the nurses would have had their own children to
look after and would have needed to get home as soon as possible.
Organizing the
collection of foundlings by country nurses was a truly daunting task.
Number of General Reception Children sent to Nurse2
Month of
Reception
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
265
284
356
360
382
318
281
248
261
260
302
246
284
289
298
297
289
240
241
170
186
206
214
226
251
328
426
412
180
176
162
160
223
260
147
249
334
334
301
283
298
274
239
278
320
326
1,573
3,383
3,563
2,940
1,005
_____
12,464
The number of children at nurse naturally rose substantially and it was not until 1769 that
the number at nurse fell below the highest figures for the pre-General Reception period.
2
Disposal Books – A/FH/A10/3/4 & A/FH/A10/3/7.
121
Number of Children at Nurse During the General Reception and its Aftermath.
*
**
**
**
**
2 June 1756
31 Dec 1756
31 Dec 1757
24 June 1758
31 Dec 1759
29 Sept 1760
29 Sept 1761
31 Dec 1762
31 Dec 1763
31 Dec 1764
31 Dec 1765
31 Dec 1766
31 Dec 1767
31 Dec 1768
31 Dec 1769
31 Dec 1770
31 Dec 1771
31 Dec 1772
31 Dec 1773
3
403
1,463
3,611
4,544
5,814
5,527
5,003
4,420
3,912
3,255
2,511
2,005
1,640
973
241
153
94
129
182
No one could have possibly foreseen when the General Reception began that on
December 1759 over 5,800 children would be at nurse.
The Destination of the Foundlings
The four Disposal or Nursery Books give the destination of every one of the 12,464
General Reception children sent to nurse.4
inspectors in twenty-two counties.
Children were sent from the Hospital to
But the numbers varied from one child only (two
counties) to 3,089 as the following figures show.
3
*This figure has been worked out from the Memorandum Book (A/FH/A09/005/001/1) which records
the reception of foundlings, their removal to the country and their return to the House. It also records
deaths both in the House and the country. The figure for 31 December 1759 comes from a report to
the House of Commons – see Nichols and Wray, op. cit.. p. 55. The other figures come from The
State of the Children quarterly and then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/1 (to June 1758) and A/FH/A9/12/2
(from December 1759), supplemented by the Ackworth Hospital Nurse Book – A/FH/Q/73.
** includes ‘Grown Children’ in the country for their health.
*** Includes children sent from Ackworth Hospital to Ackworth nurseries – see above.
4
A/FH/A10/3/4 to A/FH/A10/3/7.
122
First Destination of General Reception Foundlings5
Number of
Inspectors
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Surrey
Middlesex
Essex
Hertfordshire
Berkshire
Kent
Yorkshire
Hampshire
Staffordshire
Buckinghamshire
Bedfordshire
Northamptonshire
Derbyshire
Sussex
Somerset
Worcestershire
Cambridgeshire
Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire
Lincolnshire
Shropshire
Warwickshire
39
68
33
27
29
22
5
6
5
6
10
3
1
2
2
2
2
1
2
1
1
1
268
Number of
Foundlings
3,089
1,861
1,846
1,204
1,202
1,020
698
516
376
226
136
96
84
41
27
20
7
6
4
3
1
1
12,464
As one would expect, the vast majority of foundlings were sent to counties in the London
area. Surrey took just about three times as many children as the last fourteen counties in
the list combined; 7,816 were sent to what we can call the inner Home Counties (Essex,
Kent, Middlesex and Surrey) and 2,632 to the outer Home Counties (Berkshire,
Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire). These seven counties took in almost 84% of the
total. If we add in Hampshire (516) the figure rises to almost 88%.6 The only counties
outside this area that took in more than 150 foundlings were Yorkshire (698) and
Staffordshire (376).
5
Counties marked with an asterisk* had taken foundlings before the General Reception.
6
Yately in Hampshire is only a couple of miles from the Berkshire border. Dr. Clark includes the letters
of the Yately inspectors in her collection of Berkshire correspondence. G. Clark, ed. Correspondence
of the Foundling Hospital Inspectors in Berkshire 1757 – 1768 (Berkshire Record Society, Reading
1994).
123
Just over 97% of the foundlings were sent to counties that had already been taking
foundlings before the General Reception (12,125 out of 12,464). Most of the counties that
took the first destination foundlings for the first time during the General Reception were of
little importance. Only three of these counties took more than forty (Bedfordshire 136;
Northamptonshire 96; Sussex 41).
In one respect, however, this table can be misleading, since it deals only with the first
destination of the children and they were sometimes moved from one place to another.
This is particularly important in the case of Shropshire and Cheshire.7 According to the
Disposal Books only one child was sent as a baby from the Hospital to Shropshire, but
hundreds of children were transferred from other nurseries to the Shrewsbury nurseries
from the summer of 1759. On 29 September 1759 there were 359 children there and by
the end of the year the number had risen to 574. The General Register of Children at
Nurse at Shrewsbury, 1759-1764, lists 831 children, though they were not, of course, all at
nurse at the same time.8
The Shropshire nurseries were linked with the Shrewsbury
hospital. Roger Kynaston, Esq., the most prominent of the governors running the hospital
was treated in effect as the ‘chief inspector’ of the Shrewsbury nurseries. On September
1760, for example, Kynaston was listed as the inspector for the Shrewsbury nurseries,
although we know that the nurses were actually supervised by 110 inspectors.9
Not a single first destination child was sent to Cheshire, according to the Disposal Books,
but on 31 December 1764 204 were at nurse in the Chester area. The first children were
sent to a Chester nursery on 28 May 1764.10 The Chester nurseries were linked with the
short-lived hospital in that city. The Chester Hospital Register lists 245 children at nurse
7
The State of the Children quarterly and then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/2.
8
A/FH/D2/10/1.
9
A/FH/A9/12/2.
10
A/FH/A10/009/001.
124
as well as listing the children in the hospital. 11 As with the Shrewsbury list, not all the
children were at nurse at the same time. The Chester Hospital book of accounts and
statistics lists 200 children at nurse on 31 December 1764.12 The nurseries at Shropshire
and Cheshire were set up with the idea that the children when they were old enough,
would be sent on to these new branch hospitals.
The Founding Hospital, then, coped with the increasing numbers mainly by sending more
children to counties that had already taken foundlings before the General Reception,
though some ‘new’ counties, especially Shropshire and Cheshire, were also important.
As the number of foundlings at nurse dwindled after the General Reception came to an
end, the number of inspections declined.
Some counties which had had quite large
numbers of foundlings in the mid-1760s had none or almost none by the end of the
decade, as the following figures show.
Number of Foundlings at Nurse in Selected Counties, 1764 – 1769
31 Dec
1764
Yorkshire
Shropshire
Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Cheshire
277
431
69
280
202
31 Dec
1765
31 Dec
1766
31 Dec
1767
31 Dec
1768
31 Dec
1769
202
274
48
246
201
274
164
48
214
210
160
121
52
144
199
8
2
89
131
18
3
1
13
By 31 December 1764 the five counties looked after 1,259 children; five years later there
were just twenty-two children left.
11
A/FH/A10/009/001.
12
A/FH/A15/007/001.
13
The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually for the last four counties (A/FH/A9/12/2). The
Yorkshire figure for 31 December 1764 combines the totals in that document with the number
recorded in the Ackworth Nurse Book (AF/Q/73). The Ackworth Nurse Books is the source for
Yorkshire from 31 Dec. 1765 to 31 Dec. 1769.
125
By 31 December 1771, when the number of children at nurse reached the lowest figure in
our period (95), only nine counties had children at nurse. By then the Foundling Hospital
had withdrawn nearly all the children from the counties furthest from London. The only
counties any distance from London where foundlings were still being looked after was
Staffordshire, with just five and Yorkshire with just one. The other 89 foundlings were at
nurseries in the Home Counties or the South. Only three counties had more than ten
foundlings (Kent, 35; Surrey, 23; Hampshire, 22).14 One would have to go right back to 25
March 1747 to find a lower number at nurse.15
THE INSPECTORS
During the General Reception and its aftermath the Foundling Hospital had to recruit
several hundred inspectors.
destination foundlings.
The Disposal Books list 268 inspectors who took first
In addition there were at least another 194 inspectors who
supervised foundlings that had been transferred from some of the first destination
inspectors. The number of known inspectors is therefore 462. 16 Scattered through the
archives there are the names of a number of other inspectors in the General Reception
period. We would probably not be far out if we assumed that about 500 men and women
acted as inspectors for the General Reception children at one time or another. If we add
to this an estimate of the number of unofficial helpers and official deputies, the number
involved in running the nurseries at one time or another was probably not far short of a
thousand.
14
Ibid. The Yorkshire figure for 31 December comes from the Ackworth Nurse Book.
15
See the Memorandum Book covering the period March 1741 to February 1757 (A/FH/A09/005/001/1).
16
Five of these appear in the list of inspectors for 29 September 1760 in the State of Children Quarterly
and then Annually (A/FH/A9/12/1); another 109 are listed as Shrewsbury inspectors in the
Shrewsbury Register of Children at Nurse (A/FH/D2/10/1); thirty seven were listed in the Ackworth
Hospital’s Inspection Book (A/FH/Q/065); four were based in Berkshire (three of these are listed in G.
Clark, op.cit., p. XIX) and there is a reference to a fourth on p.34 (William Hignell); thirty seven are
listed in the Chester Hospital book of accounts (A/FH/A15/007/001); three names not found in the
Disposal Books appear in the General Committee’s list of 4 April 1759 (G. Ctte. Vol.. 3. pp. 31-32A/FH/K02/007 – microfilm X041/015).
126
It was a remarkable achievement to set up so many inspections in such a short time. As
we have seen, though, most children were sent to areas, which had taken some
foundlings before the General Reception. Thirty of the inspectors taking first destination
children had been acting as inspectors before the General Reception. Some of them such
as the Rev. Mr Thomas Trant (Hemsworth), the Rev. Dr. Holdsworth (Chalfont,) Mrs. Mary
Nettleton (Bromley) and Mrs Mary Whitchurch (Twickenham) had been helping the
Hospital for years. 17 In Berkshire Mrs Draper had been appointed in 1746, Mrs Anna
Maria Poyntz (Midgham) in 1749, Mrs Theobald (White Waltham) in 1751 and Dr. John
Collet (Newbury) in 1755.18
We do not have much direct evidence for the motives that led hundreds of inspectors and
their helpers to offer to help the Foundling Hospital. The inspectors’ letters to the Hospital
authorities were, of course, business letters, concerned with such matters as the
supervision of nurses, the health of the children, requests for clothing, the settling of
accounts and arrangements for collecting the children from London and returning those
that had reached the appropriate age. Only one or two of the Berkshire letters in Dr.
Clark’s collection reveal anything about the motives that led inspectors to undertake their
onerous duties. On 14 February 1759 the Rev. William Nunn wrote that ‘It is a pleasure to
me to find that I can be any way instrumental in promoting so laudable a charity.’19 On 6
April 1760 Mrs S. Birch of Caldecote House, near Abingdon wrote that ‘The Hospital is not
near so much obliged to me as I rejoice to have it in my power to be of any the least
service to the commonwealth of mankind. This much I would endeavour to prove to the
govs and benefactors of this truly noble, Christian charity that I would not have taken the
17
Memorandum Book – A/FH/A10/003/001. Disposal Books.
18
Ibid., p. XIX.
19
Clark. Op. cit., p. 61.
127
charge of their children if, in every respect, I did not find my heart much inclined to see the
same care and tenderness shew’d them as I would were they my own.’20
Not all inspectors were as enthusiastic as this, though. On 11 March 1759 James Kenting
of Easthampstead wrote to Mr. Blackbeard:
'Sir,
This is to acquaint you that I cannot possible execute the office of an inspector, for
I am not in the business I was and for me to trouble myself with things without any
profit, it is hurtfull, for I understand there is nothing allowed from the hospital to any
inspector.’21
In spite of this reluctance, though, Kenting agreed to become an inspector. His letters to
the Hospital cover the period 1759 to 1767.
As in the pre-General Reception period the majority of inspectors came from the middle
ranks of society. For convenience the following analysis of the relative importance of
laymen, clergymen and women as inspectors is based on inspectors who took first
destination children during the General Reception.
Size of
Inspectorates
(number of
foundlings
sent)
Total
Number of
Number of Laymen
Foundlings
Total
Number of Total
Number
Foundlings Clergymen Foundlings of Women
Total
Foundlings
300+
200-299
100-199
50-99
20-49
Under 20
2,700
838
3,177
2,586
2,347
816
2
3
9
15
29
58
1,091
628
1,250
1,074
994
358
3
1
5
12
14
16
1,609
210
638
851
419
117
10
9
30
52
1,289
661
934
341
TOTALS
12,464
116
5,395
51
3,844
101
3,225
Laymen therefore took 43.3% of the first destination foundlings, clergymen 30.8% and
women 25.9%.
20
Ibid., p. 83.
21
Ibid., p. 54.
128
LAYMEN
Some of the biggest ‘inspections’ were under the care of laymen. Fourteen lay inspectors
supervised more than one hundred foundlings at one time or another.
Inspector
*
*
*
*
*
Mr. Hugh Kerr
Mr. Thomas Langridge
Mr. John Thorn
Dr. John Collet
Dr. Thomas Lane
John Warde, Esq
Bertie Burgh, Esq
Thomas Cobb, Esq.
Mr. Joseph Law
Mr. Edward Lloyd
Roger Dalton, Esq.
Mr. Grimsey
Robert Dingley, Esq.
Mr. William Burgess
Place
Dorking, Surrey
Epsom, Surrey
Hornchurch, Essex
Newbury, Berks
Sevenoaks, Kent
Westerham, Kent
Laleham, Middx.
Lichfield, Staff.
Redbourne, Herts.
Aston, Herts
Thorncroft, Surrey
Hornchurch, Essex
Charlton, Kent
Odiham, Hants
Number of
Foundlings
601
490
218
209
201
193
187
151
147
132
121
110
109
104
*Governors
The only one of these inspections at a considerable distance from London was Lichfield.
The other thirteen came from just seven counties in the South and the Home Counties.
Many governors were based in London and therefore could not have acted as inspectors.
But many non-London governors took little part in Hospital affairs. It was no doubt true, as
Jonas Hanway said, that ‘many people give money who will not give anything else.’22 But
some governors were quite conscientious. Five of the lay inspectors who took more than
one hundred children were governors.23
Three other governors supervised over fifty
children. 24
No peer acted as inspector for the first destination children and only two baronets took
more than twenty (Sir Anthony Abdy of Chobham, one of the governors, who took sixty
and Sir Roger Twisden, who supervised thirty children in the East Malling area of Kent).
22
Jonas Hanway, The Genuine Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman (London, 1760). p. 26.
23
See Nichols and Wray, op. cit., pp. 345-375 for the list of governors.
24
Disposal Books.
129
Some of the other lay inspectors came from ‘county’ families, such as John Warde of
Squerrys Court, who played a prominent part in running the branch hospital at Westerham,
and Thomas Gilbert of Cotton Hall in Staffordshire, who was responsible at one time or
another for eighty six foundlings. Thomas Gilbert was a man of some standing. He was
land agent for both the Duke of Bridgewater (the ‘Canal Duke’) and for Earl Gower as well
as being a landowner in his own right.
He was an M.P. from 1763 to 1795, first for
Newcastle-under-Lyme and then for Lichfield. In 1782 he secured the passing of Gilbert’s
Act, an important reform of the Poor Law.25
It is not easy to work out how many of the other inspectors belonged to the landed gentry.
In the minutes of the General Committee the prefix ‘Mr.’ was commonly used for men who
are listed as ‘Esquires’ in the list of governors. It is quite likely, though, that the terms
‘Esquire’ and ‘Mr.’ were still used in the more conservative rural areas to indicate a
difference in status.
Fourteen of the fifty-eight laymen taking more than twenty first-
destination foundlings were listed as ‘Esquires’.26 Probably many of these were country
gentlemen, though the list admittedly includes the merchant Robert Dingley.27
A few inspectors were medical men, including three of the most active: Hugh Kerr, a
surgeon of Dorking (601 foundlings); Dr. John Collet of Newbury, a physician (209), and
Dr. Thomas Lane of Sevenoaks, also a physician (201).
Five of the Hertfordshire
inspectors were apothecaries and/or surgeons: Mr Joseph Law of Redbourn (147); Mr Van
25
His brother John was the resident engineer of the pioneering Worsley Canal. See Hugh Mallet,
Bridgewater, the Canal Duke (Nelson, Hending Publishing Ltd 1990) for good accounts of both
brothers, especially pp. 35-41).
26
The list includes Charles Whitworth of Leybourne in Kent who became a governor on 28 June 1758
and an inspector in November 1759. This was probably the same Charles Whitworth, who as Sir
Charles Whitworth became an M. P. and served as the Hospital Treasurer from 1772 to 1779.
27
Some of the fifty-three lay inspectors who took fewer than twenty-first destination children seem also
to have been country gentlemen. Francis Wightwick of Waltham St. Lawrence in Berkshire, for
example, was a Justice of the Peace; he was also a governor of the Foundling Hospital. See G.
Clark, op. cit., p. XX.
130
Der Wall of Welwyn (66); Mr Roberts of Barnet (63), Mr John Heaviside of Hatfield, (40)
and Mr Bayley of Tring (7). 28
* The figures in brackets give the number of children sent directly to the inspectors.
transferred from other inspectors have not been included.
Children
There were quite a few tradesmen who acted as inspectors. In Berkshire William Earle of
Reading and William Andra of Twyford were bakers. Thomas Marsham of Reading, Mr
Naish of Swallowfield and Mr. Kenting at Easthampstead were also in trade.29 There was
some uneasiness about appointing men from this class. This may have been partly due to
snobbishness on the part of the other inspectors and to the fear that tradesmen were
trying to move up the social scale by becoming inspectors but the main reason seems to
have been fear that they might try to profit from their position by taking a cut of the nurses’
pay or by forcing them to take goods in lieu of pay or by compelling them to buy goods in
their shops. In 1756 the governors decided that ‘no person that keeps a Chandler’s shop
or is of other mean occupation, shall be an inspector.’30 It should be remembered that
inspectors were not paid.31
28
Disposal Books. For Heaviside, see V. Fildes. Wet Nursing. pp. 165 – 166. He was appointed a
st
governor on the 31 December 1760. See Nichols & Wray, op.cit. p.374.
29
Clark, op. cit., p. XXVI.
30
McClure, op. cit., pp. 89-90. This is no doubt why Mr Bunce, who was a grocer and tallow chandler
was appointed a deputy to the Rev. R Pennington, rather than serving in his own right, even though
he was ‘reckoned a man of good fortune, in a large way of business and greatly respected by all his
neighbours’. See Clark, op. cit., p. XXVI and p.5 (Pennington’s letter to the steward about Bunce’s
appointment – January 5, 1759). Incidentally, Bunce in his letters to the Secretary Collingwood
sometimes signed himself as Pennington’s assistant, which suggests that he was not motivated by an
ambition to improve his status. Ibid., p.9.
31
Hanway suggested that the solution would be to have two classes of inspectors – honorary (unpaid)
and hired inspectors (paid). This would remove any temptation on the part of the tradesmen to
reimburse themselves at the expense of the nurses for their trouble. Jonas Hanway, The Genuine
Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman (London, 1766), p.39. One would have thought that a
successful tradesman, provided he was honest, would be an ideal inspector, because he would have
demonstrated administrative ability and would be able to keep his accounts properly.
131
CLERGYMEN
Fifty-one of the 265 inspectors who took first destination children were clergymen of the
Established Church*.
Thirty-five of them took twenty or more.
Nine took over one
hundred:
Rev.
Rev.
Rev.
Rev.
Rev.
Rev.
Rev.
Rev.
Rev.
Rogers
Thomas Trant
Mr. Wigmore
William Nunns
William Pennington
Owen Jones
Theophilus Hughes
Mr. Herring
John Price Jones
Chertsey
Hemsworth
Farnham
Yateley
Wokingham
Brentwood
Twyford
Toppesfield
Yateley
703
559
349
210
147
144
136
110
101
32
33
*Mr Hirons, one of the two inspectors at St. Albans, was a Congregational minister.
Rogers heads the list for the number of any inspector – he had just over one hundred
more to look after than the next inspector, the layman Mr Hugh Kerr (601).
Three
clergymen occur in the list of the top five inspectors with more than three hundred
foundlings.
In addition to the fifty-one clergymen who took first destination foundlings there were
another thirty-six who looked after children transferred from other nurseries (twenty three
in the Shrewsbury area, ten in the Ackworth area and three in the Chester area).34 In all,
therefore, we have the names of eighty-seven clergymen who acted as inspectors during
the General Reception. They seem to have been ordinary parish clergymen. George
Talbot, for example, was Vicar of Burghfield; William Pennington was minister of
Wokingham and Rector of South Morton; the Rev. Mr. Hubbard was the minister at
32
As emphasised above, Mr Bunce did most of the work at the Wokingham nursery.
33
Disposal Books.
34
Ackworth Hospital Nursery or inspectors’ Book – A/FH/Q/065. Shrewsbury Hospital list of
inspectors – A/FH/D2/10/1.Chester Hospital Accounts – A/FH/A15/007/001.
132
Sonning. No dignitaries of the Church appear in the list,35 though Mrs Shipley the wife of
the Dean of Winchester, was the inspector at Silchester.
WOMEN INSPECTORS
Women held responsible posts in running many of the new charities set up in the
eighteenth century. Women matrons were in charge of the female staff at the Magdalen
Hospital, at the Female Orphan Asylum and at the ordinary hospitals set up in London and
the provinces. The matron of the Foundling Hospital in London supervised the female
staff there. But these were all paid posts, offering no opportunities for women for what we
would call voluntary social work. No doubt many women who had the money and the
leisure to do so helped the poor in their communities. But it was not until the Foundling
Hospital was set up that women were given an official role of considerable importance in
voluntary charitable work, even though they were not permitted to become governors.
Many women whose husbands or fathers became inspectors probably helped them to
supervise the nurses. But many women became inspectors in their own right and had to
carry out exactly the same duties as male inspectors. Mrs Prudence West, an inspector at
Barnet, even took the lead in getting the branch hospital at Barnet set up. Perhaps it is not
too fanciful to see their employment as inspectors as a small step in the emancipation of
women.36
It must be admitted, though, that no women played a role in the English
Foundling Hospital comparable to that of Lady Arabella Denny at the Dublin Foundling
Hospital, perhaps because the need for intervention was less. 36a.
35
Clark, op. cit., pp. XX-XXIII.
36
The trustees of the Greenwich Charity School for girls founded in 1700 were all women but
this was a rather small concern. See George, op. cit., p. 386-7, footnotes 106.
36a
J. Robins pp. 24-25.
133
One hundred and one women acted as inspectors for first destination foundlings and
another sixty three took children who were transferred from their original inspections.37
The grand total of known women inspectors is therefore one hundred and sixty four.
Ten women inspectors took one hundred or more first destination foundlings:
Mrs. Dorothy Clarke
Mrs. Elizabeth Burgess
Lady Henrietta Cooper
Mrs. Prudence West
Hon. Mrs R. Lytton
Mrs. Jane Merttins
Mrs. Mary Harvey
Mrs Mary Whitchurch
Mrs. Emma Harvey
Mrs. Searle
Edmonton
Wrotham
Epping
Barnet
Knebworth
Dagenham
Hempstead (Essex)
Twickenham
Chigwell
Lambourne
172
157
147
137
136
121
113
106
103
10038
Forty-nine women (Including, of course, the ten above) took twenty or more first
destination foundlings. Together they supervised 2,871 foundlings. Only five of them had
titles (Lady Henrietta Cowper, the Hon Mrs Lytton, Lady Vere, Lady Henrietta Dalston and
the Hon. Mrs Spencer). Lady Vere was the wife of Lord Vere (Beauclerk) who was a VicePresident from 1739 to 1756 and again from 1758 to 1767.39 (Lady Vere, like Lady Betty
Germain, had been asked to accept the title of Patroness or Chief Nurse of the Hospital.
Lady Betty had declined on the grounds of ill health and Lady Vere had said her family
commitments stood in the way of accepting the honour. The fact that the Hospital offered
these positions suggests that they were ready to give an important role to a woman.)40
The Hon. Mrs R. Lytton was a member of an old-established family that owned Knebworth
House (not the present one). She was presumably the wife of John Robinson Lytton,
Esq., who became governor on 29 June 1757 and was the inspector at Knebworth. Mrs
37
Including twenty-two in the Ackworth area, nineteen in the Shrewsbury area and fifteen in
the Chester area.
Ackworth – A/FH/Q/065.
Shrewsbury – A/FH/D2/10/1.
Chester - A/FH/A15/007/001.
38
Disposal Books.
39
Nichols and Wray, op. cit. , pp. 412-413.
40
McClure, op. cit., p.46.
134
Lytton took over the Knebworth inspectorate in January 1758. The last three children
were sent to Mrs Lytton’s inspectorate in September 1759.41
The Hon. Mrs Georgiana
Spencer ran the inspectorate at Althorp. She became the first Countess Spencer in 1765.
Her husband was a governor of the Foundling Hospital.
In 1776 her daughter, also
Georgiana, married the fifth Duke of Devonshire. 41a41a
Although there were only a few titled inspectors, many women inspectors were well
connected. Mrs Anna Maria Poyntz42 the inspector at Midgham in Berkshire was the wife
of a governor; she had been maid of honour to Queen Caroline and was the mother of
Georgiana Spencer. Her husband had been Governor to the Duke of Cumberland when
he was a boy. 43 Mrs Julianna Dodd of Swallowfield Place, Berkshire, was married to one
M.P., John Dodd, and sister-in-law to another, James Colleton.
Her husband was a
governor of the Foundling Hospital. She was only twenty-two or twenty-three when she
took over from Mr Naishe at Swallowfield in August 1758. No doubt her assured social
position gave her the confidence to take on the task of inspector at so early an age.44 The
Misses Wentworth of Bretton Hall in Yorkshire came from a patrician family.45
Judging from Dr. Clark’s analysis of the Berkshire inspectors, there seem to have been
only a few women inspectors whose families were connected with trade.
Hannah
Aldworth and Naomi Southby were related to Samuel Slocock, ‘a prosperous and
41
Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p. 368. Disposal Books.
41a
Anne Katoczi The St Albans Foundling Hospital babies, 756-1760 in Herts Past and Present, Issue
No. 4. Autumn, 2004. See also Amanda Foreman, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, (Harper
Collins, London, 1998).
42
Stephen Poyntz was one of the governors named in the chapter Nichols and Wray, op. cit.,
p.347.
43
See Clark, op. cit., p. XXII and Christopher Simon Sykes, op. cit.., p.171.
44
Ibid., pp. XIX-XXV-XXVI.
45
Dan Cruickshank mentions Bretton Hall twice in his A Guide to the Georgian Buildings of
Britain and Ireland (London, Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1985), p. 100 and p. 189.
135
benevolent brewer’. As Dr. Clark points out, their handwriting and phonetic spelling
suggests that they were not as well educated as most of the other women inspectors in
Berkshire.
They carried out their duties efficiently, though.46
In 1760 Jonas Hanway
argued that the shortage of inspectors might be overcome by recruiting the wives of
farmers which implies that this had not been the practice earlier.47
CONSCIENTIOUS INSPECTORS
We have already mentioned that some of those inspectors who supervised General
Reception children had been helping the Foundling Hospital long before the General
Reception began. Some of the new inspectors recruited during the General Reception
also served for long periods. In the case of Berkshire, for example, the surviving letters of
five inspectors – Mrs. Hannah Aldworth, Mrs Juliana Dodd, Mr. J. Bunce (deputy
inspector), Mr William Earles and the Rev. William Dawes – cover ten year (1758 to 1768),
though letters do not survive for each of them for every year.
Most inspectors seem to have carried out their duties faithfully, though some were slow in
dealing with correspondence and some got in a muddle with their accounts.
Of the
twenty-three inspectors in Berkshire and Hampshire who took twenty or more first
destination foundlings, only two - the Rev. Theophilus Hughes and Mr. Naish - were
dismissed as unsatisfactory.
Probably the most hard working of all the Berkshire inspectors was the Newbury physician
Dr. John Collett. He had become an inspector In August 1755. By the eve of the General
Reception twenty-nine children had been sent to his inspectorate. During the General
Reception he was sent a further 209 children to supervise. The last of these arrived in
November 1759.
Between 1759 and 1768 he wrote ninety-one letters to Thomas
46
Clark, op. cit., pp. XIV-XXV.
47
Jonas Hanway, ‘The Genuine Sentiments ….. p. 38.
136
Collingwood, the Foundling Hospital Secretary.
In a note Collingwood sent to the
Shrewsbury branch hospital Dr. Collett was described as ‘a great friend of the charity.’
The governors were so impressed with his work that they offered to make him a governor,
an honour he turned down on the grounds of ill health. 48
Another Berkshire inspector Mrs Juliana Dodd, also gives the impression of having been
most conscientious, though her work load was much less than Dr. Collet’s as we have
seen (she took over some of Mr Naish’s foundlings but only 44 first destination foundlings
were sent to her during the General Reception).49 In 1764 she stood up for both the
foundlings and her nurses on the issue of nurses’ pay and the education of their charges.50
She also did her best to keep the children in good health.51
Many of the other Berkshire inspectors were equally concerned about the health of the
children, as their letters to the Foundling Hospital show.52
Inspectors were also anxious
to see that the children were properly clothed and were not afraid to complain when new
clothes were not sent down from London when requested.53
48
Clark, op. cit., pp. XXIV-XXV. See also Collet’s letters in that volume. See the Rough Inspection
Book - A/FH/A10/3/1 – and the Disposal Books for the number of children sent to Dr. Collet. For
Collingwood’s comments see A/FH/D2/3/6; it is undated but placed in a bundle of letters written in
1762.
49
Disposal Books.
50
See the letter to Jonas Hanway in Clarke, op. cit., p. 182.
51
Ibid., Letter to Colllingwood. September 16, 1760. 104.
52
Examples Ibid.
John P. Jones
Mrs S. Birch
William Dawes
June 30, 1759, p.48.
March 7, 1760, p.81.
December 16, 1760, p.103.
Examples Ibid.
William Hignall
William Dawes
Mrs. Birch
George Talbot
May 17, 1759, p.36.
December 8, 1760, p. 103.
March 3, 1701, p.116.
November 22, 1762, pp. 162-163.
53
137
Some of the inspectors did their best to look after the interests of reliable nurses by, for
example, requesting that they should be given healthy children,54 or by asking that
particular nurses should be given dry-nursed55 or wet-nursed children.56
Several
inspectors urge the Foundling Hospital to compensate nurses who had been infected with
the itch or with syphilis by foundlings.57
Many Hertfordshire inspectors, judging from their surviving letters, were equally
conscientious.
There is no reason to believe that the Berkshire and Hertfordshire
inspectors were untypical.
TROUBLESOME INSPECTORS
Not all inspectors, however, reached the standard the Hospital hoped for. During the
General Reception and its aftermath the Hospital was so short of inspectors that they
could not afford to be too critical, though there are some cases where an ‘inspection’ was
brought to an end and the children transferred to the care of another inspector. Oddly
enough, though, some of the troublesome inspectors had a better record in keeping
foundlings alive than some of the more conscientious inspectors.
The faults alleged against inspectors range from mere slackness to what, in a few case,
looked like downright dishonesty in handling the Hospital’s funds. Some inspector took
54
Examples Ibid.
J Bunce
Decembe 23, 1759, p.9.
Hannah Aldworth March 9, 1760, p.78.
55
Exampls Ibid.
Dr. John Collett
Mrs E . Spence
June 9, 1759, p.14.
November 5, 1759, p.68.
Examples Ibid.
Dr. John Collet
George Talbot
January 23, 1759, pp. 10-11.
November 3, 1759, p.72.
Examples Ibid.
Juliana Dodd
William Dawes
September 23, 1759, pp. 26-27.
February 6, 1766, p. 101.
56
57
138
insufficient care when recommending nurses.58 It was alleged, as we have seen, that
some inspectors who were shopkeepers forced nurses to accept payment in kind rather
than money.59 Or, what amounts to the same thing, forced them to buy their goods at their
shops.
The General Committee in July 1758 decided that all the nurses should be
informed that ‘they are not obliged to receive their Pay of any Person, otherwise than in
money.’60
Some inspectors were guilty of deducting sums from their nurses’ pay to
recompense themselves for the trouble in supervising them.61
It was not only laymen that proved unsatisfactory.
The Berkshire inspector who proved
least satisfactory was the Rev. Theophilus Hughes of Twyford. He was accused of being
greatly in arrears in paying his nurses. 62 In 1758 the Rev. Mr Rogers, the inspector at
Chertsey, was questioned by the General Committee over the charges he made for
burying foundlings.63 In 1759 it was resolved that ‘all the Children at Chertsey in Surrey,
that are under the inspection of either Mr. Burgh or Mr. Rogers, be immediately sent to the
Hospital.’
All the other children in their care were transferred to other inspectors.64
Mr
Burgh seems to have been thoroughly dishonest. The General Committee were uneasy
about his inspectorate as early as March 1758 when they noted he had too many children
58
For example, Mrs Loveband, McClure op. cit., p.89.
59
See anonymous letter of February 1759, Ibid., p.89.
60
G. Cttee – July 5 1758 – A/F/H/K02/006, p. 175 – microfilm X041/015.
See also the letter of Mary Gibs complaining about her inspector, Mr Earles of Reading printed in
Clark, op. cit., pp. 29-30 (this is the only letter from a nurse in Dr. Clark’s book) and the letter of the
Rev. George Talbot also concerning Earles. Ibid., p. 89. Not all complaints proved well-founded.
The nurses supervised by Mr. Bunce of Wokingham declared that they bought their goods at his shop
because it was the largest in the town and charged the lowest prices. Ibid. p. 127.
61
The Berkshire letters provide one example of this practice (Mr. Naish of Swallowfield in 1758).
McClure, op. cit., p. 90. Clark op. cit., p.24.
62
Clark, op. cit., pp. 148-149.
63
G. Cttee, vol. IV. 15 March 1758, pp. 102-103 and 22 March, p. 108 – A/FH/K02/006, microfilm
X041/015.
64
G. Cttee, vol. VII. 2 May 1759, pp. 52-53 – A/FH/K02/007, microfilm X041/015.
139
under his inspection (400).65 Two years later the governors instructed their solicitor to
proceed against him for the recovery of Hospital funds that should have been used to pay
his nurses but which he had pocketed. It was not until the spring of 1763 that the Hospital
got its money back. 66 Fortunately, such dishonest inspectors were rare.
THE NUMBER OF COUNTRY NURSES EMPLOYED
During the General reception 1,202 first destination foundlings were sent to Berkshire.67
They were looked after by some 500 Berkshire nurses.68 Valerie Fildes has shown that
there were at least 620 wet nurses in Hertfordshire and there would also have been some
dry nurses. 69 The number of first destination children sent to Hertfordshire during the
General Reception was 1,204.70
We would probably not be far from the truth if we
assumed a ratio of foundlings to nurses of a little over 2:1. On this assumption about
5,930 nurses would have been employed during the General Reception. This does not
mean, of course, that nearly all nurses looked after just two foundlings during their
employment by the Foundling Hospital. Valerie Fildes took a sample of ninety-nine wet
nurses from sixteen parishes in Hertfordshire who nursed 232 foundlings between 1756
and 1767, the year in which the last child from that county was returned to the Hospital.
She found that the number of foundlings taken varied from one to six. 71 The Hospital tried
to insist that a wet nurse had only one child that had not been weaned at a time and that a
65
As we have seen, Burgh took only 187 first destination foundlings, so the other 213 must have been
transferred, most of them probably from Rogers’ inspection.
66
G. Cttee, vol. II, 8 March, 1758 p.95 – A/FH/K02/006 – microfilm X041/01/5.
G. Cttee, vol. III, Tuesday 27 March, 1759 – A/FH/K02/007 – microfilm X041/015.
G. Cttee. Vol. VIII, 23 January, 1763, p. 217 – A/FH/K02/008 – microfilm X041/015.
What must have made this particularly embarrassing for the Committee was the fact that Bertie Burgh
had been elected a governor on 9 May 1750. See Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p.364.
67
Disposal Books.
68
Clark, op. cit., p. XXXVI.
69
Fildes, op. cit., p. 174.
70
Disposal Books.
71
Fildes, op. cit., p. 182. Fildes gives the average as three per woman, but this seems to be a mistake –
it is nearer two (2.3).
140
dry nurse had only one child that could not ‘go alone’ at a time.72 With these exceptions
there was no objection to a nurse having more than one child at a time.73 Although some
nurses in Dr. Fildes’ sample took five or six children, they would not have been looking
after them all at one time.
Some of their charges would have been sent back to London
or one of the branch hospitals (or would have died) before other children replaced them.
Valerie Fildes has shown that some of the arguments used against wet nurses (for
example, that they were ‘young, inexperienced and wrong headed’) were unsound, at least
as applied to the Hertfordshire nurses she has studied: ‘In the majority of cases she [i.e.
the typical nurse] was a good, experienced mother, whose own children survived infancy,
and also a successful foster mother.’74
The inspectors and governors realised that good nurses deserved to be encouraged. In
July 1756 the governors decided that those nurses whose charges survived their first year
with them should be given a premium of 10 shillings.75 The governors also compensated
nurses who had looked after children with illnesses such as smallpox, measles or
whooping cough, even if the child died. In September 1759, for example, a nurse at
Shirley whose charge had died, was ‘given … for time as it was sett up with several nights
– 1s. 0d.’. 76 In the same month the Revd. Mr Dawes, the inspector at Barkham, wrote to
Collingwood ‘to know that the hospital will allow the nurses for their extraordinary trouble in
72
See the minutes of the Sub-Committee for 10 November 1759 reported in the Westerham Hospital
minutes for December 3 1759 – A/FH/D3/1/1. A foundling who could ‘go alone’ was probably one
who was old enough to walk.
73
Valerie Fildes gives one example where a wet nurse, Mary Flint of Kingston, was looking after three
children at one time, but there was a thirteen-month gap between the despatch of the first and second
child and a nine-month gap between the despatch of the second and third child. It is likely therefore,
that each child had been weaned by the time the next one was taken in, though the last foundling
arrived only two weeks after the baptism of Mary Flint’s ninth and last child, so she must have been
breast-feeding her own child and the third foundling at the same time. Fildes, op. cit., p. 197.
74
Ibid., p. 189.
75
G. Cttee, Wednesday July 14, 1756, vol. V. p. 101 – A/FH/K02/005 (microfilm X041/015)
76
Inspectors’ accounts. Mrs West of Barnet, September 1759-60. Quoted in Fildes, op. cit, p. 188.
141
nursing your children in the measles’.77 In 1760 Mrs Salway, the inspector at Woodford,
was told by the General Committee that she could give ten shillings to each of those
nurses in her inspection who had looked after children who had had small pox.78 Three
months later, following a request from Mrs Bankes, the inspector at Ewell, the governors
awarded Nurse Morris the very substantial sum of five guineas to compensate her for the
expense and trouble she had been at in looking after some children with smallpox.79 In
July 1760 the governors agreed that Lady Dalston, one of the Yorkshire inspectors, could
give Nurse Rebecca Ward two guineas for the great care she had taken in looking after six
children with measles, all of whom survived.80
It is hardly likely that many of the nurses
who took in pauper children would have been found to merit such rewards if the Poor Law
authorities had taken the trouble to find out how well their children were being looked after.
Sometimes extra pay was offered to induce nurses to look after sick children. Mrs West of
Barnet nursery, for example, gave an extra five shillings to a nurse to keep a child with
rickets that had broken its leg.81 In March 1762 the Westerham governors decided to
increase the weekly pay of a nurse from 2s. 6d. to 3s. to look after a consumptive child
sent to nurse from Westerham hospital.82
Some of the Hertfordshire nurses, however, were unsatisfactory. In a letter of October 11,
1762 Mrs West said she had noticed a great difference in the health of the children at
nurse in the Barnet area. The children who were allowed to play in the open air were
much healthier than those who were kept shut up in the nurses’ cottages. She claimed
77
Letter dated September 14, 1759 – A/FH/A/6/1/12/4/9. Quoted in Clark, op. cit., p.24.
78
G. Cttee, Wednesday February 13, 1760, p.211 – A/FH/K02/007 (microfilm X041/015).
79
Ibid., Tuesday May 13, 1760, p.270.
80
Ibid., Wednesday 16 Jul, 1760, p. 303-304.
81
Fildes, op. cit., p. 188.
82
Westerham Minutes, 22 March 1762 – A/FH/ D3/1/1.
142
she had restored a number of children to good health merely by moving them from
unsatisfactory nurses to good ones.83
The authorities were well aware that some nurses were not up to standard. In April 1760
the General Committee resolved ‘That it be referred to the Sub-Committee to consider of
ordering Children from their Nurseries where it is imagined they may not be properly taken
care of, in order to be taken into the House, or sent to the Hospital at Shrewsbury, or
Ackworth.’84 On September 20th 1760 Collingwood informed the Revd. Dr. Lee that ‘A
further Visitation of the Nurses will soon be made in order to draw the Children from those
where neglect appears to have been.85
THE LOSS OF LIFE AMONGST GENERAL RECEPTION CHILDREN AT NURSE
As we have seen, Mrs McClure has argued that the Foundling Hospital coped fairly well in
the first two years of the General Reception with the huge increase in the number of
foundlings, but that it failed badly from the middle of 1758 onwards and that the death rate
for children at nurse rose alarmingly. She claimed that only 36.72% of children sent to
nurse between 25 March 1756 to 24 June 1758 died at nurse, whereas 76.76% of those
sent to the country between 24 June 1758 and 29 September 1760 died there – a truly
remarkable increase.86 She seems to have calculated the mortality rates by taking the
number of deaths at nurse in each period as a percentage of the number of children sent
to the country in the same period. This method is unsound. The low percentage for the
first period merely shows that a large number of children had not died by the ‘cut off’ date.
The high percentage for the second period presumably includes large numbers of children
83
A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/73. This letter was considered by the General Committee.
84
G. Cttee, Wednesday April 30, 1760 – A/FH/K02/007, p.258 (microfilm X041/015).
85
Copy book of letters, No. 3 p.13 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
86
Ruth K. McClure, Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century (Yale,
University Press), New Haven and London, (1981), p. 102 and Appendix III.
143
who were sent in the previous period plus those sent in the second period who had died
by the second ‘cut-off’ date.
It is hoped that the following method will get a little nearer the truth. By subtracting the
number of children who died before they could be sent to nurse from the number who died
under two years, we can work out the number that died at nurse under the age of two.
This will only slightly underestimate the total number of deaths at nurse, since only about
4% of children who died at nurse were over two years old.87
Year
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
Number sent to
Nurse
1573
3383
3563
2940
_1005
12464
Number that died
Under two years
% of Total
922
1769
1862
1566
_554
6673
58.6
52.3
52.2
53.3
55.1
53.5
The alarming increase that occurred in the proportion of children who died in the Foundling
Hospital before they could be sent to nurses in the country was not mirrored by a similar
increase in the number of children who died under two years of age at nurse.
Contemporaries were right to be alarmed at the number of deaths in the hospital in
London. But he situation was not as grim as they thought. The proportion of all children
dying under two years (i.e. whether in London or at nurse) is estimated as follows:
87
Appendix A, Table I, plus figures in Chapter Nine. See also The State of Children Quarterly and then
Annually (A/FH/A9/12/1/ and A/FH/A9/12/2) for the ages at which children died in the country. It has
been assumed that all the children who could not be sent to nurse died under two years.
144
Proportion of Children taken in during the General Reception that Died under Two
Years of Age
Percentage Died 88
Year of Reception
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
63.5
56.7
58.9
65.5
65.9 *
There seems to have been little change in the proportion of children dying at nurse during
the General Reception. This does not mean, however, that all children stood the same
chance of surviving their time at nurse. Some counties had a better record than others.
One might have expected that the Home Counties would have had the best record for
preserving the life of foundlings, since the children would not have had to travel long
distances to get to their nurses’ homes and the Foundling Hospital ought to have found it
comparatively easy to keep an eye on the nurses and their inspectors. But the county
taking more than eighty foundlings with the worst record was Middlesex with 67.6% of the
children dying within four years of their reception, and the county with the best record was
Derbyshire (35.7%).
Staffordshire (49.5%) had a better record than any of the Home
Counties except Kent (49.4%).
Yorkshire (52.4%) had a much better record than
Middlesex, Surrey, Essex and Berkshire.89
It is hard to account for these differences. Some of the Middlesex nurseries with high
death rates, such as Knightsbridge (71.9%) and Kensington (78.8%) were probably too
near London to provide healthy living conditions, but others with even higher death rates,
such as Edmonton (87.2%) and Turnham Green (88.5%) were well away from London’s
88
Appendix A, Table 1.
*The Foundling hospital had a much better record on keeping infants alive before the General Reception when
only 42.1% died under two years. If, however, the deaths of all children are taken into account, whatever the
age at which they died. The higher death rate during the General Reception does not provide such a sharp
contract with the pre-General Reception period. This is a topic we will have to consider in a later chapter.
89
Disposal Books. The very worst county of all was Somerset, but this county does not appear in the
above list since only twenty-one children were sent there. Eighteen of the twenty one children sent to
Mrs. Gibbs at Weston (the only inspector in that county) died – 85.7%
145
smoky atmosphere. It may be that some of the nurses in the London area had previously
taken pauper children from the London parishes and took no better care of the foundlings
than they had done the parish children. It is also possible that the Foundling Hospital sent
many of the children who were in the worst health to inspectors near London, knowing that
they had little chance of surviving a long journey.
But some Middlesex inspectors had a
respectable record. Only 52.6% of the children sent to Lady Vere’s care in the Hanworth
area died within four years of reception.
Ironically enough, only 56.1% of those first
destination foundlings sent to Bertie Burgh’s inspectors at Laleham died, even though
Burgh turned out to be a dishonest rogue.
In fact there seems to be no correlation between being satisfactory from the Hospital’s
point of view and being successful in keeping children alive. The inspector with the very
best record in saving lives was the Rev. Mr Jones of Paulsbury in Northants – only 17 of
the 57 first destination children sent to him died under four years (29.8%), but in 1782 the
Hospital had to write off a debt of £22. 2s. 10d. he owed to the Hospital.90 Mr Naish of
Swallowfield also has a good record (only 37.8% died), though, as we have seen, he was
discovered to have deducted sums from the nurses’ pay.
The life expectancy of a child at nurse depended then, not just on which county he or she
was sent to, but on which inspector took charge.
In Berkshire, for example, only 35% of
the children sent to Mrs Birch of Caldecote House died, whereas 78.9% of those sent to
Mrs Spence at Swallowfield died.
Rather surprisingly, only one of the inspections that took over 100 first destination
foundlings at one time or another (that of Mrs. Dorothy Clarke of Edmonton) appears in a
list of the thirteen least successful inspections and one (that of the Rev. Mr Herring of
90
C. Ct., 8 May 1782, p. 275 – A/FH/K02/002 – microfilm X041/010.
146
Toppesfield in Essex) was amongst the thirteen most successful inspectors. One would
have thought that it would have been much harder to supervise large numbers of nurses
efficiently than to look after only a few.
In some places where there were two nurseries which took more than twenty first
destination foundlings at one time or another, one inspector was markedly more
successful than the other. Only 46% of the children sent to Mrs. West at Barnet, for
example, died under the age of four; 62.1% of those supervised by her neighbour Mr.
Robers died.
At Bow in Middlesex 67.8% of the Rev. Mr. Foxley’s foundlings died,
whereas 82.5% under the care of Miss Debonnaire died.
In 1760 Jonas Hanway argued that ‘You must inspect your inspectors, so far as relates to
those who live in a wholesome or unwholesome air; those who are fortunate, and those
who are not fortunate, in saving lives; those who have a sober tribe of nurses in their
neighbourhood, and those that have none such’.91
Perhaps the Hospital authorities ought to have been quicker to distinguish between
successful and unsuccessful nurseries, but it should be remembered that they had to
place so many children at nurse that they could not afford to pick and choose which areas
and which inspectors to use. At times they must have felt relieved just to find enough
nurses to take the children and enough inspectors to supervise them.
91
The Genuine Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman (London, 1760), p. 27. In his Letters on
the Importance of the Rising Generation London, 2 vols. 1767). Hanway listed some of the
successful and some of the unsuccessful places, but this was, of course, written several years after
the General Reception came to an end. During the General Reception the evidence would not have
been so clear.
147
AGES AT WHICH CHILDREN DIED AT NURSE
The first few months were by far the most dangerous. The children had all suffered from
the traumas of being removed from their mothers. Some had had to endure a long journey
to the Hospital and all those sent to nurse had had to endure another journey to the
country.
Dr. Clark has established that 222 out of 1,096 children sent to Berkshire died within one
month of their arrival at nurse (i.e. about one-fifth).92 The figures for those dying under
one month in other counties are not available, but it is likely that the overall average for all
counties taken together would be similar.
CAUSES OF DEATH
Inspectors had to report all deaths to the Hospital, but they did not always give the cause
of death. In many cases there was probably no easily identifiable disease. Even in cases
where the inspectors stated what they believed to be the reasons for deaths we cannot
always be certain what diseases actually killed the children, because they sometimes
described symptoms which could be the result of a number of diseases.
Deaths, for
example, were sometimes attributed to fever or fits, but without any further explanation.
There are 132 deaths mentioned in the correspondence of the Berkshire inspectors in the
period 1757 to 1768. In 89 cases the supposed cause of death is stated. Dr Clark has
supplemented this information by using burial certificates and nursery books.93
Dr. Clark lists the most common cause of deaths for children at nurse in Berkshire as
follows:
92
Clark op. cit., XLV. The evidence was not available for the other Berkshire children.
93
Clark, op. cit., p. L1.
148
Disease
Fits
Convulsion
Convulsion fits
Fever
Measles
Smallpox
Consumptions
Whooping cough
Purging
Gripes
Number of Deaths
30
21
3
21
18
18
15
10
7
6
54
94
Amongst other causes of death mentioned in the Berkshire inspectors’ letters are vomiting
and looseness, dropsy, cutting teeth and the ‘foul distemper’ (syphilis).
Smallpox was not such a lethal disease as one would have expected, especially as those
grown children who were returned to London or sent to one of the branch hospitals at the
age of five or so were usually only inoculated by the hospital authorities after they had
been sent from the country. Only when children began to be kept longer at nurse were
they usually inoculated while still living in the country.95
The fact that there were quite a few deaths from whooping cough and measles suggest
that the children must have been in poor general health. In the early twentieth century
these were common childhood illnesses and were rarely fatal.
The inspectors certainly did their best to save the children’s lives, as we have seen, but,
as Dr. Clark points out, the state of medical knowledge was such that the treatment given
was often ineffective and sometimes must have made the children worse. The Foundling
94
Ibid., p. L1.
95
Ibid., p. LIX.
149
Hospital can hardly be blamed, though, for following the advice given by physicians and
apothecaries. 96
THE CHANGING ROLE OF NURSES IN THE 1760s IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE
GENERAL RECEPTION
During the General Reception period most children were returned to the London hospital
at much the same age as children had been just before the General Reception,97 i.e.
coming up to their fifth birthday.
Ages at which Children left their Nurses for the London Hospital 2 June 1756 – 31
December 176098
Age
Number
Under 3 years
3 years old
4 years old
5 years old
6 years old
7 years old
2
64
256
79
2
1
404
Percentage*
0.5
15.8
63.4
19.6
0.5
0.2
*Corrected to one pace of decimals.
Only three children were returned to London after having been in the Hospital’s care for
more than five years.
The only noticeable difference is that in 1759 a rather higher
proportion of foundlings were returned in the third year after their reception than was the
case just before the General Reception (probably to free country nurses to take more
children).
96
Clark, op. cit., pp. XLV - XLVI, XLVII – XLIX, L - LIV. The whole of Dr. Clark’s excellent introduction is
well worth reading.
97
For the position on the even of the General Reception see the Memorandum Book A/FH/A09/01/1.
The ages were presumably calculated from the dates of reception. Some of the children who were
deemed to be just under five had therefore probably already reached that age.
98
Register of Grown Children – A/FH/A9/10.
150
In the aftermath of the General Reception, however, when large numbers of children taken
in during 1756 – 1760 reached an age when they could have been sent back to London
(or one of the new branch hospitals) the children were kept much longer at nurse. As
each year passed the average age at which children returned rose.
Children Returned to the London Hospital by Age Group, 1761 – 1769. 99
Year
Under 6 Years
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
6 – 8 Years
9 – 11 Years
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
98
236
160
27
49
1
12
14
100.0
99.2
75.5
32.9
17.9
0.4
3.1
2.7
2
52
55
224
169
156
61
5
0.8
24.5
67.1
81.8
87.6
59.8
15.9
1.0
1
24
104
311
493
0.4
12.4
39.8
81.0
96.3
In the early 1760s there was a marked decline in the proportion of children returned to the
London Hospital who had been in the care of the charity for under six years and a
corresponding increase in the number of six to eight year olds. In the late 1760s more and
more children were kept at nurse until they were from nine to eleven years old. In 1761
every child returned to the London hospital had been in the care of the charity for less than
six years; in 1769 96.3% of the children returned had been Hospital foundlings for at least
nine years.
This dramatic change seems to have been brought about by the sheer
pressure of numbers, rather than disillusionment with the policy of sending children to the
charity’s hospitals (the only governor who questioned the wisdom of sending foundlings to
institutions was Jonas Hanway).100
The governors must have realized that, even though
the six branch hospitals were all taking grown children by the end of 1763 (the Chester
hospital was opened in that year), there would not be enough accommodation for all the
99
Ibid.
100
Jonas Hanway The Genuine Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman (1760) especially
pp. 20-33.
151
children at nurse if they were all returned to the London hospital or to branch hospitals
when they were about five years old. The only solution as to encourage the nurses to
keep them longer. Fortunately, with the ending of the General Reception, the need to find
nurses for newly received babies was slight. There was no need to find large numbers of
new nurses. Nurses who two or three years earlier would have been looking after babies
now found themselves looking after young children.
The Hospital must have found itself
in serous financial difficulties though, for in 1765 the weekly pay of many nurses in
Berkshire was reduced from 2s. 6d. to 2s. (and later to 1s. 6d.), even though older children
must have been more expensive to look after than babies.101 Clearly the governors were
anxious to keep costs down in the 1760s, the period when the charity had to maintain six
branch hospitals as well as the London hospital and children at nurse.
When the children reached the age at which, in earlier periods, they would have been
returned to the Hospital, the question arose of what should be done with them. Many of
the girls probably helped their nurses in housework, as the nurses’ own children would
have done. Many of the boys presumably helped the nurses’ husbands in their work. No
doubt this compensated a little for the reduced pay nurses received, though it is unlikely
that many foundlings actually earned their keep.
In one respect the Hospital followed an enlightened policy. Inspectors tried to ensure that
the older foundlings at nurse got some education.
William Dawes of Barkham, for
example, removed one boy from his nurse because she refused to send him to school.102
Another inspector, George Talbot of Burghfield, reported that all the children under his
inspection ‘go constantly to school’.103 In December J. Bunce of Wokingham listed thirty-
101
Clark, op. cit., p. LVII.
102
Ibid., January 7, 1765, p. 194.
103
Ibid. July 2, 1765, p. 203.
152
four children under his care, all of whom were ‘sent to scoole when the weather and
roades permit’.104 Some of the nurses paid for their charges’ schooling out of their own
pockets, as William Dawes pointed out when he learned of the plan to reduce the nurses’
pay from 2s. 6d. to 2s.105 Not all the children were well taught. Dr. Collet commented that
in his inspections ‘Some few of them have made some little proficiency in it [reading] but 3
or 4 of them scarcely know their letters, as the schoolmistresses are very ignorant and
some of the nurses can’t read at all, and those who live out of this town [Newbury] find it
very difficult to get any school near them’.106 On the other hand Juliana Dodd said that
three boys and one girl in her inspection were at nurse with a woman who taught them
spinning, knitting and reading extremely well.107 Whatever the quality of the instruction
given, though, it seems that the foundlings probably got as much schooling as the children
of the labouring classes in the same area.
Inspectors were not agreed as to whether the foundlings benefited from staying longer at
nurse. Dr. Collet believed children over six years old ‘got bad habits of idleness by having
too much liberty’.108 Juliana Dodd, however, argued that if the children in her care were
kept at nurse a year or two longer it would probably be easy to apprentice them in her
neighbourhood ‘as they will have a more virtuous education than when put out in numbers
together or immur’d in the hospital’.109
104
Ibid. Dec. 20, 1765, p. 215.
105
Ibid. Oct. 30, 1764, p. 181.
106
Ibid. Nov. 12, 1767, p. 224.
107
Ibid. Sept. 16, 1767, p. 226.
108
Ibid. April 21, 1764, p. 178.
109
Ibid. Oct. 24, 1764, p. 183.
153
In some cases the nurses had looked after their charges for so many years that they
developed such a strong bond with them that they asked to keep them permanently.110
Although it is probably true that the longer a nurse looked after a child the harder it was for
her to give him or her up, this bond could develop with quite young children. In a letter
dated Jun 16 1761 to the Revd. Dr. Lee, Taylor White wrote: ‘I find the Nurses who have
bro’t up our children acquire so great an affection for them they would frequently maintain
them at their own expense rather than part with them’.111
By that date only a small
proportion of the children at nurse would have been over five years old.
There are a number of cases where the Hospital agreed to this and the children were
apprenticed to the nurses’ husbands.
The Hospital only did this, though, where the
husbands were likely to be able to support the children and where they were therefore
unlikely to be a burden on the local poor rates (apprenticeships was one way of acquiring
a parish settlement).112 One cannot help thinking that the Hospital was sometimes too
cautious in this respect, though they had to be careful not to offend local people. From the
child’s point of view it would surely in many cases have been the best possible
arrangement. It was really almost the same as adoption (which the law did not then
recognise). It is not as though there would have been dozens of such cases in any one
parish.
The Hospital also sometimes allowed other local people to apprentice the children, so
making it unnecessary to return them to the London hospital or one of the branch
110
Examples.
Ibid. John P. Jones, Dec. 30, 1706, p. 209.
John P. Jones, Jan. 7, 1767, p. 231.
111
Copy Book of Letters, No. 3, p. 13 – A/FH/A/6/2/1).
112
See, for example, the care of Mary Newton, Clark, op. cit., John Collet, Aug. 25 1767, p. 221.
John Collet, Oct. 13, 1767, p. 222.
154
hospitals. 113 There was much to be said for this arrangement. The children would not
have to leave the areas they had grown up in and would be well known there so that it was
less likely that masters would ill treat them. In one case a childless merchant and distiller
took a boy to whom he had taken a liking. He had already paid for his education. Again,
this was in effect adoption.
Even if Taylor White had been convinced that the children would do as well by being
apprenticed straight from their nurses without being returned to the London hospital or one
of the branch hospitals, there would never have been enough masters and mistresses to
take all the children in the towns or villages where the nurses lived. The Hospital kept no
separate list of children apprenticed from their nurses, whether to the nurses’ husbands or
to other local people, but it is possible to calculate the number by subtracting the number
of children apprenticed from the hospitals from the total of all children apprenticed. In the
period 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773, 4,826 children were apprenticed. The branch
hospitals accounted for 2,855 (59%) and the London hospital for 1,545 (32%). Only 426
children were therefore apprenticed directly from their nurses (just under 9%). However,
117 of these were apprenticed from the Chester nurseries which were supervised by the
Chester hospital: only 309 (6.4%) had therefore no connections with any hospital. The
vast majority of children who survived their time at nurse were therefore returned to the
London hospital or one of the branch hospitals as grown children.114
113
Ibid. William Pennington Dec. 1 1767, p. 214.
114
Sources: There are one or two puzzling entries, but these figures are substantially correct.
Apprenticeship Registers – A/FH/A12/003/001-002, microfilm X41/5.
Register of Grown Children, London Hospital- A/FH/A9/10.
Ackworth Apprenticeship Registers –
A/FH/Q/068 and 069.
Chester Registers – A/FH/A10/009/001 and A/FH/D041/003/001.
Shrewsbury Registers – A/FH/A10/7/7, A/FH/D2/7/1 and A/FH/02/8/2.
Westerham Registers – A/FH/A10/8.
General Registers – A/FH/A09/002/001-003 – microfilms X41/3 and X41/4 (for Aylesbury and Barnet
hospital apprentices).
155
CHAPTER TEN
THE LONDON HOSPITAL’S GROWN CHILDREN DURING THE
GENERAL RECEPTION AND ITS AFTERMATH
NUMBER OF CHILDREN IN THE HOSPITAL
A casual observer in the late 1750s and 1760s would probably have concluded that the
General Reception had led to few changes in the way the London hospital was run.
The number of children there increased, but not as sharply as one would have
anticipated given the huge increase in the number of foundlings accepted by the
charity.
The number of grown children in the House varied from a low of 166 to a high point of
425:
The Number of Grown Children in the London Hospital,
24 June 1756 – 31 December 1773 *1
24 June 1756
31 Dec. 1756
31 Dec. 1757
24 June 1758
24 June 1759
29 Sept 1760
29 Sept 1761
31 Dec. 1762
31 Dec. 1763
31 Dec. 1764
245
238
237
195
166
262
170
262
333
407
31
31
31
31
31
31
31
31
31
Dec. 1765
Dec. 1766
Dec. 1767
Dec. 1768
Dec. 1769
Dec. 1770
Dec. 1771
Dec. 1772
Dec. 1773
357
400
425
374
352
175
180
218
227
But the role of the London hospital had in fact changed quite markedly. It no longer
took all the grown children sent back from the nurseries. Many of them now went to the
six branch hospitals founded between 1757 and 1763.
*
1
In the late 1750s the London hospital also housed some babies, either because they were waiting
to go to nurse or because they were too ill to send to nurse.
The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/1 (to June 1758) and
A/FH/A9/12/2 (from Sept. 1760).
156
From the beginning of the General Reception on 2 June 1756 to the 31st July 1773 the
names of 5358 grown children are listed in the registers or reconstituted registers. Of
these 5358 children 3331 (62.2%) were in the House at some stage in that period. 2
The other 2027 went straight to one of the branch hospitals. Almost two-fifths of the
grown children did not at any time enter the London hospital.
There are two other reasons for the comparatively modest increase in the number of
grown children in the London hospital. Many grown children that were first sent to
London were then transferred after a short while to one of the branch hospitals. To
many children the London hospital was a transit camp rather than a long-term home.
Furthermore, as we saw in Chapter Nine, children stayed longer at nurse in the 1760s
than they had done earlier. This meant that even those who were not transferred to
other hospitals often only spent a short time in London before being apprenticed.
The number of grown children that entered the London hospital therefore varied more
sharply than the number of children staying there.
2
These totals exclude fifty-six children listed in the London grown children register (26 boys and 30
girls) who were sent off to be apprenticed on the same day that they arrived from their nurses.
They were clearly recorded there merely as a matter of convenience. Many of the children were
transferred from one hospital to another, but each child has been counted only once. The total for
the number of grown children differs slightly from the number one would get by subtracting from
the number of children sent to nurse during the General Reception the number who died within
four years of the reception (see previous chapter) because some of the grown children in the
hospitals had been taken in by the charity before the General Reception (some of them were in
the London hospital on 2 June 1756 and others were returned form their nurse after that date,
either to the House or one of the branch hospitals) and a few by 31 July 1773 had been received
after the General Reception ended and because some General Reception children died at nurse
more than four years after their reception. The figures given in the text are believed to be
substantially accurate though the Shrewsbury records have presented some difficulties.
Sources:
Register of grown children (London hospital) – A/FH/A9/10.
Ackworth general register – A/FH/Q/064.
Chester registers – A/FH/A10/9 and A/FH/D06/003/001.
Shrewsbury registers – A/FH/A10/7, A/FH/D02/007/001 and A/FH/D2/8/2.
The Aylesbury and Barnet registers have not survived. They have been reconstructed from the
general registers – A/FH/Q9/2/1-4.
These four registers have also been consulted where the register of grown children is unclear.
The lists of foundlings at Barnet Hospital in the two Inspection Books – A/FH/A10/004/001-002 –
have also been consulted.
157
Number of Grown Children returned to the House,
2 June 1756 – 31 July 1773 *3
2 June - 31 Dec. 1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
27
76
39
80
187
106
216
220
84
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773 (to 31 July)
340
266
302
514
696
71
77
82
75
From the 29 September 1760 to 31 December 1771 the combined total for the children
in the branch hospitals was always greater than the total for grown children in the
London hospital. 4 But the London hospital was still of great importance, since it
provided the model on which the branch hospitals were based.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOSPITAL
The House was organized in much the same way as before the General Reception.
The governors employed quite a large staff and the ratio of employees to children
seems quite generous. The paid staff consisted of five (later six) officers and a varying
number of servants. On 29 November 1757 a report of the Sub-Committee listed five
officers and seventy seven servants (including those working in the infirmaries at the
Brill and Battle Bridge).5 In 1770 the number of servants ranged from fifty to thirty-two
and two years later from twenty-nine to thirty two.6 The female servants greatly
outnumbered the men. In 1757, for example, there were sixty-nine female servants and
3
Register of grown children – A/FH/A9/10.
There are 3458 entries, not 3331, since no attempt has been made to exclude double counting.
Thus a child who returned to the House from nurse in 1757 and was then sent off to a branch
hospital only to be returned again to London in 1759 will appear twice under the appropriate
years. Another reason for the difference is, of course, that this chart excludes children already in
the House on the eve of the General Reception.
4
The State of the Children….A/FH/A9/12/1 and A/FH/A9/12/2.
5
Report of the Sub-Committee, Tuesday 29 November 1757, pp.128-129 – A/FH/A/3/5/2.
6
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.272.
158
only eight men.7 Amongst the female employees were housemaids, laundry maids,
seamstresses, ward nurses for both boys’ and girls’ dormitories, as well as nurses to
look after the sick. One reason why so many servants were employed in 1757 is that
the Hospital had to provide both wet and dry nurses, either for babies waiting for
country nurses to come up to collect them or for those babies who were too ill to send
to the country. If we include the receiving clerk, the porter and the chief nurse as well
as all the wet and dry nurses, about half the staff were looking after babies in
1757. 8The fact that fewer servants were employed in 1770 than in 1757 does not
mean, therefore, that there had been a sharp decline in the number of servants looking
after the grown children – it merely reflects the fact that once the General Reception
had come to an end fewer servants were needed to care for babies. The decline in
numbers from 1770 to 1772 was presumably due to the fact that by the early 1770s
there were far fewer grown children in the House than there had been in the 1760s.
As far as we can tell, the House was reasonably well run, though the Report of the
Sub-Committee of 1757 showed that some of the officers were ignoring the regulations,
appointing or dismissing staff without authority and giving wages to the servants that
had not been sanctioned by any General Court or Committee. No entries had been
made in the Servants’ Book since July 1st 1756, ‘which makes the Discovery of these
abuses the more Difficult.’ No proper record had been kept of when servants entered
the Hospital’s service or when they left. The steward’s accounts had not been audited
since the previous August.9 No doubt some allowance should be made for the sheer
volume of work that the officers had to get through in the early months of the General
Reception, but the governors must have realized that if any slackness was not
checked, worse abuses might follow and the reputation of the charity would suffer.
7
Sub-Cttee report (as above), pp.128-131.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., pp.133-134 (Monday 5 December 1757).
159
They were determined to make sure that they were in complete control in the future. In
June 1759, for example, the General Committee refused to grant Mrs. French, the
matron, the power to dismiss nurses (and also refused an increase in her pay). She
resigned and was replaced by Mrs. Elizabeth Leicester.10
Some servants proved unsatisfactory and had to be dismissed, but this could happen
in any institution. As we saw in Chapter Five, however, there were two financial
scandals at the London hospital. In February 1759 it was discovered that Robert
Mitchell, who had held the post of Treasurer’s clerk, had absconded with money and
goods to the amount of £92. The governors wrote to Charles Gore, Esq., who had
given a bond to indemnify the Hospital for any loss.11 In 1761 a more serious case
came to light – the embezzlement of £600 of Hospital funds by the then steward,
Lancelot Williams. As with the Mitchell case, the governors had taken the precaution of
getting sureties for the money, so that those who had guaranteed the Hospital against
loss had to pay up. It was not until November, 1763, however, that Mr Plumtree, the
Hospital’s solicitor was able to report that they had at last paid up.12
THE DAILY ROUTINE OF THE GROWN CHILDREN
Section 5 of the Regulations (‘Of the Management of the Children when returned from
Nurse’) gives a good idea of the daily routine.13
The children had to get up at 5 a.m. in the summer and 7 a.m. in the winter. At 5.30
a.m. in the summer and 7.30 a.m. in winter the boys had to report to the schoolmaster
10
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.270.
11
Sub-Cttee – 10 and 24 February 1759, p.99 and p.103 – A/FH/A/3/5/3. Mitchell had been sacked
in January – Gen. Cttee, 10 Jan. 1759 – A/FM/K02/006.
12
Copy Book of Letters, No.3 letter to Roger Pinder, Nov.7, 1761, p.120 – A/FH/A/6/2/1. See also
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.270. Gen. Cttee, Wednesday 16 November, 1763, vol. 8. p.330.
Microfilm X041/015.
13
Regulations, pp.39-41 – A/FH/A/6/15/2.
160
who sent them off to work. Breakfast was at eight in summer and nine in winter. An
hour was allowed for this meal. The rest of the morning the boys were to spend at
work:
‘From Twelve to Two is allowed for Dinner, Diversion and Rest; at Two,
they are to return to their Work, and to Work till Six in the Summer and till it
is dark in the Winter. Nevertheless, the Master is to call the Children from
the work to read in Classes, at such Times as shall be convenient, so that
each may be instructed once, at least, every Day.
From that Time till Supper, Part of the Time is to be employed in learning to
read; the rest, the Children may play in the open Air, or School Room.
Eight o’clock in the Summer, and Seven o’clock in the Winter are to be the
Hours of Supper, and at Nine they are to go to bed.’
The girls were to be ‘kept in Wards [dormitories] entirely separate from the Boys,’ but
they had a similar routine. In the hour after reveille the ward nurses with the assistance
of the girls, had to see that the beds were made and the dormitories cleaned. After
breakfast they were ‘to be employed in making linen or Cloaths, or such other Labour,
as is suitable to their Strength, or in some useful Manufactory.’
The routine changed at the weekends. ‘On Sundays, and other Days appointed for
public Worship, they are to be instructed in the Principles of Religion and Morality, to
attend at Chapel, to be taught the Catechism used by the Church of England, or heard
to read such Parts of the Holy Scriptures as are most suitable to their Understanding.’
On Saturday afternoons and on some public holidays the children were allowed to play.
The boys ‘may be allowed to divert themselves with such Exercises, as will increase
their Strength, Activity and Hardiness…’
The hours of work may seem rather long, especially in summer, but it is unlikely that
the children were on the go all the time, since they were not tending machines. The
children lived a rather regimented life, but most of the children were in the age range of
five or six to twelve or thirteen years old. The younger ones at least could hardly have
been left to roam around without supervision. The system did at least ensure that the
161
staff knew where the children were. It may also have kept bullying down. They would
also have escaped the flogging common in most eighteenth century grammar schools
and public schools. Many of the younger boys at Winchester and Eton may have had a
harder life than the grown children in London.
Sophie von La Roche, who visited the London hospital in 1786, was very impressed
with what she saw.14
ATTEMPTS TO KEEP THE CHILDREN HEALTHY
Like the ordinary subscription hospitals in London and the provinces, the Hospital had
the services of surgeons and physicians who gave their services without payment. As
far as the writer is aware, no surviving document lists their duties, but we can get a
good idea of the tasks they carried out from scattered references in the minutes of the
General Committee and the Sub-Committee. They were expected to supervise the
treatment of children suffering from contagious diseases, such as the itch, and to deal
with the more serious diseases. One of their duties was to carry out inoculations for
smallpox. It is likely that minor ailments were dealt with by the apothecary or the
matron or by the chief nurses of the various infirmaries.
There were two honorary surgeons in our period, Lewis Way and Thomas Tompkyns.
Lewis Way probably was related to Lewis Way, the charity’s first Treasurer (1739-41).
In September 1757 the General Committee learned that he had just been appointed
surgeon of Guy’s Hospital and they decided that if he resigned his post at the
Foundling Hospital they would not replace him, ‘the Business of the Hospital not
requiring two Surgeons’.15 But he did not resign until 3 December 1760.16
14
Claire Williams, trans., Sophie in London, 1786, being the Diary of Sophie v. La Roche (London,
1933), pp.176-177.
15
Gen. Cttee, 28 September 1757 – A/FH/A03/002/005.
16
Ibid. 3 Dec. 1760 – A/FH/A03/002/007.
162
Thomas Tompkyns appears several times in the minutes. On Wednesday 4 May 1757,
for example, the General Committee took his advice and agreed that a large bathing
tub should be provided for the infirmary.17
On 14 June 1758 he reported on the
condition of children suffering from the itch that he was looking after,18 and on
November 19th 1760 he gave details of the inoculation of 16 children carried out on the
6th of that month.19
Thomas Tompkyns acted as the Hospital’s sole surgeon following Lewis Way’s
resignation. Earlier (in 1758) he had asked to be paid for his services, but the General
Committee had refused his request. He doesn’t seem to have borne any resentment at
this rebuff and continued to serve the charity as before.
On 14th May 1766 a Mr
Thomas Tompkyns was elected a governor.20 If, as seems likely, this is the same
Thomas Tompkyns, then this election would have been in recognition of his loyal
service to the charity.
The Foundling Hospital had the services of three honorary physicians in our period: Dr
William Cadogan, Dr Charles Morton and Dr William (later Sir William) Watson. All
three were men of some note.
Dr William Cadogan (1711-1797) was a fashionable London physician. He had taken
his MD at Leyden, one of the most prestigious medical schools in Europe, in 1737. For
a time he was an army physician. He then took up private practice in Bristol. In 1752
he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and soon afterwards settled in London. He
17
Ibid. 4 May 1757 – A/FH/A03/002/005.
18
Ibid. 14 June 1757 – A/FH/A03/002/005.
19
Ibid. 19 November, 1760 – A/FH/A03/002/005.
20
Nichols and Wray, op. cit. p. 380.
163
wrote a book on gout, which was widely read, though some of his fellow doctors
thought it of little value.21
In 1748, as we saw in Chapter Seven, the Foundling Hospital published his An Essay
upon the Nursery and Management of Children.
One of his suggestions was that
infants should not be swaddled in too many clothes or be overfed. On 28 June 1749
he was elected a governor of the Foundling Hospital, no doubt a sign of the value the
governors placed on that book.22 He only attended a few governors’ meetings.
In October 1754 he became one of the Hospital’s physicians (Dr Morton was appointed
at the same time).23 In the following month he was asked about a proposed change in
the children’s diet. He said he would confer with Dr Morton before giving his opinion. 24
He made two experiments with new methods of inoculation in our period, neither of
which was successful. 25 Early in 1759, at the request of the Sub-Committee, he wrote
a report on the nurseries and the infirmaries on the boys’ side. He said they ‘were dirty
and had ill smells’ and that tubs of dirty linen were left in the infirmary.
He
recommended ‘that particular care be taken in every Nursery and Infirmary to keep the
Room Sweet and well Aired.’
Dr Charles Morton (1716-1799) had received the degree of MD in 1748 from Leyden.
In 1750 he was elected physician at the Middlesex Hospital. He became a Fellow of
the Royal Society and served as its secretary from 1760 to 1774. In 1756 he was
appointed Under-librarian at the newly founded British Museum and in 1776 was made
21
Dictionary of National Biography.
22
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p. 363.
23
Gen. Cttee., October 1754 – A/FH/A03/001/002.
24
Sub. Cttee, 9 June 1756 – A/FH/A03/005/002 - and Gen. Cttee, 10 and 27 October 1759 –
A/FH/A03/002/006.
25
Sub. Cttee. 24 February 1759 – A/FH/A03/005/003. It is not always clear whether he is writing
about just one infirmary or all the infirmaries.
164
Principal Librarian, a position he held until his death in 1799.
He seems to have
devoted as much time to antiquarian topics as to scientific research.26
He took his duties as physician to the Foundling Hospital seriously. On 16 June 1756,
for example, he sent to the General Committee ‘a Paper containing some Regulations
in Relation to the Establishment of the Infirmary’ for their consideration.27
On 23
November 1757 he reported on the condition of nine children that he had inoculated on
3 October.28
He made several reports on the ‘State of the Infirmary’ to the Sub-
Committee in 1755.29 In 1760 he presented the Foundling Hospital with twelve copies
of a treatise he had written on whooping cough. The governors arranged for them to
be distributed to Dr Lee (Ackworth), Roger Kynaston (Shrewsbury) and a number of the
more important inspectors, such as Dr. Collet and Mr Heaviside. 30
He was elected a governor on 26 March 1755.31 He attended 356 meetings over forty
years from 14 May 1755 to 4 February 1795. Since most of these meetings did not deal
with medical matters, Morton must have been concerned with the welfare of the charity
as a whole.
William Watson (1715-1787) had begun his medical career as an apothecary but in
1757 he received doctorates in physic (medicine) from the Universities of Halle and
Wittenberg and in December 1758 he was admitted as a Licentiate of the College of
Physicians, becoming a Fellow in 1786. A distinguished scientist, he made valuable
contributions to botany and to the understanding of electricity as well as to medicine.
26
D.N.B.
27
Gen. Ctte, 16 June 1756 – A/FH/A03/002/004.
28
Ibid. 23 November 1757 – A/FH/A03/002/005.
29
Sub-Ctte, 23 July, 6 August, 3 September – A/FH/A03/005/002.
30
Ibid. 8 November 1760 – A/FH/A3/005/004.
31
Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p. 367.
165
He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1741. He was immensely hard-working
and provided more than fifty-eight papers to that body’s ‘Philosophical Transactions.’
Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society (1778-1820) believed that it had
become too easy for medical men to become Fellows, but Watson certainly merited
that distinction.
Watson’s most important researches in medicine concerned epidemic diseases (a
subject of the greatest importance to the Foundling Hospital). He wrote pamphlets on
influenza, dysentery, ‘putrid measles’ and smallpox. He was said to be an admirable
doctor, being of a ‘particularly humane temper’.32
In October 1762 he was appointed as one of the Foundling Hospital’s physicians, a
position he held until his death in 1787.33 There are only two references in the General
Committee minutes relating to Dr. Watson by our cut-off date of 31 July 1773, so there
is no way of knowing how big a part he played in the care of the children, but it is clear
that he was one of the most conscientious governors. He had been elected a governor
on 3 October 1753.34 On 12 May 1761 he was elected to the General Committee35 and
from 1762 his attendance record was excellent.
He attended 940 meetings – a
remarkable record for such a busy man. His last attendance was on 16 April 1787, the
year in which he died.
Until 1759, the Foundling Hospital called on Joseph Partington of Hatton Garden when
they needed the services of an apothecary. He was presumably in private practice. In
32
D.N.B. This article is well worth reading, if only to see how he showed that electricity is transferred
instantaneously or almost instantaneously.
33
Ibid.
34
Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p. 366.
35
Gen. Cttee. 12 May 1761 – A/FH/A03/001/002.
166
that year they decided they needed to have a full-time resident apothecary who would
devote all his time to the care of the children. Robert McClellan was appointed.
Partington seems to have been well thought of. In August 1759 the governors provided
him with a testimonial when he applied to the Charter-house for a post there, saying
that he had ‘served this Hospital as Apothecary above Twelve years with great Care
and Fidelity’.36
In February 1759 Dr Cadogan wrote a report outlining the duties of the resident
apothecary. He was to take care that all medicines were properly administered and
that ‘no Cordial or opiate or the like Medicine be trusted to the care of Nurses nor that
they be suffered to give any Medicines which are not Ordered by the Physician or
Apothecary or Matron of the Infirmary’. He was also to report to the Sub-Committee
any cases of neglect of their orders.37
In short he was in overall charge of the day to
day care of sick children.
The apothecary was also responsible for making up many of the medicines needed.*
In March 1759 the governors agreed to furnish the ‘Apothecary Shop’ with twelve items
that McClellan had asked for. 38 It was ordered that in future the matron and the nurses
in the infirmaries should apply to the apothecary for the medicines they needed.39
Robert McClellan held the post of resident apothecary for almost forty years (from 1759
until he retired in 1797). His salary was £50 a year. 40 Only the Secretary, Thomas
36
Sub. Cttee, 8 August 1759 A/FH/A03/005/003.
37
Ibid. 24 February 1759.
*
In this period apothecaries often combined the function that today are undertaken by GPs and
pharmacists.
38
Ibid. 12 March 1759.
39
Gen. Cttee, 6 April 1759 – A/FH/A03/002/006.
40
Ibid. 17 Jan 1759.
167
Collingwood, was paid more. Not only was his salary far higher than that of other
officers holding responsible positions in the London hospital (James Blackbeard, the
receiving clerk, for example, was paid £25 a year), but it was even higher than that of
the Masters of the two biggest branch hospitals, Ackworth and Shrewsbury. His post
was clearly regarded as of the greatest importance.
McClellan was apparently a rather difficult man to get on with. In 1766 for example, he
was forced to apologise, for his rudeness to William Harrison, one of the leading
governors. 41
He had a more attractive side, however.
In 1774 he persuaded the
governors to reward his assistant, Julian Mariner, an ex-foundling, who had worked
loyally for the Hospital for 14 years, on the occasion of his taking a post at
Apothecary’s Hall. They gave him five guineas and a suit of ‘Clothes of the Second
Cloth’.42 [Mariner took over as apothecary when McClellan retired.]
The governors, must have felt McClellan was good at his job – they would hardly have
employed him for so many years otherwise.
The governors provided several infirmaries for the sick children. The number of
infirmaries varied over the years, as did the particular uses to which they were put. A
report by the Steward to the Sub-Committee listed six infirmaries, most of which were
for grown children:
41
Gen Cttee. 5 and 12 February 1766 – A/FH/A03/002/008.
42
Gen. Cttee, 27 April 1774 – A/FH/A03/002/012.
168
Infirmary
House Infirmary
Gate Infirmary
Powis Wells
The Brill
Battle Bridge
Wet Nurse Infirmary
Number of Beds
In use
Not occupied
10
19
8
21
7
8
73
8
!
!
2
21
3
34
Total
18
19
8
23
28
11
107 15A
The governors were as concerned about the diet of the children as they had been
before the General Reception.43 In 1762 they produced a revised ‘Table of Diet.’44
Meat was provided on five days a week and so were potatoes or other vegetables.*
There is, however, no mention of fruit, though Mrs McClure points out that they did
occasionally get apple or gooseberry pies and raisins and currants were sometimes put
in the puddings.45 On October 21 1762 Collingwood wrote to Saunders, the secretary
at the Westerham branch hospital asking him whether he could send his cart or wagon
loaded with apples as they would be ‘very useful for the Children and family’46 (i.e. the
staff).
In a letter of March 5 1762 to the Rev. Dr. Timothy Lee at Ackworth Taylor White said
that ‘the Children here drink only water or milk and water.’47 It was only in 1778 that the
General Committee allowed the children small beer and then only on Sundays.48 It
43
See McClure, op.cit., pp.195-204, for a good discussion of this subject.
44
McClure, op.cit., p.271.
*
The Table of Diet for 1759 is listed on p. 263 infra.
45
Ibid., p.198.
46
Copy Book of Letters, No.3, p.200 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
47
Ibid., p.144
48
McClure, op.cit., pp.197-198.
169
would probably have been better for their health if this innovation had been introduced
earlier.
As Mrs. McClure points out, we have little information about how much food was
provided for the children. From 1758 the usual serving of meat weighed eight ounces
before it was cooked and the bread allowance was 61 ounces a week. Each child got
3! ounces of cheese a week.49 The Hospital does not seem to have kept a record of
the size of the portions of potatoes or other vegetables. It may be, though, that the
children did not get enough to eat. Mrs Juliana Dodd, the outspoken inspector at
Swallowfield, in a letter dated October 1st 1765, wrote:
‘I can not help observing that when I was at the hospital last June and saw
the children’s dinner, the quantity of greens was so small that I should
never have imagined that there was a gardener kept for the benefit of the
children and, upon enquiry, was inform’d that a larger share of any kind of
vegetables than what I then saw, with the small portion of meat, was scarce
a dinner for them.’50
In a reply dated October 15, Thomas Collingwood said that the gardener had been
dismissed’ some time past, by reason of his Negligence’ and he hoped that there would
be no further complaint ‘for the want of a sufficient quantity of Greens.’51
There is some evidence that the diet was deficient in calcium and vitamins A, C and
D. 52 There were some cases of scurvy which must have been due to a lack of vitamin
C. A number of children who had weak or crooked legs were probably suffering from
rickets which suggests a lack of calcium and a vitamin D deficiency. The cause of
‘distempered eyes’ may have been due to children not getting enough vitamin A.53
We cannot, of course, blame anyone in the eighteenth century for not seeing children
got the right vitamins in their diet. In any case, it is possible that the grown children
49
Ibid., p.199.
50
Clark, op.cit., p.194.
51
Copy Book of Letters, No. 3,p.326 – A/FH/A/6/2/1
52
McClure, op.cit.,p.204.
53
Ibid., p.209-210.
170
were better fed than the children of many unskilled or casual labourers in London. They
were at least sure of getting three meals a day.
It is also likely that the grown children were better clothed than many of the children of
the poorer classes, 54 some of whom had to make do with second-hand clothes or cast
offs from their older brothers or sisters.
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
When it comes to infectious diseases the grown children may have been worse off than
children living with their parents in their own homes or than foundlings still at nurse.
There were, for example, a number of cases of ‘scald head’ (ringworm of the scalp)
and the ‘itch’ (scabies). 55
Even before the General Reception one part of the London hospital had been used as
an infirmary. But the governors realized that the only way to stop the spread of
infectious diseases was by isolating infected children. This is why two of the infirmaries
(Battle Bridge and the Brill) were in the Bloomsbury area, but away from the main
buildings of the House.56
The governors found, though, that the rules about isolating infectious patients were
sometimes ignored. In their report of Monday 5 December 1757, for example, the SubCommittee reported that
54
Ibid., pp.193-195.The Foundling Hospital’s uniforms were designed by Hogarth.
55
On 31 December 1757 the Sub-Committee drew up a list of ‘Medicines necessary for the
illnesses to what the Children of the Country Hospitals may be Subject to. Among these were
‘Scalled heads.’ No doubt the list was based on the evidence provided by the grown children in
London. Sub-Cttee, 31 Dec. 1757, vol.2, p.147 – A/FH/A03/005/002. The list is reprinted in
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.134-135.
56
There are references to both of these infirmaries, for example, in the minutes of the SubCommittee for 23 April 1757, vol.2, pp.114-115 – A/FH/A03/005/002.
171
‘We find many Children who have the Itch are in the House, contrary to the
express rules of the Hospital.
We find that many of the Children having the Itch are at the Brill,
notwithstanding the House at Battle Bridge is capable of receiving them &
was hired for that Purpose as well as for Inoculation.’
Ordered.
The Children who have the Itch to be put to the House of Battle Bridge.’57
Five days later the Sub-Committee repeated
‘That the order for the removal of all Children under Infectious distempers
be enforced, & that the Matron have notice of this order.’58
The governors were also anxious to prevent children outside the Hospital from being
infected. In a letter to Dr. Lee at Ackworth dated May 30, 1763, Taylor White wrote
‘I am afraid to remove any Children from their Nursery for this infectious
distemper we now suffer by at the Hospital is in every part of the Counties
round about & I fear we sent it to Shrewsbury by the last Caravan tho’ we
were totally ignorant of it. They write four of the Children which come down
have the Measles which is the Illness which the Distemper resembles. And
I can’t think it worth while to venture to send a dangerous and infectious
fever into Yorkshire for the saving the additional Expense of nursing for a
few Weeks but that it better suspend the removal of any Children till with
the Change of Weather the Sickness abates.’59
Like the ordinary London hospitals, the House was plagued with bedbugs. A ‘Bug
Doctor’ was employed, ‘no Cure, no Money’.60 Sophie von Roche’s description of how
clean the dormitories were may therefore give too favourable an impression, though
the bedbugs may have been less troublesome when she wrote in 1786 than earlier.
[The solution would have been to replace the wooden bedsteads with iron ones.]
57
Ibid., p.134. In 1759 two other buildings were converted into infirmaries. McClure, op.cit., p.206.
58
Ibid., p.137.
59
Copy Books of Letters, vol.3, p.235 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
60
McClure, op.cit., p.206.
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.132-133.
172
FATAL DISEASES
Two hundred and seventy six grown children (131 boys and 145 girls) that were in the
House at some time in the period 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773 had died there by the
latter date.61 Thus 8.3% died in the House, a very much lower rate than for the children
at nurse, though this is what we should expect. The grown children sent to London in
this period were nearly all at least five years old and many were older. They had
already survived the most dangerous years. We cannot easily draw from these figures
conclusions about the standard of care provided because some children spent years
there, while others spent only a few weeks or even only a few days there. The causes
of death in the House, though, are revealing. They were recorded for 137 of the 276
deaths.62
Smallpox
Fevers
Measles
Dysentery
Mortification
Consumption
Convulsions
Emaciated
Whooping Cough
7 other diseases
Total
36
31
19
18
10
4
4
3
3
9
137
Boys
13
13
6
11
3
2
2
2
2
6
60
a
c
e
g
Girls
23
18
13
7
7
2
2
1
1
3
77
b
d
f
h
a. Including one ‘delirious,’ one ‘fever and mortification,’ one ‘worm fever and mortification,’ and four
‘eruptive fever.’
b. Including one ‘violent fever,’ one ‘eruptive fever and mortification’ and eleven ‘eruptive fever.’
c. Including one ‘measles and whooping cough.’
d. Including one ‘measles and whooping cough.’
e. Including one ‘bloody flux’ and one ‘diarrhoea.’
f. Including one ‘bloody flux’ and one ‘diarrhoea.’
g. Including one ‘mortification in his face.’
h. Including one ‘mortification of lungs.’
Over 80% of the 137 deaths were attributed to just five causes: smallpox, fevers,
measles, dysentery and mortification.
61
Register of grown children – A/FH/A9/10.
General registers – A/FH/A9/2/1-4.
62
Ibid.
173
Smallpox (36 deaths) alone accounted for 26.5% of the deaths. There may also have
been some deaths from smallpox amongst the 118 children where the cause of death
was not stated. There were probably not many of these, though, since the governors
and staff were well aware of how dangerous smallpox was and would therefore have
been anxious to make sure that every death from smallpox was noted. If we made a
generous allowance for under-recording and assumed that fifty children died from the
disease the proportion would be only 1.5% of the 3331 who passed through the
House. 63 Nevertheless, the number of deaths from smallpox must have surprised the
governors. The Brill infirmary had originally been acquired in 1756 with the idea of
using it as an inoculating house.64 In 1757 the Battle Bridge infirmary was used for this
purpose.65 In reply to a letter from Mrs Boscawen of 24th September 1756 the General
Committee assured her that any nurses sent up to collect babies would be perfectly
safe since there was no danger of them catching smallpox. 66 The system had obviously
not worked as well as the Hospital had expected. Probably there were some cases
where an inspector wrongly thought a child had had the smallpox ‘in the natural way.’
There may also have been cases where the child had been inoculated, but the
inoculation had not, for some reason, ‘taken.’ It is clear, though, that the governors
were aware that not all children who were vulnerable to smallpox had been inoculated.
At a meeting of the General Committee in February 1760 the governors resolved
‘That such children as are proper Objects for inoculation; be inoculated as
soon as the Weather permits, and the Doctors consulted thereon.’67
63
According to the Bills of Mortality 8.2% of all deaths in London in the period 1728 to 1757 were
caused by smallpox. J. R. McCullock, Account of the British Empire, 4th ed., 1854, II, p.613.
Quoted in Dorothy George, op.cit., Appendix D, p.407 (1930 edition).
64
Sub-Cttee, 24 May 1756, vol.II, p.74 – A/FH/A03/005/002.
65
Ibid., 23 April 1757, p.114.
66
G.Cttee, 29 Sept. 1756, p.136 – A/FH/K02/006 microfilm X041/015.
67
C-Cttee, Wednesday 20 February 1760 – A/FH/K02/007, p.218 – (microfilm X041/015).
174
In August of the same year the Secretary reported to the Sub-Committee that 60 boys
and 65 girls in the Hospital had not had the smallpox. The Sub-Committee
‘Ordered, that the Apothecary do take a list of the said children and do
acquaint the Physicians and Surgeons that the Committee desire that as
many of them as can conveniently, be inoculated in the House taken for
that purpose in Cold Bath Fields.’68
The fact that there were only thirty six deaths attributed to smallpox in the House,
though, does suggest that many of the grown children had either been successfully
inoculated or had already had the smallpox while at nurse, though admittedly not all the
children who caught the disease in the House would have died of it. Smallpox seems to
have been particularly lethal for young children.
The second most common cause of death was fever, with thirty-one cases. Fifteen of
these were described as ‘eruptive fever.’69 Mrs McClure thinks that this was almost
certainly scarlet fever. 70 This was not always fatal – in fact far more children caught the
disease in the House than died of it. In the list of medicines to be used in the branch
hospitals there is a mention to ‘Bark in Intermittents,’ presumably a reference to the use
of quinine in the cases of malarial fever or ague. This was probably the only type of
fever for which there was an effective treatment. The list also mentions the ‘fever
Powder of our Dispensatory’ but does not explain what it consisted of.71 Such other
treatments as were given, such as bleeding the children, making them vomit or purging
them probably made them worse.72 It was not always an advantage to have access to
a physician or an apothecary in the eighteenth century.
68
Sub-Cttee, Wednesday 30 August 1760 – A/FH/A/3/5/4, p.112.
69
For sources see footnote 32.
70
McClure, op.cit., p.208.
71
Sub-Cttee, 31 Dec.1757, vol.2, p.146.
72
McClure, op.cit., p.208.
175
The third most common cause of death was measles (nineteen cases). Here again, no
effective treatment was available. The majority of those that caught measles, though,
survived.73
Dysentery killed eighteen children, almost as many as measles did. This suggests that
the General Committee had been too optimistic when, in the letter to Mrs Boscawen
already referred to, they had said the House was ‘as clean and wholesome Place as
any in the Town.’74 The water supply or the food must have been contaminated. It does
not follow, though, that the water stank or the food looked as though it was rotten, so
we cannot be sure whether the governors should have known that something was
wrong. It may be that the lavatories were not kept as clean as they should have been
and this should have been more obvious. By 1760, though, the governors realized the
connection between dirty water and disease, though it is not clear whether they were
thinking specifically of dysentery. At a meeting of the General Committee the governors
decided that the children should only drink water from the conduit spring and that it
should be locked before use.75
Ten deaths were attributed to ‘mortification.’76 One boy was said to have died from
‘mortification in his face’ and one girl of ‘mortification of lungs.’ As Mrs McClure points
out, mortification may refer to gangrene, but the word was sometimes used to describe
a state of torpor before death and does not therefore throw much light on the causes of
death.77 It may be that the term was sometimes used when the physicians or the
apothecary did not know the real cause.
73
In 1768 there were 101 cases, but only seven died. McClure, op.cit., p.208.
74
G.Cttee, vol.V, p.131 – A/FH/K02/005 – microfilm X041/015.
75
C.Cttee, February 20, 1760 – A/FH/K02/007, p.218 (microfilm X041/015).
76
See footnote 35 for sources.
77
McClure, op.cit., p.209.
176
EDUCATING AND TRAINING THE CHILDREN
The education and training of the children did not differ radically from that provided
before the General Reception. All the children were given some religious instruction.
Each Sunday they were to be seen in the chapel, the boys on one side of the gallery
and the girls on the other. In November 1752 the governors appointed the Rev. John
Waring as Reader. He served until 1766. He was succeeded by the Rev. Samuel
Harper, who held the past for thirty-six years.78 Waring seems to have been rather lazy
and had to be reminded more than once that he was supposed to teach the children
the doctrines of the Church of England.79 There do not seem to have been any
complaints about Harper. When the first full-time schoolmaster, John Redpath, was
appointed on 16 February 1757, one of his duties was to teach the boys the catechism.
The schoolmistresses taught the girls. Redpath may have been more conscientious
than Waring: he had 2,000 copies of the Hospital’s prayers, the Creed, the Lord’s
Prayer and the Ten Commandments printed.80 We do not know, however, how
effective this religious instruction was. In 1757 Dr. Johnson claimed that he ‘found not a
Child that seemed to have heard of his Creed, or the Commandments.’ It may be,
though, that the children were frightened out of their wits, as we would have been if Dr.
Johnson had pounced on us. 81
78
Nicholls and Wray, op.cit., pp.209-210.
79
McClure, op.cit., p.226. The whole of Chapter 17, A Christian and Useful Education, is excellent.
80
Ibid., p.221.
81
Ibid., p.106-107.
177
All the children were taught to read, partly so that they be able to read the Bible. In
1767 Jonas Hanway wrote
‘I am permanently of the opinion, upon the general view of this class of
mankind, that all the children should be taught to read, as they constantly
are in hospitals, were it only that they may be able to read some parts of
the New Testament, and the Common Prayer Book, the orders of their
mentors and the requests of their friends. More knowledge of books than
this may not be necessary…’82
At times the governors examined the children to see what progress they were making
in reading. 83 On 20 September 1760 Redpath produced a report: ‘The Books proper,
are a Spelling Book for beginners, and a book consisting of little instructive Stories,
Tables, Select Proverbs, Moral Sentences and Maxims etc. for the more advanced.’
He suggested the biblical stories of Joseph, of Moses’ birth and of David and Goliath
could be used as well as material from ‘Prophane History.’ He also recommended
stories with a moral such as The Ant and the Grasshopper (in praise of
industriousness), The Young Man and the Swallow (warning against gaming) and The
Vain Jackdaw (the dangers of being taken in by flattery). 84 Many of these stories have
an animal in the title, so it is quite likely that they may have taken their inspiration from
Aesop’s Fables.
This approach to reading seems quite enlightened, but it must be admitted that not all
children read well or understood what they were reading. In October 1761 the
governors urged Mr Lewis, who had taken over from Mr. Redpath as Schoolmaster, to
‘make Reading pleasant to the Boys by their taking a little at a time and by laying a
proper Emphasis give them a proper Idea of the sense of the words.’85
82
Jonas Hanway, Letters on the Importance of the Rising Generation, vol.II, pp.37-38 (London,
1767).
83
See, for example, Sub-Cttee, 6 September 1760, 25 April 1761, 16 May 1761, 30 May 1761, 18
July 1761, 8 August 1761, 5 September 1761 and 10 October 1761 – A/FH/A/3/5/4.
84
Ibid., September 20 1760.
85
Ibid., October 10 1761.
178
Children were not normally taught to write or to do arithmetic, though a few of the
brighter children may have picked up these skills. Hanway argued that ‘As to writing, if
one in twenty acquires this part of learning, it may answer for the other nineteen.
Among the poor foundlings, I do not know of one of them taught to write, in the
hospital, except by accident, or that a boy is forward and impatient to learn; though it is
certain that many of them go to employment where writing is necessary, and must be
taught by their masters.’86
As we have seen it was comparatively easy to train the girls in skills which would be
useful for them later, because the governors realized that the vast majority of them
would be apprenticed to ‘household business’ (domestic service). On Wednesday 13
October 1756 the General Committee resolved that ‘a Committee be appointed to see
that the Girls be employed in such Manner as to be fit for all sorts of Household
Work.’87 Almost all the jobs the girls did in the House, would have been useful
preparation. The work the girls did also helped to keep down the number of paid staff,
thus reducing costs. Some of the girls became so skilful that the Hospital was able to
sell shirts, table cloths and other items made by them. The sale of these items only
raised small sums, but must have been good publicity for the charity.
86
Hanway, Rising Generation, vol. II, p.38.
87
G.Cttee. vol.V, p.142 – A/FH/K02/005 – microfilm X041/015.
179
Taylor White, in the letter of June 30 1764 to Timothy Lee at Ackworth, referred to
earlier, gave an account of how the girls’ work was organized:
‘Our numbers are nearly the same with yrs our method of Education &
employment of Girls is this We have 2 work Mistresses to teach Sewing
and Darning 1 to teach reading 1 Spinning & Coatmaking Each of these
Mistresses have in the House the Care & Inspection of a number of Girls is
to each Ward there is a Housemaid as their Assistant & Sev’t to help them
Clean the Ward etc. Each Mistress has also one at least of the biggest Girls
as her Assistant in the School to help cut out work & over look the other
Girls And these biger Girls do reely instruct the small ones more effectively
then the Mistresses & are much improved themselves by the teaching of
others. The Children are not separately kept to a distinct employmt for each
Child but every Girl goes to read Spin or Work alternately so that they soon
become expert in those various works which fit them for the domestic
Employment of females. We have Girls of 7 or 8 Years old who will each
spin about ! lb of 10 [?] flax. They can work well with the needles so as to
make a fine Shirt as well as the London Milliners. And some can flower
Muslin or Cambrick fit for Ladies Ruffles etc. Our Coat-making is confined
to a few bigger Girls being rather too hard labor for young ones.88
In 1772 the schoolmistress reported that amongst the girls there were seventeen shirt
and shift makers, five darners, seventeen knitters, twelve engaged in spinning and
thirteen in coat-making (plus ‘several young children, not capable of anything’).89
Providing suitable work for boys must have been even more difficult than earlier, since,
as we shall see, boys were apprenticed to a wide variety of trades during the General
Reception period. The governors, though, probably still hoped that most boys would be
apprenticed to husbandry or the sea services. In 1748 the governors had publicly
stated that the boys were intended for these occupations.90 In a letter to Mrs Boscawen
of Hatchlands Park, Surrey of 22 September 1756, the General Committee stated that
‘the Boys of this Hospital are commonly placed out, at about eleven or twelve Years of
Age; and the Governors, if they can, always chuse the Sea for them, before any other
Occupation.’91 No doubt, though, the governors bore in mind the fact that they were
88
Copy Book of Letters, vol.3, p.279 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
89
Nicholls and Wray, op.cit., p.141. Some of the knitters were probably making gloves. In March
1762 the children were taught to knit worsted gloves. Ibid., p.139.
90
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.130.
91
G.Cttee, vol.V, p.131 – A/FH/K02/005 – microfilm X041/015.
180
writing to an admiral’s wife and that Britain was now at war with France. For a time a
rope-walk was set up in the colonnades so that the boys could spin twine and make
fishing nets. The governors welcomed their occupations, ‘being laborious and to be
performed in the open Air,’ and in every respect consistent with the Destination to
Navigation and Husbandry.92 It was decided in 1766 that the boys (and the girls) should
be taught to mend their own clothes and this skill would certainly have been useful for
seamen. 93 A few boys were employed in helping the gardener and this would have
been good training for any who were later apprenticed to agriculture. But most boys
were employed on work which had no connection with either the sea or farming. A list
presented by the schoolmaster to the General Committee in 1772 recorded an organist
(John Painter), three tailors, two making nets, eleven darners, fifty knitters, two garden
boys, one baker and one messenger. Twenty boys were apparently too young to be
included in the list.94
As early as 1760 the governors seem to have realized that it was not possible to devise
a system of training that would be of use to them when they were apprenticed. In July
of that year they declared
‘that the employment of the Children in any Manufactory is not with a view
to teach them a Trade by which they are to get a livelihood but to give them
an early Turn to Industry by giving them constant employment.’95
We have already mentioned that many children spent only a short time in the House.
This would have limited the effectiveness of the training given to girls as well as boys.
Of the children taken in from 2June 1756 to 31 July 1773 37.6% spent less than three
months there; by the latter date, 30.1% spent from three months to one year, 12.5%
92
McClure, op.cit., p.185. The ropewalk was in existence before the General Reception began.
93
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.140. See also Peter Earle, Sailors – English Merchant Seamen
1650– 1775 (1998), p.92.
94
Ibid., p.141.
95
Sub-Cttee, Saturday 12 July 1760 – A/FH/A/3/5/4, p.89.
th
181
form one to two years and 6.4% from two to three years. Almost two-fifths spent less
than one year. Under one-fifth (19.8%) spent two years or more.96
The contrast with the pre-General Reception period is very marked. As we saw in
Chapter 7 no child apprenticed from the House before the General Reception spent
less than three years there and 72% spent eight or more years there.
THE LONDON HOSPITAL AND APPRENTICESHIP
The London governors aimed to apprentice almost all the children who survived that
had not been claimed by parents or friends. Securing apprenticeships for the children
was critically important. Given that most foundlings left the hospital at the ages of ten,
eleven and twelve, the governors really had no alternative. They could hardly have sent
them out to fend for themselves at so early an age, especially as they would have
known little about the world outside the hospital boundaries.
Apprenticeship was
intended to give them some security: it gave them somewhere to live and imposed
duties on the masters or mistresses.
It gave the governors the right to intervene to
protect them if they were ill-treated. In theory at least by the end of their apprenticeship
they should have had sufficient instruction to enable them to earn their own living.
Apprenticeship was important for another reason: it was a way by which foundlings
could gain a right of settlement which would entitle them to poor relief in their parishes
if they fell on hard times. The Foundling Hospital itself had an ’extra parochial’ status,
which did not carry with it the right to poor relief.
96
Register of grown children – A/FH/AP/10.
General Registers – A/FH/A9/2/1-4.
182
THE NUMBER OF APPRENTICES FROM THE LONDON HOSPITAL, 2 JUNE 1756
TO 31 JULY 1773
The governors sent some of their grown children to the branch hospitals, but hundreds
of children remained in London and were apprenticed from there.
Whatever the
weakness in the training given, the London hospital succeeded in placing out 775 boys
and 770 girls as apprentices. In aggregate, though, the branch hospitals apprenticed
far more children than the London hospital: 1476 boys and 1380 girls were apprenticed
from the branch hospitals in the period of the General Reception and its aftermath (the
great majority from the Ackworth hospital). Thus the London hospital accounted for
only just over a third of all children apprenticed from the hospitals, even though not one
branch hospital was open for the entire period from 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773. 97
When the 426 or so children apprenticed in the period 1761 to 1770 without going to
any of the hospitals are taken into account, the proportion of apprentices from the
London hospital falls to under one third of all children apprenticed. In some cases
children were listed as being apprenticed form the London hospital who had been there
for only a very short period: 43 boys and 34 girls in the period 1760 to 1769 spent three
days or less at the London hospital as grown children. Clearly they can have derived
no benefit at all from their stay there as grown children. In fact, in some cases they
were probably taken to London merely so that the clerks could get the apprenticeship
indenture signed. Of these 67 children 36 were sent back to the area where they had
been nursed. Some were apprenticed to the husbands of nurses. Many of their ‘short
stay’ grown children were only four or five years old. In some cases, as with a number
apprenticed without being returned to London, the children were really being adopted –
apprenticeships was merely the legal device for achieving this end. There are a
number of other cases where a young child was kept at the London hospital for only a
few weeks before being returned to the place where he or she had been raised. Here
97
Apprenticeship registers – A/FH/A12/003/001-002, microfilm X41/5. All the statistics in this
section are based on an analysis of these registers. Mrs McClure was clearly mistaken in thinking
that the majority of children were apprenticed from the London hospital. McClure, op.cit., p.132.
183
again, in many cases this probably amounted to adoption. One hundred and fifty four
children of all ages were returned to the places where they had been brought up.
At first the boys were apprenticed until they were twenty-four. The governors here
were following the terms of the Act of 1740 which was itself presumably based on the
Poor Law Act of 1601.98 From 1752 masters or mistresses were required to pay the
boys for the last three years of their apprenticeship: £5 a year became the standard
amount.99 This suggests that the governors felt uneasy about apprenticing the boys for
such a long period. If we leave aside a few exceptional cases, the practice of
apprenticing boys to the age of 21 only started in the spring of 1765 and most boys
were apprenticed till 24 until the summer of 1767. From that time on all boys were
apprenticed till the age of 21.100 In that year an Act of 1767 laid it down the same rule
for boys apprenticed by the Poor Law authorities.101 The girls were always apprenticed
till the age of 21 unless they married before that age. Given the early age at which
most of the foundlings were apprenticed, apprenticeships for both boys and girls could
last a very long time.
Apprenticeship fees were only introduced in 1767 at the insistence of the House of
Commons, which was anxious to get the ‘parliamentary’ children apprenticed as soon
as possible. 102
98
See Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.341. For criticism of this policy see D. George, op.cit., Chapter V.
99
Apprenticeships Registers – A/FH/A12/3/4 and A/FH/A12/3/2 – microfilm X41/5.
100
Ibid.
101
D. George, op.cit., p.241.
102
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2.
184
Number apprenticed from London, 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773 *
1756 (from 2 June)
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773 (to 31 July)
Total
6
39
20
13
36
34
31
16
18
100
148
161
183
441
171
49
44
35
1545
Boys
4
20
10
5
11
16
15
8
6
51
73
99
105
240
86
14
8
4
775
Girls
2
19
10
8
25
18
16
8
12
49
75
62
78
201
85
35
36
31
770
* All London apprentices are included, including ‘short stay’ children and children taken in before the
General Reception.
In the early years not all that many children had reached the right age for
apprenticeships. In the late 1760s, however, the Foundling Hospital was faced with the
problem of apprenticing many of the children taken in during the General Reception
who were now old enough to be placed out. In the early 1770s the numbers needing
apprenticeships declined. The pattern of apprenticeships was also affected by the
numbers that could be placed out from the branch hospitals. Had not so many children
been apprenticed from Ackworth from 1767 to 1769, for example, the London hospital
would have had to find places for far more children (in those years Ackworth
apprenticed 1649, whereas the London Hospital only sent out 795 children).
Girls were somewhat harder to place out than boys, no doubt because there were
rather fewer occupations open to them: - 96.6% of the boys apprenticed from the
London hospital in the period 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773 had been found places by
the end of 1770; only 86.8% of the girls had taken up apprenticeships by that time.
Nevertheless the number of boys and girls apprenticed is about the same.
185
Trades to which Boys were Apprenticed from London, 2 June 1756 to 31 July
1773
Boys were apprenticed to 174 different occupations ranging from apothecary to woollen
weaver. Many trades were mentioned only once. In the following table the various
trades have been grouped together with related occupations. Where this has not been
possible, apprentices have been listed under the Miscellaneous heading. All trades
taking more than five apprentices are listed in brackets under the appropriate heading.
Occupations
Husbandry and related Trades
(9 trades)
Cloth Manufacture
(22 trades)
Metal Trades
(29 trades)
Food Trades
(18 trades)
Peruke Makers and/or Barbers
Clothing Trade
(13 trades)
Household Business
Leather Goods
(5 trades)
Wood Trades
(13 trades)
Building Trades
(9 trades)
Miscellaneous
(49 trades)
Sea Service and Related Trades
(5 trades)
Number of Apprentices
112
[Husbandry 72; Gardener 22;
Gardening and Household Business 10;]
94
[Weaver 60; Silk Weaver 5]
72
[Watchmaker 12; Watch Finisher 8;
Farrier 8]
68
[Baker 15; Butcher 10; Cheesemonger 7;
Ginger Bread Baker 6; Vintner 6]
67
60
[Taylor 29; Hat Maker 7; Staymaker 7;
Breeches Maker 5;]
60
48
[Shoemaker/Cordwainer 42]
29
[Carpenter 7; Cooper 7]
15
95 *
[Jeweller 8; Apothecary 6;
Tallow Chandler 6; Bookbinder 5]
55
[Sea Service 50]
* Includes 5 boys where the trade is not specified.
Only 72 boys were apprenticed to husbandry and only 50 to the sea service. London
was not the most obvious place for a farmer to go who was looking for a boy to help
him. A much higher proportion of boys (44.7%) were apprenticed to agriculture from
Ackworth than from London (6.5%). There was little demand for apprentices to the sea
service after the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, because the Royal Navy needed
186
fewer men in times of peace and there were plenty of men and boys who had served in
the Navy who could now join or rejoin the merchant service. The Marine Society, which
had been founded in 1756 to recruit men and boys for the Royal Navy, nearly went out
of existence after 1763 because there seemed to be no need for it any longer.103
It would have been impossible for the governors to provide appropriate training for the
jobs most of the boys were apprenticed to, even if they could have known in advance
the likely number who would be apprenticed to each occupation. The Foundling
Hospital may perhaps have been more successful in instilling habits of industry than
some of the nurses, but this apart, for most of the jobs the boys would have been no
better prepared than those who were apprenticed straight from their nurses.
The Destination of the Boys – the Importance of London
There was, however, one obvious advantage in having grown children brought up in
London. London was not only the biggest city in Britain, the seat of government and the
centre of fashion and the arts: it had an overwhelmingly important role in the economy.
It was the greatest port in the country and by far the biggest centre of industry.
Campbell’s The London Tradesman shows the amazing variety of trade carried out in
the capital. 104 It lists 316 occupations, beginning with anchor smith and ending with
woollen draper. London was thus an excellent ‘market’ for foundling apprentices. Most
of the non-agricultural occupations to which the London grown children were
apprenticed were practised in the capital. It is hardly surprising, then, that 567 of the
boys (just 73%) went to masters of mistresses in London.
103
See James Stephen Taylor, op.cit., pp. 69-73.
104
R. Campbell, The London Tradesman, first published in 1747.
187
As the following chart shows, most of the boys apprenticed outside London went to the
Home Counties (123). Several English counties did not take a single apprentice from
the London hospital and none went to Wales.
Number of Boys Sent to Each Region, 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773
Region *
London **
Inner Home Counties
Outer Home Counties
The North
The Midlands
Southern England
West Country
East Anglia
Welsh Border
Wales and Monmouthshire
West Indies
*
**
***
Number Apprenticed
567
91
[Middlesex 30;*** Kent 22; Surrey 21;
Essex 18]
32
[Berkshire 15; Hertfordshire 12;
Buckinghamshire 5]
27
[Yorkshire 15; Westmorland 7;
Northumberland 5]
26
[Staffordshire 7; Huntingdonshire 5]
15
[Hampshire 11]
10
[Devon 5)
5
1
Nil
1
775
For definition see Chapter Eight, footnote 24.
The Bills of Mortality area plus Marylebone.
10 of these were only three or four miles form London.
Girls Apprenticed from the London Hospital
Girls were apprenticed to 53 different trades, but 35 of these took only one girl.
The following chart is set out in the same way as the corresponding chart for the boys:
Trades to which Girls were Apprenticed from London,
2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773
Occupations
Household Business
Cloth Manufacture and Related Trades
(16 trades)
Clothing Trades
(16 trades)
Miscellaneous
(20 trades)
Number of Apprentices
593
94
[Embroiderer 32; Pencilling Calicoes 13;
Carpet Manufacture 11; Silk Throwster 9;
Tambour work * 8; Printing Calicoes 7]
* A form of embroidery.
61
[Mantua Maker 27; Milliner 14]
22
188
Household business was, as one would expect, overwhelmingly the most important
occupation, accounting for 77% of the total. As we have seen, training the girls
received in the hospital should have recommended them to potential masters of
mistresses (though, it must be admitted, many probably became mere household
drudges, doing work for which no training was needed).
Most of the rest were employed in cloth finishing (for example, embroidering cloth) or in
making up clothes (for example, mantua making). Many girls, as we have seen, spent
only a short time at the hospital, but those who had stayed two or three years there
would have acquired skills that would have made them very useful in these
occupations. They were almost certainly better qualified for these trades than girls
apprenticed by the parish authorities. It is likely, therefore, that the governors found it
easier to find good masters or mistresses for these girls than the churchwardens or
overseers did for parish apprentices.
Number of Girls Sent to Each Region, 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773
Region
London
Inner Home Counties
Outer Home Counties
The Midlands
The North
Welsh Border
Southern England
West Country
East Anglia
Scotland
Wales and Monmouthshire
Isle of Jersey
*
Within three or four miles of London.
Number Apprenticed
527
152
[Essex 53; Surrey 42 (3*);
Middlesex 36 (25*); Kent 21]
30
[Hertfordshire 17;Berkshire 8;
Buckinghamshire 5]
18
12
[Northumberland 6]
12
[Cheshire 9)
10
[Hampshire 9]
3
3
2
Nil
1
770
189
The general picture is very similar to that for the boys. The percentage of girls going to
London is somewhat less (just over 68%) and the percentage to the Home Counties
somewhat greater (23.6%).
If we combine the totals for London and the Home
Counties the difference is slight (about 92% for the girl and about 89% for the boys).
Many of the ‘grown children’ were sent on from the London hospital to one of the
branch hospitals and their governors became responsible for finding them places. But
the London governors succeeded in apprenticing most of the children who remained in
the London hospital. A handful who could not be placed out were kept on to work in
the House – it became their permanent home. Only 33 children taken in from the day
the charity opened its doors on 25 March 1741 at the end of the General Reception
nineteen years later (25 March 1760) were discharged because they had reached the
age of 21 and no one had been found to take them as apprentices.** 105
THE FATE OF THE CHILDREN APPRENTICED FROM LONDON
The governors must have been aware that the churchwarden and overseers of the
poor of the London parishes had the reputation for caring much more about getting
pauper children apprenticed as soon as possible (preferably in another parish) than
they did about finding suitable masters or mistresses.106 The governors did their best to
ensure that their charges got a better start in life than pauper apprentices. No child was
apprenticed without some enquiry being made into the character of the potential master
or mistress. Sometimes one of the governors would recommend a person known to
him as suitable.107 In other cases a governor would make enquiries before the General
*
In addition to these 33, eleven children were discharged from Ackworth on reaching the age of 21.
105
General Registers – A/FH/A/9/1-4
106
Enquiry into the Causes of the Increase of the Poor (1738), p.43, quoted in Dorothy George, op.
cit., pp 227-228. Mrs George’s chapter on pauper apprentices (Chapter V) is excellent. Appendix
IV giving examples of apprenticeship cases from the Middlesex Sessions Records is also well
worth reading.
107
See the Minutes of the General Committee – microfilm X041/015. Examples: Captain Stephen
Douglas recommended by George Whatley (14 July 1756); John Brown of Ramsgate
recommended by Edward Hunt (15 September 1756).
190
Committee came to a decision.108 Sometimes the Secretary was given this task. 109 The
General Committee eventually decided that anyone applying for an apprentice would
have to provide the name of someone who could vouch for his or her character.110 As
the number of foundlings to be apprenticed increased, however, it must have been
harder to ensure that they all went to good masters or mistresses who could look after
them well and give them proper training.
The majority of boys were apprenticed to masters rather than mistresses (1760;15).
Most of the girls were also apprenticed to masters (677 to masters; 93 to mistresses).
This is, however, only because widows and spinsters were the only women who could
sign indentures on their own behalf. In the case of married women, the indentures had
to be signed by their husbands.
In many cases a girl, though in theory apprenticed to
a man, would really be employed and instructed by his wife. This is especially the case
for girls apprenticed to household business or mantua making. Most of the boys would
have been supervised by their masters who would have employed them in their own
trades. Boys apprenticed to household business would normally have been employed
by the gentry rather than by working men. For both boys and girls apprenticed to
working men, the wives would have presumably played the key role in running the
home and the life foundling apprentices led must have depended as much on the
character of the wives as it did on that of the husbands.
Although the governors did their best to find the children suitable masters and
mistresses, they did not normally check on how well the children were being looked
after. The leading London governors evidently felt uneasy about this. On 1 June 1771
108
Examples:
Anne Crosby checked by Mr Farquier (9 March 1757);
Robert Beecroft checked by Mr. Hatsell (27 April 1757).
109
Ibid. Examples:
Thomas Young checked by the Secretary (20 April 1757); John Pinsent (30
August 1758).
110
Ibid. 22 June 1757. Soon after this they arranged for a standard printed form should be used
(20 July 1757).
191
the Sub-Committee resolved ‘that it would be greatly for the benefit of the children
apprenticed, were some of the Governors charitably to visit them to enquire of their as
well as that of their Masters or Mistresses behaviour, which might be done by taking a
list of those Children near their respective Abodes.’111
Those active governors who regularly attended the meetings of the General Committee
and the Sub-Committee would hardly have had the time to do much visiting, though in
1771 Jonas Hanway did visit twenty four girls that had been apprenticed to tambour
work (embroidery) to Felix Ehrliholzter at Plaistow in Essex. Hanway
‘found them very clean and in good order. The Master made no very great
Complaint of any of them but commended them very highly. His wife says
that she teaches them as they grow up Household Business. Mr Ehrliholzter
said that he proposed to give them work when they were out of their Time,
only one appeared to be sick notwithstanding the sedentary life, and not one
had died of the whole Number apprenticed to him.’112
As far as we can tell, those governors who had taken little part in the Foundling
Hospital’s affairs do not seem to have acted on the Sub-Committee’s suggestion. At
any rate, if they did so no reports of their visits have survived in the Foundling Hospital
records. We have in fact little information about how most of the children fared.
The governors had not devised any scheme for seeing that all the apprentices were
visited, but they did investigate when complaints were made about the children by their
masters or where it was reported that masters or mistresses had ill-treated their
charges. There are not many such cases, especially when we consider that hundreds
of children were apprenticed from London, but there must have been other cases
where apprenticeship had proved a failure which the governors never heard of.
111
Sub-Cttee, 1 June 1771 – A/FH/A/3/5/9.
112
Ibid., 15 June 1771.
192
Apprentices were issued with a set of written instructions urging them to behave well:
‘You have been taught to fear God, to love Him, to be honest, careful,
laborious and diligent. As you hope for Success in this World, and Happiness
in the next, you are to be mindful of what has been taught you. You are to
behave honestly, justly, soberly, and carefully in every thing, to everybody,
and especially towards your [Master or Mistress] and Family; and to execute
all lawful Commands with Industry, Chearfulness, and good manners.’113
Not all the children lived up to these high standards. One boy, Walter Duck, turned out
to be a thief and a pickpocket and was taken up in the streets and committed as a
vagrant to Bridewell.114 One girl, Patience Revel, was declared to be guilty of theft and
other vices by her master, John Boutflower. The Sub-Committee refused to take her
back though they said they would agree to her being turned over to another master if
someone suitable would take her. They also said that a magistrate could order her
‘proper Correction’. They added that girls like her sometimes changed for the better.115
Some of the foundling apprentices ran away. Edmund Chester, for example, left his
master and pretended that he had been pressed (for the Navy).116
Sarah Mowbray’s
mistress reported that she had ‘Eloped from her, and had taken some of the Clothes
given her by the Committee. The only reason she apprehends for her Elopement was
that she could not lay Alone.’
The Sub-Committee said they could not end the
apprenticeship but would see if this girl had run off to the woman who had nursed
her. 117
There are some cases where masters or mistresses died before the apprenticeship
ended.
In this case it was the duty of the executors to fulfil the terms of the
apprenticeship.
In February 1771, for example Joshua Peck informed the Sub-
Committee that both his master and mistress were dead. He was ordered to inform the
113
Mrs. McClure, op. cit., p. 263 reprints The Complete Instructions to Apprentices.
114
Sub-Cttee Minutes, 18 March, 1769-A/FH/A/5/5/9.
115
Ibid., 27 April 1771.
116
Ibid., 16 February 1771.
117
Sub-Cttee 25 November 1771 – A/FH/A/3/5/10.
193
executors that they must let the hospital know to whom they intended to turn the boy
over for the rest of his time.118
Sometimes a master or mistress abandoned an apprentice. On the 5th August 1769, for
example, the Steward told the Sub-Committee that Henry Clark of St. John’s Wapping,
hatter and shop-seller, was bankrupt and in the King’s Bench prison. He had left his
apprentice Jane Fuller to fend for herself. She had come to the Hospital for help and
had been taken care of at the Coach and Horses infirmary.119 In April 1771 Susan
Ruby told the Sub-Committee that ‘her mistress had left her quite destitute and she had
no Victuals but from the neighbours for 3 days, and was in a very naked Condition.’
The governors put her in the Coach and Horses infirmary and ordered the Secretary to
write to the master to attend the next meeting of the General Committee.120
Other masters or mistresses neglected or ill-treated their apprentices. Judith Wenman,
for example, appeared before the Sub-Committee and claimed that her mistress had
not instructed her in mantua-making, as she was supposed to do, but only in household
work and that she kept her very short of clothes ‘having but two shifts and as few other
things in Proportion’. The Secretary was told to ask her mistress to appear before the
General Committee.121
When the governors heard that Barnabas Norton, apprenticed to a shoemaker, William
Fowler, in the parish of St Andrews Holborn, might have been ill-treated, the Foundling
Hospital’s schoolmaster was sent to investigate. The boy appeared before the subCommittee: he was bruised and stooped. The governors ordered the apothecary to
examine him. He reported that the stooping might be due to the fact that he had to
118
Sub-Cttee 19 February 16771 - A/FH/A/3/5/9.
119
Sub-Cttee, 5 August 1769 – A/FH/A/3/5/8.
120
Sub-Cttee, 6 April 1771-A/FH/A/3/5/9.
121
Ibid., 9 Nov. 1771.
194
bend over his work, ‘but that in his Arms were several black and blue Marks which
appeared to him to proceed from Bruises, That he was full of Vermin and his Head
Sore and full of blotches Occasioned by Neglect.’ They instructed the Secretary to
write to Fowler telling him that if he did not take better care of Norton, ‘the Corporation
will take such Measures as the Law Directs.’122
In November 1770 the Rev. Mr Richards of Yateley wrote to the Sub-Committee to tell
them that Mary Durham, apprentice to a silk weaver in the parish of St. Luke, Old
Street had turned up in his area ‘on Account’ of being half starved and otherwise illtreated. The governors ordered the master, John Williams, to attend the next SubCommittee meeting.123
About three weeks later the Sub-Committee minutes authorised payment to the
apothecary for ‘Coach hire and other Expenses, for Carrying Witnesses before
magistrates, etc. in relation to the Child Sarah Powell, Apprenticed to Berry in Hanway
Yard which said Berry was Convicted and imprisoned for using the said Child ill.’124
The most shocking case of brutal treatment of a foundling came to light in 1767. In
1765 Mary Jones was apprenticed to James Brownrigg, a plasterer and decorator,
living in Fetter Lane. The girl was treated with sadistic cruelty by his wife Elizabeth
Brownrigg. In 1767 Mary Jones managed to escape and find her way to the Foundling
Hospital. The Gentleman’s Magazine records that
‘Mrs Brownrigg used to lay down two chairs on the kitchen floor, in such a manner that
the seat of one might support the back of the other; and then fastening the girl down,
122
Ibid., 26 Oct, 1771.
123
Ibid., 10 Nov. 1770.
124
Ibid., 1 Dec., 1770.
195
sometimes naked, and sometimes with her coats pulled over her head, she used to
whip her till her strength was exhausted; at other times when the girl had been washing
the room or the stairs, her mistress has found fault with her work, and taking her up in
her arms, has repeatedly plunged her head in the pail of water nearby.
By such
treatment the girl received many hurts to different parts of her body …. and was
besides kept in continual terror by threat of drowning.’ When she was admitted to the
Foundling Hospital it was feared for a time that she might lose the sight in one eye.
Mrs Brownrigg had also taken two pauper apprentices from the precinct of White
Friars. Both of them were cruelly treated. One of them, Mary Mitchell, managed to
escape. The other girl, Mary Clifford, died as a result of the beatings she received.
Elizabeth
125
Brownrigg
was
convicted
of
her
murder
and
executed.125
See the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for a full account of the treatment of the girls. (September 1767,
volume. 37, pp 433-437).
196
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SETTING UP OF THE SIX BRANCH HOSPITALS
THE REASONS FOR ESTABLISHING BRANCH HOSPITALS
Six branch hospitals – Ackworth, Shrewsbury, Aylesbury, Westerham, Barnet and
Chester – were set up between 1757 and 1763.
It seems likely that when the House of Commons on 6 April 1756 recommended State
support for the Foundling Hospital M.P.s assumed that branch hospitals would be
founded to cope with the increase in numbers that would follow the adoption of a policy
of indiscriminate admission. One of the Commons’ resolutions had declared
‘That to render the said Hospital of general Utility and Effect, it should be
entitled to appoint proper Places in all Counties, Ridings or Divisions of the
Kingdom, for the reception of all exposed and deserted Young Children’1
and it would have been a short step from setting up places of reception to establishing
branch hospitals in the same places (or at least in some of them). The governors,
though, ignored the suggestions that receiving houses should be set up all over the
country and insisted that only children brought to the London hospital in Lamb’s
Conduit Fields would be accepted by the charity. They were probably reluctant to do
anything that might lead to an increase in the number of foundlings from the provinces
and may have felt that the charity might become unmanageable if there was more than
one place of reception.
The governors were also cautious at first about setting up branch hospitals. It would
have been a waste of limited funds to set up more hospitals than were needed. Some
time had to elapse before they could estimate the number of children likely to be
brought in each month during the General Reception. They also had time on their side,
since children accepted by the charity were not normally taken from their nurses until
1
G.Cttee, Vol.V, pp. 54-55 – A/FH/K02/005 – microfilm X041/015.
197
they were at least five years old. As early as November 24th, 1756, however, Taylor
White informed the General Committee that a branch hospital would probably be
erected in Yorkshire2 and on December 15th of that year the General Committee was
asked to draw up some rules ‘for instituting and regulating Country Hospitals.’3 On
Wednesday January 19th 1757 the General Committee considered a plan for
managing branch hospitals and arranged to send it to the General Court for approval. 4
The printed Account of the Hospital, published in 1759, declared that
‘As the Hospital at London cannot contain the Number of Children under the Care of
the Corporation, it is proper that Houses for the Maintenance and Education of Children
should be established in different parts of the Kingdom.’5 The governors seem to have
been aware that they were now following a policy that would be approved by
Parliament. The first argument used by Taylor White in a letter to George Whatley of 24
August 1758 concerning the advantage of branch hospitals was ‘It’s according to the
resolution of Parliament.’6 He also pointed out that the London hospital would be
unable to take a quarter of those ready to leave their nurses in three years’ time.
The case for branch hospitals did not only rest on the impossibility of finding places for
all grown children in the existing London hospital. Taylor White argued that it would be
cheaper to build branch hospitals in the provinces than to provide more
accommodation in London. Children brought up in the country would be healthier. It
would be easier to apprentice grown children if some were in branch hospitals rather
than all being concentrated in London. They could be given a training which would be
appropriate for the jobs available in their areas. He also argued that if branch hospitals
2
Ibid, p.159.
3
Ibid, p.171.
4
Ibid, p.186.
5
A/FH/A1/5/2, p.52.
6
A/FH/A6/1/11/49.
198
were not opened, then the shortage of accommodation in the London hospital would
mean that children would have to stay longer with their nurses without proper education
and would contract bad habits. 7
Taylor White also believed that establishing branch hospitals would improve the
charity’s ‘image’, to use a modern term. It would show that taxpayers’ money was not
just being used for the benefit of the London area. It would also encourage the country
gentry to take an interest in the venture and would increase support for the charity in
Parliament.
THE SELECTION OF SITES FOR THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
In the Account of the Hospital (1759) the governors set out their criteria for selecting
suitable sites:
“These Houses should be situated in healthy Countries, where Provisions
and Fuel are cheap, and in Places commodious for Carriage to and from
London, where the Children may find proper Employments during their
Continuance under the Care of the Charity and be conveniently placed out
to the Sea Service, Husbandry, Manufactures, or other Employments which
may be useful to the Public.
They should also be in such a Neighbourhood, that a sufficient Number of
Gentlemen may be found to take care of the good Oeconomy of the
Houses, and the proper Education and Disposal of the Children…
It seems more convenient that these Houses should be at some little
Distance form Cities and great Towns than in them.” 8
These do not seem to have been the only factors taken into account. One reason for
selecting Ackworth as the site of the first branch hospital was probably that there were
already a large number of foundlings at nurse in that area who could be sent there
when they left their nurses rather than having to be returned to London. In the case of
Chester the governors of the Blue Coat School were ready to let the Foundling Hospital
7
Ibid. As we saw in Chapter Six, even though six branch hospitals were opened, foundlings did
stay longer at nurse in the 1760s than the children had done in earlier periods. Taylor White
clearly believed that the grown children benefited from the training they received and was
presumably uneasy about this development.
8
A/FH/A1/5/2,p.52-53.
199
occupy that part of their building9 which they did not need rent free for three years.
[This part of the Blue Coat School had been occupied by the Chester General Infirmary
for a few years but in 1761 they moved out to purpose-built accommodation.]10 Chester
may also have been selected partly because Taylor White, the Treasurer, as we have
seen was a Judge of the County Palatine Court there and would therefore have been
able to check on how the hospital was being run when he visited the city. He would
also, presumably, have known many of the local gentry. In the case of Barnet, rather
surprisingly in view of the fact that women were not eligible to become governors, the
suggestion came from Mrs. Prudence West, who was an inspector there.
On the whole, the governors selected the sites well, though not all the desirable
features listed in the Account could be found in all the hospitals. The hospitals were
usually set up in healthy areas. Only four of the 103 children who were sent to
Aylesbury hospital died there.11 The hospital at Shrewsbury (always known locally as
the Orphan Hospital) was built at Kingsland, just outside the town, and overlooking the
Severn. When it was vacated by the charity, part of the building was occupied for a
time by convalescents from the town ‘to enjoy the benefit and pleasure of so desirable,
beautiful and healthful a situation.’12 The hospitals at Ackworth and Westerham were
surrounded by farmland. In urging that a hospital should be set up in the Barnet area
Mrs. West stressed that she had found a suitable house ‘in a delightful situation at the
farther end of Hadley a small distance from any house.’13 Chester had the reputation of
9
J. Hemingway, History of the City of Chester (1831), vol.2, p.196.
10
See letter of Sept.6, 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/69.
11
The Aylesbury register has been reconstructed from the following three general registers –
A/FH/A9/2/1-3.
12
T. Phillips, History of Shrewsbury (1779), quoted in Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.177.
13
A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/69. Letter of 6 Sept, 1762..
200
being a very healthy place. In 1774 a local physician Dr. Haygarth claimed that Chester
had one of the lowest mortality rates in the country.14
The Ackworth, Chester and Shrewsbury hospitals were rather a long way from London,
which increased transport costs, but the Shrewsbury hospital was near the main road
from London to Holyhead, the London to Chester road was an important route, and the
Ackworth hospital was only a few miles from the Great North Road. In each case, the
journey from London was mainly over turnpiked roads (though this, of course,
increased the cost of travel). 15
Admittedly, travel was still quite slow, even in good weather: the journey to London
from Ackworth could take five or six days. Thompson gives one instance where the
caravan (the specially designed vehicle for transporting foundlings) set off from
Ackworth (presumably early in the morning) on November 7th 1769, with one man, one
nurse and eighteen girls. They reached London on the twelfth. The caravan seems to
have set off on the return journey the next day and reached Scrooby on the 18th. They
must have reached Ackworth the next day.16 On January 22nd 1759 Mr. Bather, the
Shrewsbury carrier, offered to take children from London to Shrewsbury. The waggon
would be on the road for eight days. 17
The governors, though, had the sense to realise that long journeys in bad weather
could be harmful to the children’s health. On October 22, 1761, for example,
Collingwood wrote to Thomas Morgan, the secretary of the Shrewsbury hospital, that
14
See Hemingway, op.cit., vol.1, pp.333-4 and The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol.44 (1774), p.472. If
we can accept Haygarth’s figures, the mortality rate was considerably lower than that at
Shrewsbury.
15
E. Pawson, Transport and Economy: The Turnpike Roads in Eighteenth Century Britain, p.139.
16
Henry Thompson, A History of Ackworth School during the first Hundred Years (1879), p.5.
Thompson’s first chapter (an excellent one) deals with the foundling hospital.
17
Shrewsbury Committee minutes, 22 January 1759 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
201
‘the Gentlemen here do not think it safe to remove any more children from distant
places at this season of the Year.’18
Travel was expensive as well as slow. The total cost of the journey to Ackworth and
back mentioned above was £7-7-0 (including £1-6-11d for turnpike tolls). Bather
proposed to charge the Shrewsbury hospital for the journey from London at the rate of
7s each child and 12s for the person looking after them. His wagon could take twenty
children, so that the journey could cost up to £7-12-0d. 19 The cost of taking a batch of
children from London to Shrewsbury, therefore, was about the same as that of
employing a farm labourer for about six months.20
The other three hospitals, Westerham, Aylesbury and Barnet, were all, though, quite
close to London. It would have taken less than a day to get to Barnet and the journeys
to Aylesbury and Westerham could probably have been accomplished in one long
day’s journey, provided the roads were not water-logged.
EXPENDITURE ON THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
The cost of setting up and running the hospitals naturally varied widely:
Hospital
Ackworth
Shrewsbury
Westerham
Aylesbury
Chester
Barnet
Total Expenditure21
£65,931
£54,191
£12,308
£4,238
£3,949
£1,777
£142,395
For comparison, the expenditure on the London hospital in the period 1756 to 1773
was £97,989. 22 This total admittedly included sums spent on the babies kept in the
18
Copy Book of Letters, No,3, p.116 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
19
Thompson, op.cit., p.5 and Shrewsbury minutes, op.cit.
20
For contemporary wages see footnote 109 in Chapter Five.
21
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2. Each year’s expenditure has been rounded to the
nearest pound and the totals are based on these rounded figures.
22
Ibid.
202
hospital as well as money spent on the grown children, but it should be borne in mind
that the major building work in London had been finished by 1756.
The main reason for the differences in expenditure at the various branch hospitals is
obviously the fact that they varied in size so much and were not all in existence for the
same length of time. But not all the hospitals had exactly the same costs to meet. In the
case of Ackworth and Shrewsbury the expenditure included the cost of buying or
leasing land and the cost of building the hospitals. At Aylesbury both the land and the
hospital building were purchased. At Westerham the land and the building were leased.
At Chester, as we have seen, the Blue Coat School allowed the charity to use part of
the school building free of charge for the first three years.
The Hospital almost certainly saved money by setting up branch hospitals in the
country rather than by putting up more buildings in London. The following figures relate
to expenditure incurred by the end of 1766, since there was no further expenditure on
land, building and furniture within our period. Much of the London expenditure recorded
here was, of course, incurred before the General Reception began. Ackworth and
Shrewsbury have been selected for comparison with London because they were of
comparable size to the London hospital.
COST OF BUILDING AND EQUIPPING THE LONDON, ACKWORTH AND
SHREWSBURY HOSPITALS BY 1766
Expenditure on Land, Building and Furniture23
Land
Building costs
Furniture
London
£7,313
£36,960
£4,268
£48,570
Ackworth *
£4,074
£14,148
£1,830
£20,052
Shrewsbury
£1,930
£12,489
£2,626
£17,045
* Excludes the cost of farming utensils
23
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2. [Estate Account]
203
The difference in the price of land in London and Ackworth is even greater than these
figures suggest. The Lamb’s Conduit Fields estate in Bloomsbury in London consisted
of 56 acres and cost £7,313, about £130 an acre.24 By 1760 the Ackworth governors
had bought just over 104 acres in various lots.25 More land was acquired later. The
estate eventually consisted of 127 acres and cost £4,074 or about £32 an acre.26
The difference in building costs is also very marked. The west wing of the London
hospital had cost £11,212 (to the nearest pound), almost as much as the entire
Shrewsbury hospital (£12,449) and the east wing had cost £17,399, more then the cost
of the Ackworth hospital.27
Even the cost of furniture was much greater in London, though this is partly explained
by the fact that the London hospital had been in existence longer than the branch
hospitals and therefore more money had to be spent on replacing broken or worn-out
furniture.
The combined cost of land, building and furniture for Ackworth and Shrewsbury
(£37,097) was substantially less than the cost of land, building and furniture for the
London hospital (£48,541).
Both the Ackworth and Shrewsbury hospitals were sold off at a heavy loss after
Parliament withdrew its financial support, but the governors can hardly be blamed for
not anticipating that Parliament would change its policy so abruptly. Even if they had
24
The actual purchase price was £7,000: £7,313 is the figure in the Asset Account for 1765. This
presumably includes legal costs and obligations to existing tenants.
25
Gen.Ct. – Wednesday April 1, 1761, p.167 – A/FH/K01/002, microfilm X041/010.
26
Henry Thompson, op.cit., p.23.
27
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2. For an account of the building of the Shrewsbury
hospital see Julia Ionides, Thomas Farnolli Pritchard of Shrewsbury (the Dof Lane Press, Ludlow,
1999), chapter 4.
204
been able to see into the future, they would still have needed to provide extra
accommodation for the General Reception children, unless they had abandoned the
idea that the majority of children of the right age should spend some time in a hospital
before being apprenticed.
COST OF RUNNING THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
It looks as though the running costs as well as the capital costs of the branch hospitals
were lower than those for the London hospital. From 1761 onwards the ‘Accounts
Audited’ lists the expenditure on the maintenances of the children, i.e. all expenditure
except that on land, building, furniture and (from 1767, when they were first
introduced), apprenticeship fees. In the case of London part of the expenditure would
presumably have gone on the cost of administering the charity as a whole (e.g. such
items as the salaries of the Secretary and one or two clerks), but this would have
accounted for only a small part of the total London expenditure.
Expenditure on the Children in the Three Largest Hospitals, 1762-1770* 28
* In pounds to the nearest pound.
London
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
28
3636
4395
5434
5746
5384
6177
6401
6003
4317
Accounts Audited – A/FH/A/4/1/2.
Ackworth
1992
2390
3308
4391
5383
5177
3320
2298
1976
Shrewsbury
2099
2609
3200
3766
4850
5557
6239
2945
1417
205
Number of Children cared for at the end of each year
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
London
268
333
407
357
400
425
374
352
175
Ackworth*
279
347
568
778
884
725
354
239
170
Shrewsbury**
182
272
435
567
658
675
617
309
97
* Includes children at nurse under the supervision of the Ackworth governors.
**There is some doubt about the accuracy of these figures. See Appendix L.
In the years 1764 and 1765 Ackworth and Shrewsbury were both looking after far more
children at the end of the year than London, yet their expenditure was substantially
less. In 1766 Ackworth had more than twice the number of children at the end of the
year than London, yet its expenditure was almost identical to that of London.29
It is difficult to work out the exact cost per child per annum, since the number in the
bigger hospitals in some years fluctuated sharply. We do, though, have some
contemporary estimates. It was calculated in 1769 that the annual cost of keeping a
child at Ackworth was only £5-17-8d.30
In 1772 the following statement of the cost of maintaining children there was produced:
‘An Abstract of the Expence of Ackworth Hospital from Dec.31st 1771 to June
30th 1772. 31
Apothecary’s Accot
Clothing Accot.
Households Husbandry
Incidental Expences
Servts Wages
deduct Cash used on Household and Husbandry Acct.
Total Expences for the Hospital for 6 Months
£28-11-6
44-1-1
248-8-4
19-0-5
73-7-6
£413-9-6
21-13-0
£391-14-6
On an Average there hath been in the Hospital 128 children at £3-1-0 amounts to
£390-8-0.’
29
The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/1.
30
Thompson, op.cit., p.18.
31
Third copy book of Ackworth out-letters – A/FH/Q/11.
206
On these figures the annual cost would be £6-2-0d. It will be recalled that the
parliamentary grant was calculated on the assumption that each child would cost the
Foundling Hospital £7-10-0 a year.
In a letter of 1 February 1768 Mrs. West declared that she had kept the cost at Barnet
at 2s 6d per child per week (the amount that had been given to many nurses before the
General Reception for looking after children in their own homes), which would give an
annual figure of £6.10.0d. This figure excludes rent and wages, but Mrs. West declared
the ‘Rent is remarkable Low’32
It is likely that provisions were cheaper in the provinces than in London, though Mrs.
West said that prices were unexpectedly high in Barnet in the winter of 1767 to 1768.33
Angus McInnes points out that Shrewsbury benefited from its position between the
pastoral lands of mid-Wales and the fertile arable lands of the Midlands. Goods could
be brought cheaply by the River Severn from Wales and from Gloucester. He points
out that Daniel Defoe had praised Shrewsbury for the cheapness and abundance of
goods. ‘Here is the greatest market, the greatest plenty of good provisions, and the
cheapest that is to be met with in all the western part of England.’34 There is some
evidence, though, that prices were beginning to rise about the time the Shrewsbury
hospital was established. In 1759 the Revd. Job Orton, in a letter to a correspondent in
Northampton, declared that ‘This was formerly a cheaper place to live in than almost
any large town in England. But now things are altered, by the number of gentlemen
32
A/FH/A/6/1/21/18/44.
33
Ibid.
34
Angus McInnes, The Emergence of a Leisure Town: Shrewsbury, 1660-1760, in Past and Present
(1988), vol. 21, p.81. The passage quoted is in Defoe’s A Tour through the Whole Island of Great
Britain (vol.2, p.76 in the Everyman edition).
207
who have taken houses in the town.’35 Prices were still probably cheaper than in
London, however.
Chester was also noted for the number of its gentlemen, but prices there seem to have
been quite low. In 1795 John Aikin noted that ‘Its markets are well supplied with all
articles of necessity and luxury, and at a lower rate than in the trading and
manufacturing towns of the neighbourhood.’ Chester was also important as the great
mart for Irish linens which sold at the two annual fairs. Aikin noted that at ‘these fairs
are sold large quantities of other commodities, as Yorkshire cloth, Welsh flannels,
cheese, horses, cattle, etc.’ Aikin was admittedly writing several years after the Chester
branch hospital closed, but he himself noted that Chester ‘has long maintained nearly
the same stations it at present occupies.’36 At Ackworth most of the foodstuffs and
other goods were about 20% cheaper than in London and the cost of coal was about
seven times higher in London than at Ackworth.37
The Account of the Hospital (1759) makes no mention of the likely savings on the
wages bill, though the governors presumably had this in mind. Wages at Ackworth
were substantially lower than in London. On 1 October 1757 the Ackworth governors
hired Mr. & Mrs. Hargreaves as master and matron for £40 a year.38 The salary for
Samuel Wegg, the steward at the London hospital (who had a comparable post to the
master) was £30 a year and Mrs. Sussanah Frend, the matron in London, earned
£20. 39 The schoolmaster was paid £10.8.0d at Ackworth and £30 at London.40 The
35
Quoted in McInnes, loc.cit., p.64.
36
J. Aikin, A Description of the Country from thirty to forty miles round Manchester (London,
1795), pp.384-396. There is a good map on p.385.
37
Thompson, op.cit., p.21, or Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.169-170.
38
Ackworth minutes – A/FH/Q/8.
39
Sub-Committee minutes for Tuesday 29 November 1757 – A/FH/A/3/5/2.
40
For Ackworth see register of servants – A/FH/Q/60. For London the minutes for 29 November
1757 (as above).
208
schoolmistresses for the girls were paid between £4.10.0d and £5 a year at Ackworth
and £10 in London. Nurses get £3.10.0 a year at Ackworth and £5 in London (nurses
for the babies in the House got more than this). Laundry maids were paid £4 a year at
Ackworth and £5 or £6 a year in London.
Wages at Shrewsbury were also much lower than at the London hospital. Thomas
Morgan was appointed as the first secretary on February 12 1759 at a salary of only
£15 per annum.41 As the work increased, though, so did the salary, by means of annual
gratuities and New Year gifts. On March 18 1765 Samuel Magee was appointed at a
salary of £30 a year. 42 On January 8 1767 he was given a gratuity of £10, bringing his
wages up to £40. 43 But Thomas Collingwood in London was by then paid £100 (£50 in
salary and £50 as an honorarium)44 In January 1759 the first matron at Shrewsbury,
Mrs Elizabeth Pugh, was appointed at a salary of £10 a year. On 15 October 1759 Mrs
Martha Powel, who had replaced her, received a further £2 by way of gratuity and on
January 8 1767 the matron was granted an extra £2.10.0d, so that her total salary by
then seems to have been £14.10.0d.45 But this was rather less than Catherine French,
the deputy matron, and Elizabeth Makepeace, the chief nurse of the Brill infirmary, had
earned in London in November 1757 (£15 a year)46 In November 1757, the porter at
the receiving lodge in the London hospital received £10 per annum. When a porter was
appointed at Shrewsbury on 13 May 1766 he was given only £5.47 Most of the
employees at Shrewsbury (and the other branch hospitals) received free board and
lodging, but so did those in London.
41
Shrewsbury minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
His pay is listed at £50 in A/FH/M01/B/47, but in subsequent years the £50 honorarium was
always paid.
45
A/FH/D2/1/1.
46
Sub-Committee (as above) – A/FH/A/3/5/2.
47
A/FH/A/3/5/2 for London; A/FH/d2/1/1 for Shrewsbury.
209
The numbers employed in the branch hospitals varied, of course, with the number of
children to be cared for. At first the number of employees was so small that the saving
in the wages bill can have been of little consequence. In September 1759, for example,
the only employees at Shrewsbury in addition to the master (or secretary) and the
matron appear to have been a nurse for the girls, one for the boys and a cook maid.48
In the 1760s, though, the Ackworth and Shrewsbury hospitals employed quite a large
staff, so that the lower wages in the provinces saved the charity a substantial sum. The
Ackworth hospital employed at one time or another twenty eight men and 197
women.49
Number of Employees and Number of Foundlings at Ackworth
March
Employees Foundlings
!
9
16
19
14
24
28
31
42
33
26
30
19
22
13
13
11
1767
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
!
19 *
107 *
126 *
131
194
279
386
530
774
855
701
338
355
150
129
47
September
Employees Foundlings
7
15
15
14
18
27
29
45
40
33
28
20
22
22
14
12
4
12
79 *
123 *
128 *
174
282
346
549
774
913
860
276
343
206
136
150
1 50
48
A/FH/D2/1/1.
49
The main source is the Ackworth register of servants – A/FH/Q/60, but some servants listed in a
receipt book for wages (A/FH/Q/25) do not appear in the register; they have been added to the
total, as have the secretary (or master) and the matron. Incidentally, the receipt books show that
most of the women and some of the men were illiterate, since they acknowledged receipt of their
pay by making a mark rather than by signing their names.
The number of employers is the number employed at any time during the month; the number of
foundlings is the number at the end of each month.
50
For employees see register of servants – A/FH/Q/60.
For foundlings Ackworth register (A/FH/A12/3/1) for those marked *; volumes of monthly statistics
(1757-1767 and 1767-1773) from the Ackworth collection for the rest.
210
Most of the employees, as in the London hospital and at Shrewsbury, were women. In
March 1762, for example, nineteen women, but only five men were employed; in March
1765 there were thirty six women but only six men.
The decline in the number employed at Ackworth in 1766 and 1767 is rather surprising,
since there were more foundlings to look after in those years than in 1765. The
Ackworth Committee kept the wages bill down, though, by keeping back some of the
older foundlings who would otherwise have been apprenticed. On 5 December 1765
there is, for example, a reference to ‘20 kept for the Service of the Hospital.’51
The Shrewsbury governors seem to have been less concerned about keeping the
wages bill down as the following show:
Number of Employees and Number of Foundlings at Shrewsbury, 1766-1772.
16 July
31 July
30 July
31 July
31 July
31 July
31 July
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
Employees
44
52
53
39
21
16
11
Foundlings
501
600
530
384
177
90
15 52
This is the only evidence we have of unnecessary expenditure.
The General
Committee in London and the governors of the branch hospitals clearly succeeded in
keeping costs down.
51
Ackworth – A/FH/Q/8.
52
A/FH/D2/15/1.
211
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE GOVERNORS OF THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
THE NUMBER OF GOVERNORS
The Account of the Hospital shows that the leading London governors believed that the
support of influential people in their neighbourhood would be vital to the success of the
branch hospitals.
The list of governors certainly looks rather impressive on paper. Over five hundred
governors are recorded as being on the governing committees at one time or another:
Ackworth
Shrewsbury
Aylesbury
Westerham
Chester
179
64
57
81
148
529
1
Amongst the 529 governors were thirty five peers or holders of the courtesy title of lord
(including two dukes, two marquises and seventeen earls), one archbishop (York) and
nine bishops, fifty baronets or knights (mainly baronets), thirty nine clergymen
(including two deans) and 395 untitled commoners (some of whom were related to
peers).
Most of these men were ‘new’ governors, who had been elected with the intention that
they should be appointed to these committees. In fact the peak years of recruitment for
new governors were those in which large numbers were elected to run the branch
hospitals. In 1762, for example, 130 men from Chester were chosen. In 1771 forty five
of the sixty eight new governors came from Yorkshire.2
1
The governing committees were appointed in May each year at the Annual General Meeting of
the General Court. No managing committee was appointed for Barnet Hospital.
G. Ct., vol.2 (A/FH/K01/002) and vol.3 (A/FH/K01/003) – microfilm X041/010.
2
See the list of governors in Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.367-385.
212
New governors could be appointed by the General Court in London at any of their
meetings. The members of the managing committees were appointed only at the
Court’s yearly meeting, though in some cases a man was appointed governor and put
on a managing committee at the same yearly meeting. 3 These men were usually
appointed on the advice of the General Committee, but the General Committee
normally itself relied on recommendations by those governors who were expected to
take a leading part in running the branch hospitals or who had already begun to do so.
On Wednesday November 24 1756 the General Committee asked Taylor White to write
to Sir Rowland Winn at Ackworth and ask him whether he would consent to become a
governor and whether he would recommend other gentlemen in Yorkshire who would
be prepared to become governors and serve on the proposed Ackworth (or Yorkshire) 4
committee. On Wednesday March 2 1757 (some months before the Ackworth hospital
took in its first foundlings) the General Committee agreed to recommend sixteen men
to the General Court: their names had all been recommended by Sir Rowland Winn. 5
Later on the Ackworth governing committee itself put forward more names that were
accepted by the General Court.6
The appointment of over five hundred governors to the managing committee of the
branch hospitals, many of whom had had no connection with the Foundling Hospital
before the General Reception, suggests a wide measure of support for the charity. The
number of new governors, however, can give a misleading impression. In a letter of 3
January 1757 to the General Committee Sir Rowland Winn said that when he
3
See letter of Collingwood to Sir Rowland Winn, 7 March 1761 – Copy Book of Letters, No.3, p.51
– A/FH/A/6/2/1.
4
G.Cttee – A/FH/K02/005, p.159 – microfilm X041/015.
5
Ibid.
6
See, for example, letters written to the Revd. Dr. Lee of 5 March 1762 and 13 May 1762 – Copy
Book of Letters, No.3, p.145 and p.161 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
213
approached the country gentry in the Ackworth area to see whether they would agree
to being appointed as governors, they asked whether they would have to make a
donation of £50. The answer, as we saw in Chapter Three, was No.7 The great majority
of the new governors on the governing committee of the branch hospitals (like the great
majority of other new governors appointed after 2 June 1756) gave nothing to the
charity’s funds.
The sums raised for the Ackworth hospital were quite small even if we include
donations from non-governors:
31 December 1757
30 Dec. 1758
30 June 1759
31 Dec. 1759
2 August 1758
31 Dec. 1758
30 Sept. 1763
4 Dec. 1770
Miss Elizabeth Wentworth
Miss Julia Wentworth
Miss Arabella Wentworth
Marquis of Rockingham *
William Lamb
Mrs Medhurst of Kippax
Dr. Timothy Lee *
Archbishop of Tuum
Dr. Timothy Lee*
Mr Joseph Rose
Henry Verelst, Esq.
£20
£20
£20
£100
£5
£10.10s
£20
£15
£5.5s
£24.10
£89.10
£215.10
£545.5s8
£225 was also left in two legacies.
* Governors
Many of the new governors also took little part in running the branch hospitals.
Three hundred and twenty one governors did not attend a single meeting. Only twenty
three governors at Ackworth, Shrewsbury, Westerham and Chester attended more
than one fifth of the meetings of their respective branch hospitals. [Admittedly in the
case of Ackworth many governors were appointed when it was already clear that the
hospital would close, in order to ensure that there would be enough influential people in
the areas where the children were likely to be apprenticed, so that they could protect
them should their masters or mistresses ill-treat them. But many of the governors
appointed in the early days also failed to attend any meetings.]
7
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.161.
8
Ackworth Ledger Book – A/FH/Q/17.
214
Most meetings were attended by only a handful of governors:
Attendance of Governors at Branch Hospital Meetings
Ackworth
Shrewsbury
Westerham
Chester
No. of
Meetings
Total
Attendance
180
366
124
307
977
957
2152
482
1047
4638
Average
Attendance
5.3
5.8
3.9
3.4
4.7
9
The attendance record of the Shrewsbury governors was better than that of the other
hospitals, even though more meetings were held there than in the other hospitals:
26.6% of the Shrewsbury governors did not attend a single meeting, but for the other
three hospitals listed the percentage were 70.8 (Ackworth), 72.8 (Westerham) and 79.1
(Chester). The better record for Shrewsbury may be partly due to the fact that it had the
smallest governing body – perhaps only those likely to show some interest in the
charity were put on the governing body there. Similarly the poor record of Chester may
be due to the fact that it had such a large number of governors (though, admittedly the
Ackworth hospital had even more).
There was incidentally no correlation between the size of the hospital and the number
of meetings called. Ackworth, with over twice as many children recorded in the register
as Shrewsbury, had only about half the number of meetings as Shrewsbury. Chester
had more meetings than Ackworth.10
Not a single peer attended more than five meetings. Only one of the lords on the
managing committee at Ackworth, Viscount Galway, attended and he only turned up
once. 11 None of the bishops attended any meetings. Many of the baronets and untitled
9
For sources see Appendix E.
10
Ibid.
11
A/FH/Q/8 and A/FH/Q/3.
215
laymen took little part in running the branch hospitals: nevertheless it is from these
groups that most of the active governors came. There were no clergymen on the
Westerham hospital governing committee and only one of those on the Chester
committee attended any meetings. But the clergy on the Shrewsbury committee had a
good attendance record. At Ackworth, as we shall see, the most active of all the
governors was a clergyman, the Revd. Dr. Timothy Lee.
It would not have been desirable for all governors to attend regularly, of course. Such a
practice would involved large numbers of men wasting time on matters that could easily
have been dealt with by four or five and it would have been difficult to get through the
agenda. In the case of Chester, for example, the committee met almost every week,
even though it was one of the smallest hospitals. Some governors who attended no
meetings or only a few helped the charity in other ways. Patentius Ward, who attended
eleven meetings of the Ackworth management committee,12 for example, was an
inspector of the Ackworth nursery; so was Stanhope Harvey, who attended only two
meetings. 13 Stanhope Harvey also took three boys as apprentices. Even the Marquis of
Rockingham, though he did not attend a single meeting at Ackworth, gave a handsome
turret clock and took one boy as apprentice.14 At Shrewsbury several of the governors
who only attended a few meetings acted as inspectors, e.g. John Hincks and Alderman
Cotgreave. 15 Alderman Richardson did not attend the meetings at Chester very often,
yet he acted as the cashier and, as far as we can tell, did the job efficiently.16
12
A/FH/Q/64
13
John Horsham, 7 May 1768, Robert Grimston 4 July 1768 – Ackworth Apprentice Register, 1758
– 1768 – A/FH/Q/068.
Alexander Foote, 21 July, 1769. Ackworth Apprentice Register, 1769-1775 – A/FH/Q/069.
14
Garnabet White, 21 Dec../1 Nov 1759 – A/FH/Q/068.
15
Chester minutes, April 14, 1767 and April 28, 1767 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
16
Ibid. Richardson was frequently called on to pay cash to John Small, the Chester hospital’s
secretary.
216
Nevertheless, even when allowance is made for cases such as these, it does seem
that many governors, to adapt the words used by President Theodore Roosevelt of his
predecessor President Taft, ‘meant well but they meant well feebly.’
The General Committee, though, seems to have believed that the names of all the
governors should be known to the public. In a letter of May 4 1769 to Richard
Hargreaves at Ackworth Collingwood said that he hoped that he had received 50 lists
of governors 17 and there are references in other letters to him and the governors of
branch hospitals to the despatch of such lists. It is possible that the General Committee
believed that the governors wished to have their services recognised. It may have
enhanced a man’s status to be listed as a governor. It is more likely, though, that the
Committee felt the public would be reassured to see that so many influential local
people had agreed to become governors. This consideration may have become more
important when the hospital came under attack by those who felt that no more
parliamentary funds should be granted.
THE LEADING GOVERNORS
In each of the branch hospitals, then, just as in the London hospital, the work of
supervising the officers and servants fell to a small group of active governors. Some of
these active governors also played a part in getting the hospitals set up and some also
helped dispose of the hospitals when they closed.
1
Ackworth
At Ackworth only nine governors attended more than twenty meetings and only five of
these attended more than fifty meetings.18 As in London, the treasurer played a key
17
Copy Book of Letters, no.4, p.184 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
18
Gen.Cttee – Dec.11, 1754 and 5 March 1755 – A/FH/K02/004, p.236 and p.250 – microfilm
X041/015.
Gen.Cttee – Dec.17, 1755 and 22 June 1757 – A/FH/K02/005, p.15 and p.106 – microfilm
X041/015.
217
role. The first treasurer, Sir Rowland Winn of Nostell Priory, as we have seen, recruited
a number of governors before the Ackworth hospital opened. He attended seventy two
meetings. He died in 1765. He was a very wealthy man and had spent a fortune on
rebuilding Nostell Priory. He was an ardent Whig and a friend of the Marquis of
Rockingham, a future Prime Minister. His lifestyle was much the same as that of a
wealthy peer. He was regarded as the leading squire of the Ackworth area. His initial
connection with the Foundling Hospital was a rather strange one for a Yorkshire
baronet. He had been selling linen cloth made in his own Yorkshire manufactory to the
Foundling Hospital for a number of years. He continued to sell linen to the charity even
after he had become a governor and the Ackworth branch hospital had been
established. 19 Strictly speaking, he ought not to have continued to do so once he had
become a governor. Under the Foundling Hospital’s bye-laws as we have seen, ‘No
Committee shall Contract for or Purchase any they whatsoever for use of the Hospital,
in which any Governor or Guardian has any Property Interest (Land or Houses only
excepted)’20 We do not know whether he aimed to benefit himself as well as the charity
by these transactions. He clearly took a keen interest in the welfare of the foundlings at
Ackworth. Catherine Cappe, a young relative who lived at Nostell Priory for a number
of months, said ‘It was his delight to visit these children, which he generally did two or
three times in the week, examining their diet, inquiring into their health and respective
improvements, and investigating the conduct of the matron, master, and other
assistants. Many of the children and especially the boys, he knew and distinguished
individually; and had great pleasure in observing whatever appeared promising in their
disposition or talents; never shall I forget the animation and fine expression of his
countenance, when, on his return, he delighted to detail the various little occurrences
19
See, for example, Collingwood’s letter to Hargreaves, the secretary of the Ackworth hospital,
dated June 19, 1763 – Copy Book of Letters, No.3, p.174 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
20
Gen.Ct., vol. 1, p.39- A/FH/K01/001 – microfilm X041/016.
218
which had interested him, to an attentive and affectionate group of family auditors’. 21
He took five boys from Ackworth as apprentices.22
On his death his son, also named Sir Rowland, took over as treasurer. He took little
interest in the Ackworth hospital. He only attended nineteen meetings and announced
his resignation on 4 September 1766. 23 He was replaced by a cousin, Thomas Winn of
Ackton, who proved to be much more conscientious. He had attended meetings from
the start in 1757. He remained as treasurer until the hospital closed, attending in all
151 meetings. 24
The governor who played the biggest part in running the Ackworth hospital, though,
was the Revd. Dr. Timothy Lee. He had been educated at Westminster School and
Trinity College Cambridge and had been appointed librarian there in 1752. He had
been Vicar of Pontefract from 1742 to 1744. He was a pluralist, being Vicar of Felkirk
(1743-77) and Rector of Ackworth (1744-1777). He was apparently an admirable
pastor taking a leading part in village life at Ackworth. 25 In addition to corresponding
with the London governors about the running of the Ackworth hospital he acted as what
we might the chief inspector of the Ackworth nursery. He attended 164 of the Ackworth
management committee meetings, more even than Thomas Winn. He also took four
boys and one girl as apprentices as well as taking two girls who were transferred to him
in 1759 on the death of their previous master, the Revd. Thomas Trant.26 He was also,
21
Catherine Cappe, Memoirs of the Life of the late Mrs Catherine Cappe, written by herself
(Longman, 1822), pp.79-84.
22
Ackworth Apprentice Register – A/FH/Q/068.
23
A/FH/Q/8, p.83. He was more interested in architecture than philanthropy. He spent years
remodelling Nostell Priory, employing both Robert Adam and Thomas Chippendale – Mrs Cappe
portrayed him as a rather unattractive character. Ibid., pp.85-90.
24
A/FH/Q/8.
25
Beatrice Scott, Ackworth Foundling Hospital, 1757-1773, Yorkshire Archaelogical Journal, vol.61,
1989, p.176.
26
Ackworth apprentice register – A/FH/Q/068.
219
as we have seen, one of the very few people connected with the Ackworth hospital to
give money as well as time to the charity.
Another Ackworth governor who was particularly conscientious was John Smyth of
Heath. He was made a governor in March 1757, at the same time as Thomas Winn
and Timothy Lee.27 He attended 98 meetings.
2
Shrewsbury
At Shrewsbury twenty four governors attended twenty or more meetings and twelve of
these attended fifty or more. This is a more impressive record than that at Ackworth,
even when allowance is made for the fact that the number of meetings that a
Shrewsbury governor could have attended was about twice that of an Ackworth
governor. We have already suggested one reason for this good attendance. Another
reason may be that Shrewsbury had a large number of resident gentry who had the
time to devote to philanthropy. The town had been one of the first to establish a
hospital: the Salop Infirmary had been opened in 1747.28 Relations between the two
institutions seem to have been cordial. The trustees of the Infirmary agreed that the
Foundling Hospital should be supplied with medicines at prime cost and also allowed
their apothecary Samuel Winnall to work part time for the Foundling Hospital.29 This cooperation is hardly surprising. Twenty four of the 169 trustees of the Salop Infirmary
down to the end of 1755 served later on the managing committee of the Shrewsbury
Foundling Hospital.30 In fact some of the most active trustees of the Salop Infirmary
became some of the most active governors of the Foundling Hospital. The Town
Council also seems to have been sympathetic: some land at Kingsland belonging to
27
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.368.
28
McInnes, loc.cit., p.73.
29
Shrewsbury Committee minutes, 5 March 1759 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
30
H. Bevan, Records of the Salop Infirmary (Sandford + Howell, Shrewsbury, 1847). Bevan
recorded the names of all the promoters of the Salop Infirmary who attended meetings between
1745 (when the project was under discussion) and 1755.
220
the corporation was granted to the charity on a ninety-nine year lease.31 The fact that
five ex-mayors became governors of the Shrewsbury Foundling Hospital no doubt
helped.32
Even at Shrewsbury, though, a fairly small group did most of the work. Only seven of
the Shrewsbury governors attended more than a fifth of all meetings. These seven all
attended more than one hundred meetings.
The governor with the best attendance record was Roger Kynaston. He came from an
old Tory family that had been important in Shropshire for generations. His father and
grandfather had both represented Shropshire in Parliament and his son also became
one of the two Shropshire M.P.s in 1784. His brother Edward was also an M.P. sitting
first for Bishop’s Castle (1747-1772)33 Kynaston attended 285 out of a possible 366
meetings of the Foundling Hospital. No other governor at any of the branch hospitals
attended more meetings. [Kynaston had been equally conscientious in supporting the
Salop Infirmary: he had attended 225 meetings between 1745 and 1755.]34 Kynaston
was clearly regarded as one of the most important governors. In August 1758, for
example, the General Committee told Collingwood to write to him at Shrewsbury
explaining that they had received from Taylor White a list of noblemen and gentlemen
of Shropshire and asking him to see whether they would be ready to have their names
put forward as governors.35 On 25 October 1758 Collingwood was told to thank
Kynaston for his help.36 In the early years of the Shrewsbury venture, Taylor White
31
Shrewsbury minutes, 21 October, 1758.
32
See H. Owen & J. B. Blakeway, History of Shrewsbury, vol.1, 1825.
33
Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, eds., The History of Parliament – House of Commons, 17151752, vol.2 and House of Commons, 1752-1790, vol.3 (London, HMSO, 1964).
34
Bevan, op.cit.
35
Gen. Cttee – A/FH/K02/006, p.199 – microfilm X041/015.
36
Ibid., p.260.
221
wrote to him a number of times concerning such matters as the way the hospital should
be organized, the progress of work on the new purpose-built hospital at Kingsland on
the outskirts of the town and the dispatch of children to Shrewsbury.37 Kynaston also
passed on to the Shrewsbury committee the instructions of the Sub-Committee
concerning the way children were to be conveyed to London.38 At the first Shrewsbury
committee meeting on 9 October 1758 he was appointed to two sub-committees, one
to look for suitable temporary accommodation to house the children until the purposebuilt hospital could be put up and one to negotiate with Thomas Congreve for a sale or
lease of land adjoining the Kingsland estate.39 The Shrewsbury committee sometimes
left routine matters in his hands. On May 21 1759, for example, he was asked to make
the arrangement for conveying six children from Leek in Staffordshire to the Orphan
Hospital.40 Kynaston took three foundlings as apprentices, perhaps to set an example:
one girl in 1761, another in 1764 and a boy in 1765.41 Taylor White thought highly of
him. In a letter to George Whatley he referred to Kynaston as ‘my worthy Friend at
Shrewsbury’ and went on to say ‘he is a Gentleman of a good estate in most Excellent
Character from men of All Partys, perfect able to go thro any business he
undertakes’. 42
Equally conscientious was the Revd Dr. Adams, Vicar of St. Chad’s, Shrewsbury. Like
Kynaston he had played an important role in setting up the Salop Infirmary. He
attended 262 meetings of the Salop Infirmary in the period 1745 to 1755.43 The
selection of Shrewsbury as the site for the branch hospital for the foundlings was
37
Shrewsbury Committee minutes – 21 and 30 October 1758, 6 and 20 November 1758, 22 and 29
January 1759 and 21 May 1759 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
38
Ibid., 19 February 1759.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
41
Shrewsbury registers – A/FH/A10/7, A/FH/D2/7/1 and A/FH/D2/8/2.
42
Letter addressed from Flint, 24 August 1758 – A/FH/A06/001/011/49.
43
Bevan, op.cit.
222
probably due to him. At the General Committee meeting of 2 August 1758 Taylor White
reported that Dr. Adams had written to him on the 28th July suggesting that
Shrewsbury might be a suitable place for setting up a branch hospital. Taylor White
was asked to look into the matter.44 Dr. Adams attended 236 meetings of the
Shrewsbury Foundling Hospital committee. At the first committee meeting he was
asked to negotiate with Mr. William Bennet over the purchase of his house at Kingsland
on the outskirts of the town and with the Revd Mr. Fowler about his lands near
Kingsland. On 16 October 1758 he reported that Bennet was ready to surrender his
house and Fowler was ready to sell his two plots of land.45 On 17 November 1762 the
Shrewsbury governors asked Adams and Kynaston to prepare ‘a Body of Regulations
for the Government of the Hospital to be considered by the Board.’46 On August 31
1769 Taylor White wrote him a long letter giving ‘the whole State of the Corporation,
that you, and we may work together for the common good of the whole.’47 His last
recorded attendance at the committee was on 21 May 1772.48 He was involved in the
winding up of the Shrewsbury Foundling Hospital’s affairs in the early 1770s.49 As late
as June 1775 Collingwood wrote to acknowledge the receipt of the Shrewsbury
accounts for the year ending on 17 June 1775.50 In that year he became Master of
Pembroke College, Oxford.
Five other Shrewsbury governors attended more than one hundred meetings: William
Tayleur (217 meetings); Col. William Congreve (192); Sir Richard Corbett (186);
44
Gen. Cttee – A/FH/K02/006, p.199 – microfilm X041/015.
45
Shrewsbury minute – A/FH/D2/1/1.
46
Ibid.
47
Copy book of Letters, No.4, pp. 251-254 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
48
A/FH/D2/1/1. Only one more meeting is recorded in the Shrewsbury minutes, but there must have
been other meetings later, since the hospital’s property had to be disposed of after the last
foundlings left.
49
See Copy Book of Letters, No.5, 17 October 1772, 3 and 23 December 1772, 8 [?] January 1773,
4 March 1774 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
50
Ibid.
223
Edward Corbett (128) and Col. (later Maj.Gen.) Severne (128).51 All five had been
trustees of the Salop Infirmary. William Tayleur had been appointed as the first
Treasurer of that institution and had attended 283 of its meetings in the period 1745 to
1755. 52 His son, William Tayleur Jnr. was a fairly conscientious governor of the
Shrewsbury Foundling Hospital: he attended 33 meetings.53 The Corbetts came from
much the same background as Kynaston. Sir Richard Corbett inherited in 1701 a
baronetcy created in 1642.54 He sat as M.P. for Shrewsbury in four Parliaments (17231727 and 1734-1754). He served as mayor of Shrewsbury in 1735. Edward Corbett
also served as mayor (in 1738). The other governors who had served as mayor were
Godolphin Edwards (in 1729), Francis Turner Blythe (in 1744) and Thomas Fownes (in
1749). 55 Col. Severne was the Quartermaster General of Ireland.56 Given his excellent
attendance record at the foundling hospital his Irish post must have been at best a
semi-sinecure.*
3
Chester
At Chester the idea of setting up a branch hospital of the Foundling Hospital was
popular and received support from the Corporation and from some of the governors of
the Blue Coat School and the Chester General Infirmary. In a letter of 30 October 1762,
written on behalf of a committee of the Common Council, the Recorder of Chester,
Robert Townsend, declared that ‘The Committees were unanimous in desiring a
Grateful acknowledgement to be made to you, for so great a mark of your regard to the
51
A/FH/D2/1/1.
52
Bevan, op.cit.
53
A/FH/D2/1/1.
54
Cockayne, The Complete Baronetage (Exeter, William Pollard’s Co., 1902), vol.2.
55
Owen + Blakeway, op.cit.
56
A/FH/D2/1/1.
*
Another leading trustee of the Salop Infirmary, the Revd. Job Ortan, mentioned earlier, also
became a governor of the Foundling Hospital. He had attended 298 meetings of the Salop
Infirmary in the period 1745 to 1755. He attended 27 meetings of the Foundling Hospital.
224
City.’57 Amongst those appointed to the governing committee of the Chester foundling
hospital were seven men who had served as mayors and one who was appointed
mayor later. 58 As we have seen, the trustees of the Blue Coat School let the Foundling
Hospital use part of their buildings, and, for the first three years, charged no rent. Eight
of the trustees of the Blue Coat School became governors of the Chester foundling
hospital. 59 There was also a link with the Chester General Infirmary. All three treasurers
of that institution plus the deputy treasurer, together with three of the their four
physicians and one of their four surgeons, became foundling hospital governors.60
The governors of the Chester foundling hospital clearly believed that the establishment
of a large foundling hospital would increase the prosperity of the city. In a letter of
February 27, 1765, they advocated the setting up of a large purpose-built hospital for
four or five hundred children ‘founded on the Goodness of the situation, the cheapness
of Provision and the low price of labour and moreover of Materials for Building, may at
this place be provided upon very moderate Terms, insomuch that we have reason to
believe a good and proper Hospital may be here built for one third part of the Sum
which has been laid out at Shrewsbury.’ They estimated that £2,500 would be spent on
the building and that ‘one year with another upwards of five Thousand pounds will be
expended in supporting and maintaining such Children as shall be received into this
Hospital, including those that are put out to Nurse in the Neighbourhood thereof.’61 Had
57
A/FH/A15/007/001.
58
For a list of Chester mayors, see Joseph Hemingway, A History of the City of Chester (Chapter
1831), vol.1, p.236. For Townsend see p.240. For a list of the governing committee of the Chester
foundling hospital see the minutes of the A.G.M. of the General Court for 1763 to 1769 –
A/FH/K01/002 (for 1763-1767) and A/FH/K01/003 (for 1768 to 1769) – microfilm X041.010.
59
See letter of November 12, 1762 – A/FH/A15/007/001. Two of them, William Cowper and Richard
Richardson, had also served as mayors, so they appear on the previous list. Richard Richardson
became the Chester foundling hospital’s cashier. See, for example, Chester minutes for June 1,
1763 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
60
Hemingway, op.cit., vol.2, p.186. One of the treasurers was William Cowper, M.D. – he appears
on all three lists.
61
Letter sent to Mrs. Grosvenor and ?? – A/FH/D4/2/1.
225
Parliament not brought the General Reception to an end Chester might indeed have
gained in the way anticipated.
In spite of local enthusiasm for the venture, however, only a few governors attended
the weekly meetings (partly, perhaps, because they were weekly) and four or five
names dominate the list. Amongst the most conscientious governors were Trafford
Barnston, Esq., Dr. Alan Denton and John Orange, all of whom attended over 200
meetings. 62
Trafford Barnston attended 260 meetings. He was clearly a man of some standing in
the community. He was one of the three treasurers of the Chester General Infirmary
mentioned above. The deputy treasurer was Mr Robert Barnston, who was presumably
a relative. In an article on Chester in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1764. Trafford
Barnston was said to occupy one of the best houses in the city.63 A Trafford Barnston,
Esq. Is listed as mayor of Shrewsbury for 1741. If this is the same person it provides a
link between the two branch hospitals.64
Dr Denton attended 247 meetings. He was one of the three physicians who were also
physicians at the Chester General Infirmary.
John Orange attended 230 meetings. He was one of the trustees of the Blue Coat
School. 65 While acting as a governor of the foundling hospital he sold large quantities
of linen to the charity.66 It is not clear whether there was any self-interest involved. He
62
A/FH/D4/1/1.
63
Gentleman’s Magazine, vol.36 (1764), p.409.
64
H.B. Owen & J.B. Blakeway, op.cit., vol.1, p.536.
65
Hemingway, op.cit., vol.2, p.196 and A/FH/D4/1/1.
66
See letter of Nov. 12, 1762 – A/FH/A15/007/001.
226
was not the only draper to sell linen to the charity so he did not have a monopoly. 67
Had he been motivated mainly by self-interest he would presumably have attended just
a few times for form’s sake. He would hardly have attended 230 meetings without a
genuine interest in the charity. It must be admitted, though, that it might have been
better if the charity had bought all its linen from non-governors.
Only two other Chester governors attended more than one fifth of the meetings: Pusey
Brooke (75) and the Revd Mr. Barnston (25), the latter probably a relative of Stafford
Barnston. 68
4
Westerham
At Westerham seven governors attended more than one fifth of the meetings – Thomas
Ellison (110), John Warde (86), Stanford Whittaker (65), Ralph Manning (47), John
Bodycote (40), Jonathan Chilwell (33) and Pendock Price (26).69
The key figure in getting local support was probably John Warde, Esq. of Squerryes
Court. His grandfather had been Lord Mayor of London. His father had bought
Squerryes in 1731. He seems to have been a wealthy man, judging by his fine
collection of Dutch paintings.70 As we saw in Chapter Five he was one of the most
active inspectors – he supervised 193 foundlings at one time or another who were sent
to nurses in the Westerham area. He had been a governor since 27 June 175071 and
was a member of the General Committee from 1760 to 1774.72 In May the Sub-
67
See, for example, the Chester minutes for Jan. 6 1767 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
68
A/FH/D4/1/1.
69
Westerham minutes – A/FH/D3/1/1.
70
The present John Warde of Squerryes Court is a descendant of this John Warde. The house is
open to the public. The biographical details come from the guide book.
71
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.364.
72
See the yearly meetings of the General Court. C.Ct. – A/FH/K01/002 and A/FH/K01/003 –
microfilm X041/010.
227
Committee
reported that Warde had ‘delivered’ to the Treasurer a list of several
Gentlemen whom he would propose to be Governors, and to have the Conduct of a
Hospital in Kent. 73 He also offered to give some land on the common at Westerham, an
offer which was later rejected as the land was held to be unsuitable.74 Warde acted as
the Westerham hospital’s treasurer.
Thomas Ellison was one of the original governors on the Westerham committee. When
the land offered by Warde was turned down Ellison offered to lease a farm with its
buildings to the charity. The initial negotiations were conducted by Warde, Pendock
Price and the Westerham committee on behalf of the charity. Eventually, after
considerable haggling over terms, an agreement was reached.75 On 17 October 1759
the General Committee resolved ‘That this Committee begs Mr. Warde to return
Thanks to Mr. Ellison for his charitable assistance, and gladly accepts thereof.’ 76
Although, judging by his attendance record Ellison was a highly conscientious
governor, he evidently treated this transaction in a commercial spirit and got the best
terms he could.
5
Aylesbury
Lloyd Hart suggests that one reason for setting up a hospital at Aylesbury was because
many of the nobility and the gentry in the area were ready to support it.77 It was
certainly the natural centre for Buckinghamshire society. Elections for the county M.P.s
were held there. During the Assizes and Quarter Session many of the leaders of the
county would have visited the town. It was a prosperous place. According to Daniel
73
Sub-Cttee, May 13, 1758, p.210 – A/FH/A3/5/2.
74
Gen.Cttee, June 21, 1758, p.164 – A/FH/K02/006 – microfilm X041/015.
75
See the Westerham minutes for June 26m, July 19 and September 23 1759 – A/FH/A15/5/1.
76
Gen.Cttee – 17 October 1759 – A/FH/K02/007 – microfilm X041/015.
77
V.E. Lloyd Hart, John Wilkes and the Foundling Hospital (H.M. & M. Publishers, Aylesbury, 1979).
228
Defoe it had ‘a very noble market for corn, and is famous for a large tract of the richest
land in England, extended for miles around.’78
The lead in getting the hospital established at Aylesbury seem to have been taken by
the notorious John Wilkes, who became the Aylesbury hospital treasurer. Wilkes had
been made a governor on 29 March 1758, just over a year before the Aylesbury
hospital opened. 79 In a letter to John Dell, who acted as his agent in his
Buckinghamshire affairs, he refers to ‘my scheme for Aylesbury.’ As far as we can tell
his motives were no different from that of other governors, though there is a hint that he
felt the post of treasurer might give him useful powers of patronage in the town.80 It was
not until 1761 that he began pocketing the Foundling Hospital’s funds.81 Wilkes fled to
France in December 1763 to escape trials for seditious libel and blasphemy. He took
no further part in running the Aylesbury hospital.
Amongst the leading governors at Aylesbury were Job Walden Hanmer, J.P., who
usually took the chair at the Aylesbury committee meetings and the Revd. Dr.
Stephens, vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Aylesbury. We do not know whether any of the
leading governors were guilty of deliberately covering up Wilkes’s embezzlement. At
the very least they were guilty of deplorable slackness in checking the accounts.
Perhaps the fact that the Aylesbury governors decided that they would only meet once
a quarter should have given the General Committee cause for concern.82
78
D. Defoe, op.cit., vol.2, p.14 (Everyman edition).
79
Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.369.
80
See letter of October 11, 1759, in Lloyd Hart, op.cit., p.36.
81
Ibid., p.66 (meeting of 17 July, 1761).
82
Ibid., p.63.
229
6
Mrs West at Barnet
Barnet (or Hadley) hospital, the smallest of the branch hospitals, was in a category of
its own. Here, as we have seen, the initiative clearly came from Mrs. Prudence West. In
a letter to the Sub-Committee of September 6 1762 she wrote that she had heard that
many of the children under her inspection would probably be sent to Yorkshire and
‘since then it has been hinted by one that has a great tenderness for this poor Infant
that I might render myself more useful to this Charity if I continued these Children
(whose Infancy I have indeavour’d to watch over) still longer as the number of children
is much greater than all the Hospitals can contain tho’ I had pleas’d my self with the
thought of the time drawing nigh that would lessen my number of children as they have
taken so much of my attention that I have hardly time for any thing else yett I could not
help lisning to this proposal as every one ought to endeavour to do all the good they
can perhaps some others may follow my example if it shou’d prove a good to this
charity.’83 Without the help of a committee of governors she found a suitable house,
appointed the two matrons and dealt with all the correspondence with the General
Committee.84 Judging from her forthright letters she seems to have been in no need of
an assertiveness course.
CONCLUSION
The General Committee’s record in finding suitable sites for the branch hospitals and in
getting enough governors to run them was impressive. Before we can reach a verdict
on the branch hospitals, however, we need to know how important a part they played in
coping with the grown children and to see how well they looked after them.
83
A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/69.
84
The General Committee seems to have treated the Barnet Hospital as an annexe of the London
hospital. The annual printed accounts list Barnet as ‘under the supervision of the General
Committee’ (A/FH/B3/14/1/1-15). In practice, though, it was run by Mrs West.
230
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE ROLE OF THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
THEIR IMPORTANCE
If we ignore the months spent preparing the Ackworth hospital (the first to be opened)
before the foundlings arrived and the time spent at Ackworth, Shrewsbury and
Westerham in disposing of the lands and buildings after the hospitals there had closed,
the entire history of the branch hospitals covers just sixteen years, from the time the
first ten boys arrived at Ackworth on 19 August 1757 to the time the last two girls and
thirteen boys arrived at London from Ackworth on 31 July 1773, following the closure of
the hospital there. 1 Four of the hospitals were in existence for under ten years
(Aylesbury, Westerham, Barnet and Chester). But the branch hospitals nevertheless
played a vital role in looking after the grown children during the period of the General
Reception and its aftermath. The London hospital would never have been able to cope
with all the children returned from their nurses in the period.
During the General
Reception and its aftermath, the branch hospitals looked after 1805 boys and 1905
girls.
The likelihood of children being sent to the branch hospitals varied according to when
they had been taken in. Only a small proportion of those accepted before the General
Reception went to one of the branch hospitals. Some of them would have reached the
age when they could be apprenticed by the time the hospitals were opened. Similarly, a
relatively small proportion of the children taken in after the General Reception were
sent to them. By the time they were old enough to leave their nurses some of the
branch hospitals would have closed and there would have been plenty of room for
them in the House, which, after all, was not going to close.
1
Ackworth general register – A/FH/Q/064.
Register of grown children – A/FH/A9/10.
231
In the case of the General Reception children their destination depended on the year of
entry: 57.6% of the 1757 intake subsequently went to one or more of the branch
hospitals only compared with 20.2% of those accepted in the first three months of
1760.
From 29 September 1760 to 31 December 1770 there were more children in the
branch hospitals than in the House. At the end of 1765 and 1766 there were over four
times as many.
The Number of Grown Children in the House and the Branch Hospitals
24 June 1756 – 31 December 1773 2
Date
24 June 1756
31 Dec. 1756
31 Dec. 1757
24 June 1758
24 June 1759
29 Sept. 1760
29 Sept. 1761
31 Dec. 1762
31 Dec. 1763
31 Dec. 1764
31 Dec. 1765
31 Dec. 1766
31 Dec. 1767
31 Dec. 1768
31 Dec. 1769
31 Dec. 1770
31 Dec. 1771
31 Dec. 1772
31 Dec. 1773
The House*
245
238
237
195
166
262
170
262
333
407
357
400
425
374
352
175
180
218
227
The Branch
Hospitals**
!!
!!
20
57
161
278
445
684
928
1301
1549
1624
1569
1228
530
267
223
82
1
Totals
245
238
257
252
227
540
615
946
1261
1708
1906
2024
1994
1602
882
442
403
300
228
*
In the late 1750s the London hospital also housed some babies who were waiting to go to nurse or who
were too ill to send to nurse.
** Excludes children at nurse who were supervised by some of the branch hospitals – see later.
The above figures show how dramatic was the growth in the number of children in the
branch hospitals. The numbers increased tenfold from the end of 1759 to the end of
1766. The decline in numbers in the early 1770s was equally dramatic. By that time
2
The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/1 (to June 1758) and
A/FH/A9/12/2 (from September 1760).
The totals for 31 December 1762 have been corrected as 6 children were transferred from the
th
London hospital to Barnet on December 29 1762.
232
large numbers of General Reception children reached the age when they could be
apprenticed. It will be seen, though, that it was not until 31 December 1773 that fewer
grown children were being cared for by the Foundling Hospital than on 24 June 1756.
The following two charts show what a critically important role Ackworth and
Shrewsbury played in looking after grown children.
The Number of Children in the Branch Hospitals 29 Sept. 1757 – 31 Dec. 1773* 3
Date
29 Sept. 57
24 June 58
25 Mar. 59
29 Sept. 59
29 Sept. 60
29 Sept. 61
31 Dec. 62
31 Dec. 63
31 Dec. 64
31 Dec. 65
31 Dec. 66
31 Dec. 67
31 Dec. 68
31 Dec. 69
31 Dec. 70
31 Dec. 71
31 Dec. 72
*
Ackworth
12
57
97
121
122
174
279
349
500
576
610
565
346
221
170
130
81
Shrewsbury
!!
!!
40
57
58
118
182
272
435
567
581
592
617
298
95
81
1
Aylesbury
!!
!!
!!
40
51
52
52
52
52
52
51
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
Westerham
!!
!!
!!
!!
47
101
159
161
215
250
201
221
195
!!
!!
!!
!!
Barnet
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
12
35
40
40
38
37
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
Chester
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
59
59
64
66
71
70
!!
!!
!!
!!
Excludes children at nurse under the supervision of the branch hospitals. For these see the chart on
p. 227.
The Number of Children that entered the Branch Hospitals, 1757 – 1771*
Date
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
*
3
Ackworth
20
67
57
21
89
98
87
297
413
197
80
347
625
235
!!
31
2664
Shrewsbury
!!
!!
58
28
46
89
159
179
175
158
60
120
!!
!!
20
!!
1092
Aylesbury
!!
!!
40
22
19
!!
2
20
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
103
Westerham
!!
!!
!!
50
65
55
8
65
50
25
22
129
!!
!!
!!
!!
469
Barnet
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
12
26
7
9
2
1
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
57
Chester
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
60
2
3
2
12
27
!!
!!
!!
!!
106
The totals at the bottom of the second chart count all the children on the registers (or reconstituted
registers). Children transferred from one place to another are therefore counted more than once.
The State of the Chiildren Quarterly and then Annually - A/FH/A/9/12/1.
233
The reasons why there were so many more children on the Ackworth register than the
Shrewsbury register, even though they were often looking after about the same number
of grown children, is that large numbers of children sent to Ackworth from 1768
onwards spent only a short time there.
Over two thirds of the children sent to
Ackworth hospital in the period 1768 to 1772 were there for less than three months.4
There was a more rapid turnover of foundlings at Ackworth than at the other branch
hospitals.
In a letter to Sir Charles Whitworth, the Treasurer of the Hospital on 10th
December 1772, Dr Lee claimed that ‘For the five or six years past this Hospital has
been a place to put children out’.5 (i.e. to apprentice them);
Its achievement in
securing apprenticeships, as we shall see later, was indeed remarkable.
In fact
Ackworth counted for almost half of all foundlings apprenticed in the period of the
General Reception and its aftermath.
The following chart shows that more grown children were sent to the branch hospitals
than the London hospital. Each child is counted only once.
The Distribution of Grown Children 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773
House only
Boys
Girls
882 ________ 766
Totals
1648
House plus one of more
branch hospitals
One or more branch
hospitals only
Boys
Girls
734 ________ 949
1683
Boys
Girls
1071 ________ 956
1648
Total to the House – 3331, i.e. 1648 pus 1683 (1616 boys; 1715 girls)
Total to the branch hospitals – 3710 i.e. 1683 plus 3027 (1805 boys; 1905 girls).*6
4
Ackworth general registers – A/FH/Q/064.
5
Copy Book of Letters from Ackworth – A/FH/Q/12.
*There are 3767 entries in the London grown children register, not 3331, because many of the
children were sent from London and then returned later and are therefore recorded twice.
6
Register of grown children – A/FH/A9/10.
General registers – A/FH/A9/2/2, A/FH/A9/2/3 and A/FH/A9/2/4 – microfilm X41/3, X41/4 and
X41/5.
Ackworth general register – A/FH/Q/066.
Chester registers – A/FH/A10/9 and A/FH/DO4/003/001.
Shrewsbury registers – A/FH/A10/7 and A/FH/D02/007/001.
Westerham registers A/FH/A10/8.
See Appendix M.
234
The large numbers that were sent to the branch hospitals is all the more remarkable in
that not one of them was in existence for the entire period 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773.
At first sight it may seem puzzling, given that almost as many children passed through
the London hospital as the branch hospitals, that far more children in the 1760s were in
the care of the branch hospitals than the House. But, as was the case at Ackworth, a
large number of grown children sent to London stayed there for only a short time.
THE SUPERVISION OF NURSERIES BY THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
The vital role of the branch hospitals in looking after grown children is obvious. Four of
the hospitals – Westerham, Westerham, Shrewsbury and Ackworth – also supervised
hundreds of children at nurse in their areas in the 1760’s as the following figures show:
The Number of Children at Nurse Supervised by the Branch Hospitals, 1759 –
1771.
Date
st
31 December
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
Ackworth
[441]*
[428]
[398]
[430]
[497]
68+[209]
202
275
160
8
18
1
Shrewsbury
160
163
389
574
574
431
274
241
204
n.a.
11
2
12
Chester
200
201
210
199
131
1
-
Westerham**
331
n.a.
280
232
160
146
107
68
-
Total
601
591
1118
1351
1140
837
872
670
30
2
7
13
* The figures in brackets are for the Revd Dr. Lee’s nurseries. These children were not (in theory)
supervised by the Ackworth hospital.
** It is not clear how much control the Westerham governors exercised over the nurseries in the Westerham
area.
7
A/FH/Q/64 for Dr. Lee’s nurseries.
Ackworth Hospital Nurse Book (A/FH/Q/73) for children under the supervision of the Ackworth
hospital.
For the Shrewsbury figures see the general register of children at nurse for 1759 to 1763 and
1765 – (A/FH/A15/3/2). For 1764 see The State of the Children Quarterly and then Annually
(A/FH/A9/12/2). For 1766 to 1769 see The State of the Orphan Hospital at Shrewsbury
(A/FH/D2/15/1).
There are some discrepancies in the various Shrewsbury sources, but the above figures are
believed to be substantially correct. See Appendix L.
For Chester see the Chester Nurse Book (A/FH/A1O/009).
For Westerham see the Westerham Register (A/FH/A10/8) and The State of the Children
Quarterly and then Annually.
235
The numbers supervised directly from the London hospital always exceeded those
managed by the branch hospital, but the governors of the branch hospitals shouldered
a significant part of the burden of coping with the General Reception children sent to
nurse.
The Relative Importance of the Branch Hospitals and the London Hospital in
Supervising Children at Nurse, 1764 - 1767. 8
Date
31st December
1764
1765
1766
1767
Total Branch Hospitals
1140
837
872
670
London Hospital
2115
1674
1130
970
In 1764 and 1765 the branch hospitals were supervising about a third of the children at
nurse and in the years 1766 to 1767 the proportion rose to about two-fifths.
Barnet and Aylesbury
None of the children at nurse in Hertfordshire were supervised by the Barnet hospital
(though Mrs West, who ran that hospital, was also an inspector at Barnet and many of
the children under her inspections were sent to the Barnet hospital). In 1765, in an
effort to get the Ackworth hospital to take responsibility over all the children at nurse in
Yorkshire, the Sub-Committee declared that ‘at the several Hospitals of Shrewsbury,
Westerham, Chester and Barnet* the Committees that have the Care of those
Hospitals, have also the care of the Children at Nurse under their jurisdiction, and in
their Accounts transmitted to this Hospital Quarterly, do … Charge for the necessary
Expenses of the Children at Nurse as well as for the necessary Expenses of the
respective Hospitals….’9 In the case of Barnet, though, this must be a mistake, if only
because there was no Barnet Committee, and Mrs West ran the hospital there.
According to the annual printed accounts of the early 1760s the Yorkshire, Kent and
8
The number supervised directly from London has been calculated by subtracting the number in
the branch hospitals from the total number at nurse. The State of Children’s Quarterly and then
Annually – A/FH/A9/12/2. The figures for those supervised from London in December 1764 and
December 1765 includes grown children in the country for their health.
9
Sub-Cttee, Saturday 2
nd
March, 1765 – A/FH/A/3/5/6.
236
Buckinghamshire nurseries were under the supervision of the local branch hospitals. 10
The Aylesbury branch hospital, however, does not seem to have exercised any
authority over the Buckinghamshire nurseries.
Westerham
The Kent nurseries had been in existence for years by the time that the Westerham
hospital took in its first children in July 1760. On the 24 June 1758, for example, 357
children were being looked after in twelve inspectorates.
The Westerham hospital
gradually acquired some authority over these nurseries. At first the London governors
decided which children from local nurseries should be sent there, but later the
Westerham governors themselves made the arrangements for taking in children from
local nurseries.11
Ackworth
There were already many children at nurse in Yorkshire before the Ackworth hospital
opened. On the death of the Revd. Thomas Trant, the Revd. Dr. Lee took over the
Hemsworth nursery in 1759 (re-named the Ackworth nursery). In addition to looking
after the children that had been in Trant’s care he also took 89 other first destination
children sent from London.12 He was responsible for so many children that he had to
persuade twenty women and fifteen men to assist him. The printed lists of children at
nurse in the Ackworth area were headed ‘Dr. Lee’s return of the Foundling Children
under his inspection with the help of his friends’.13 In 1765 Dr. Lee’s Ackworth nursery
closed when 208 children were sent to Ackworth hospital.14 There were also one or two
small independent nurseries. The last of these (Bretton Hall, run by the Misses
10
A/FH/B3/14/1/1-15
11
See the Westerham hospital minutes for 4 Sept.1760, 20 Nov.1760, 7 May 1761, 26 Nov.1761, 6
Sept.1762, 4 Oct.1762, 11 Oct.1762, 27 Dec.1762, 28 Jan.1763, 16 May 1763 and 27 June 1763
– A/FH/D3/1/1.
12
Disposal Books.
13
A/FM/Q/065.
14
Ackworth general register – A/FH/Q/064. Register of children received – A/FH/Q/062.
237
Wentworth) closed in the previous year when the fifteen children left were sent to the
hospital. 15 Dr. Lee and the inspectors not under his supervision were paid directly from
London, but the minutes and the correspondence of the Ackworth hospital makes it
clear that the plan was that these children should be sent to the hospital when they
reached the appropriate age. The hospital and the nurseries were really a single
enterprise. Since Dr. Lee was the most active of the Ackworth governors this is not
surprising. Nearly all the children that survived their time at nurse in the Ackworth area
appear eventually in the Ackworth hospital registers.
In addition to these children, large numbers were sent to nurse by the Ackworth
governors themselves. Some were sent from the Ackworth hospital to country nurses
for the sake of their health; others were sent to nurse before being taken into the
hospital if it was felt they were too young or too weak to cope with the hospital regime.
Some, though, were sent to nurse to prevent overcrowding in the hospital. In a letter of
28 May 1766 sent to Taylor White, George Whatley and Mr. Harrison in London, Dr.
Lee reminded them that he had told them earlier that the Ackworth governors aimed to
keep only about 600 children in the hospital.16 On 30 September 1766 the Ackworth
governors were responsible for 913 children (447 boys and 466 girls), the highest
number for any hospital. 17 As the numbers in the hospital dwindled in the late 1760s it
was possible to bring children back from their nurses. The last returned two or three
years before the hospital closed.
Shrewsbury and Chester
In the case of Shrewsbury and Chester all the inspectors were supervised by the
branch hospitals from the start. In the period 1759 to 1763 there were more children in
15
Ibid.
16
A/FH/A10/009/001.
17
Ackworth monthly statistics. The figure is 888 according to the State of Children Quarterly and
then Annually – A/FH/A9/12/2.
238
the Shropshire nurseries then in the Shrewsbury hospital. As we saw in Chapter Nine
110 inspectors looked after the children at nurse at one time or another.18 The
Shropshire nurseries closed in 1768, four years before the Shrewsbury hospital was
given up.
The children in the Chester nurseries always outnumbered the children in the Chester
hospital, which was very small and could only house a minority of the foundlings to be
cared for. On 31 December 1764 the 200 children in the Chester nurseries were
supervised by thirty three inspectors.19
None of the children at nurse in Shropshire and the Chester area were babies that had
just been taken in by the charity. Many of the 163 children taken to one of the
Shropshire nurseries in 1759 were about three years old and the youngest were over a
year old. 20 Most of the 210 children sent to the Chester nurseries in 1764 were six or
seven years old. 21 Some were old enough to be apprenticed from the Chester
nurseries.22 In fact more children were apprenticed from the Chester nurseries (117)
than the Chester hospital (37).
18
A/FH/D2/10/1.
19
Chester hospital accounts – A/FH/A15/007/001.
20
A/FH/D4/10/1.
21
A/FH/A10/009/001.
22
Ibid.
239
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHILDREN SENT TO THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
THE TASK OF ALLOCATING CHILDREN TO THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
Once the General Reception ended the General Committee in London no longer had to
find places at nurse in the country for thousands of children. They were now, however,
faced with the task of finding enough places in the London hospital or one of the
branch hospitals for those children they felt should leave the care of their nurses. The
following summary shows how demanding this task was. A large number of children
had to be moved from one place to another.
Places from where Children were sent to the Branch Hospitals 1
Branch
Hospital
Ackworth
Shrewsbury**
Westerham
Aylesbury
Chester
Barnet
Total
*
**
From Local
Nurseries
773 *
808
304
7
45
48
____
1985
From
London
1119
178
165
96
1
9
____
1568
From other
Branch Hospitals
625
10
!
!
60
!
___
695
From Non-Local
Nurseries
147
96
!
!
!
!
___
243
This figure excludes those children sent out to nurse from the Ackworth hospital and later returned to
the hospital, since they appear under the other headings.
See the Shrewsbury register kept in London – A/FH/A10/7. Children that did not enter the
Shrewsbury hospital have been omitted.
Children from Local Nurseries
Although the General Committee had overall responsibility for allocating children to the
branch hospitals their task was made somewhat easier where nurseries had been
established under the direct supervision of the branch hospitals or where the branch
hospitals had gradually acquired the power to supervise them. The decision as to
whether children from their nurseries should be sent to their branch hospital could in
practice be left to the local governors. This would be a simple matter to arrange, since
1
For sources see Chapter Thirteen, footnote 5.
240
most of the nurses would be in walking distance of their hospitals.
The active
governors and the secretaries of the branch hospitals probably knew the inspectors
personally and this would have made it easier to judge which children at nurse ought to
be sent to the hospitals. Taking children from local nurseries also avoided the cost of
transporting children.
As the chart shows large numbers of children came from local nurseries. In fact they
account for just over 44% of all the children on the registers (or reconstituted registers)
of the branch hospitals. Only at Aylesbury were they of little importance. In three
hospitals they accounted for a majority of the children, viz. Westerham (64.8%),
Shrewsbury (74%) and Barnet (91%).* They were also important at Ackworth (29%)
and Chester (42.4%).
However, just over 55% of the children sent to the branch
hospitals came from further afield. Here the task of deciding which children should be
sent fell to the General Committee.
This is the case even when children were
transferred from one branch hospital to another since the decision had to be made in
London, although the actual transport arrangements could be made by one of the
branch hospitals. When branch hospitals closed the General Committee had to decide
where to send the children who were living there.
Children from London
Children sent from London account for just over one-third (34.9%) of all the names in
the branch hospital registers. Large numbers of children were sent to Ackworth,
Shrewsbury, Westerham and Aylesbury. At Aylesbury they comprised 93.2% of all the
children. The Chester registers are misleading. The Chester hospital registers record
only one child from London,2 but the London register of grown children list 31 children
*
The very high percentage here is due to the fact that the Barnet hospital had been established
mainly to take the children from the two Barnet nurseries (Mrs West’s and Mr Roberts’s).
2
A/FH/A10/19/1 and A/FH/D04/003/001.
241
sent to Chester who were not returned to London.3 These children were sent to the
Chester nurseries. Those that were later transferred to the Chester hospital were
classified as coming from the Chester area not from London. Many of the children had
been returned to the London hospital from their country nurses so that they could be
sent to one of the branch hospitals as soon as possible.
The overwhelming importance of Ackworth is obvious. Just over 70% of all the children
dispatched from London to the branch hospitals (1119 out of 1568) were sent to
Ackworth. * In the years 1765 to 1770 989 children were sent to Ackworth, more than
twice the number sent to all the other branch hospitals (449) in the entire period of their
existence. Just over two-fifths of all the children in the Ackworth hospital register had
been sent from London.
Children from other Branch Hospitals
Only Chester, Ackworth and Shrewsbury took in foundlings from other branch
hospitals. In 1760 ten boys were sent to Shrewsbury from Aylesbury.
All the 60
children (30 boys and 30 girls**) sent to Chester in 1763 (the year in which the hospital
opened) came from Shrewsbury. This was no doubt partly to ease the pressure of
numbers on the Shrewsbury hospital, but also to get the new hospital at Chester
started. These were the only children Chester took in from another branch hospital:
3
A/FH/A9/A10.
*
No allowance is made here for the children sent to the Chester nursery – see above.
These figures are based on the Chester register. The Shrewsbury register listed 21 boys and 21
girls sent to Chester in that year; the other nine boys and nine girls must have come from the
nurseries linked to the Shrewsbury hospital.
**
242
Number of Children at Ackworth from the other Branch Hospitals
1760
1766
1768
1768
1769
1769
1770
1772
Aylesbury
Shrewsbury
Chester
Westerham
Shrewsbury
Chester
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury
10
32
16
64
211
112
149
31
625
Aylesbury
Westerham
Chester
Shrewsbury
10
64
128
423
625
Many of the children sent from Shrewsbury in 1769 and 1770 were no doubt sent to
Ackworth in the belief that they would stand a better chance of being apprenticed there
than in the Shrewsbury area. In 1769 a large number of children from the Chester
hospital and the Chester nurseries were sent to Ackworth when the Chester hospital
closed. When the Shrewsbury hospital closed in 1772 some of the children went to
Ackworth and others were returned to London. In Chapter Ten we noted that for many
children in the aftermath of the General Reception the London hospital was more of a
transit camp than a long-term home. If we stick with the military metaphor we can say
that for many children the Ackworth hospital in its last few years was a demob depot.
Children from Non-local Nurseries
Only Ackworth and Shrewsbury took children from non-local nurseries. Sixty five of the
96 children sent to Shrewsbury from outside Shropshire were from the Staffordshire
nurseries of Leek (17), Cotton (31), and Lichfield (17). They were probably sent to
Shrewsbury because it was the nearest hospital. The other children came from
Newbury in Berkshire (21) and St. Albans in Hertfordshire (10).
The 147 children sent to Ackworth came from the Hertfordshire nurseries of Welwyn
(31), Thunderidge (11), Lilley (17), Hitchin (8) and Barnet (5), from Luton in
Bedfordshire (40), from Lichfield (19) and Dilhorn (11) in Staffordshire and from
Balderton in Nottinghamshire (5). The Hertfordshire nurseries were all close to the
Great North Road, the route used by the ‘caravan’ that took children from London to
243
Ackworth, so that it was natural for the London governors to send some of the children
from that county to Ackworth. The Great North Road also passed through Balderton.
Enough has been said to give an idea of the logistical problem the Foundling Hospital
faced in the aftermath of the General Reception. No other charity in England faced
difficulties of this sort. The fact that the governors in London and their secretary coped
with these problems is a tribute both to their ability and to their conscientiousness.
244
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
THE ROLE OF THE GOVERNORS
Although the Treasurer and the General Committee in London had some powers of
supervision, the responsibility for the day-to-day running of the branch hospitals lay
with the governing committees. There is a good account of their duties in the Account
of the Hospital(1759):
‘They have power to recommend the Master and Matrons to the General
Committee, and to remove them for any Misbehaviour; and also to elect and
displace all Servants of their respective Houses.
They make Contracts for Servants Wages, and for Cloathing and
Maintenance of the Children, for their Employment, the Price of their Labour,
and to place them out Apprentices; but the Indentures must be transmitted to
London to be sealed.
These Committees take care that the Houses be kept in Repair, that the
Children be properly employed, fed and cloathed, in the Manner agreed to;
they see Tables of Provisions for each day of the Week put up in their
Houses, and ascertain the Quantity and Quality.
They see that the Children be industriously employed, instructed in Reading,
and in the Principles of the Christian Religion; attend regularly at Divine
Service, and are kept clean in their persons, and decent in their Behaviour.
That the Master, Mistress and Servants, be careful and industrious, sober
and grave, in their Deportment, tender to the Children committed to their
Care, and in no degree guilty of Profaneness or Immorality.
They take Care that the Cloathing be equal in Goodness to the Samples,
uniform according to the Patterns of the Hospital, substantially made, and
that it is to be of the Manufactures of Great Britain or Ireland.
They give timely Notice to the Hospital of what Remittance are wanted; and
from Time to Time correspond with the General Committee; or such other
Committee as shall be specially appointed for that Purpose, and send up
their Accounts constantly every Quarter. They make all Agreements for
Provisions, Board, or Cloathing, which are entered in a Book kept for that
Purpose, also the Indentures which require the Seal of the Hospital, and all
other Matters which conduce to the Benefit and Increase of the Charity, and
1
which render it more extensively useful to the Public.’
Given the considerable responsibilities placed on the governing committees, it is not
surprising that the Account shows that the leading London governors believed that the
1
A/F//5/2
245
support of influential people in their neighbourhoods would be vital to the success of
the branch hospitals.
Only the Aylesbury governors let the charity down. John Wilkes would never have got
away with misappropriating the Hospital’s funds if they had done their duty (see
Chapter Twelve).
THE MASTERS OR SECRETARIES
The most important male employee in the branch hospitals at Ackworth, Shrewsbury,
Westerham and Chester was the Master who also acted as secretary. [At Aylesbury
the master seems to have been less important, partly because there was a separate
part-time secretary. At Barnet Mrs. West dispensed with a Master and dealt with the
correspondence and accounts herself, as well as supervising the running of the
hospital.]
Where the Master also acted as Secretary he played a crucial role. The governors,
however conscientious they might be, had to leave much of the routine administration
of the hospital in his hands. His importance can be gauged from the fact that, as we
have seen, he was paid more than the other officers, and considerably more than the
servants.
The Account of the Hospital (1759) shows what was expected of him, though the actual
tasks he had to carry out varied somewhat from hospital to hospital:
246
‘The Master is to be a middle-aged Man, unencumbered with a Family, of an
unblemished Character, of the Protestant Religion, active and able to teach
the Children to read, or write if required; himself to write a good hand, and
keep exactly the Accounts of the Hospital, and the Inventory of the
Household Goods there.
His Duty is to see the Children properly employed and instructed, to teach
them to read, to see the Accounts faithfully kept, to act as Secretary to the
Committee; to take care of the Furniture, Provisions, and Materials employed
in any Manufactory for the use of the Children: to see their Work accounted
for and paid for: to get in the Tradesmens Bills Quarterly and see them paid;
to transmit the Vouchers, annually at least, with his Accounts to the
Committee: to enter the Receipt of Children, their Discharge or Deaths, and
2
that proper Decency and good Government be kept in the Hospital.’
According to the Regulations for the Shrewsbury hospital he had also ‘to enquire into
and report to the Board the Character of all such persons as shall offer themselves for
Vacancies under his inspection.’3
One of the most time consuming tasks must have been that of dealing with the paper
work. At a meeting of the General Committee in London on Wednesday 9 November
1757 it was decided that the following books should be sent to Ackworth:
A Book of the Treasurer’s Receipts & Payments
A Book for the Master of the Hospitals Receipts & Payments
A Journal
A Ledger
A Petty Cash Book
A Book to enter the time of the Servants coming & discharge
A Book of Servants Wages
A Receipt Book for the Master
A Receipt Book for the Treasurer
A Book to enter the Clothing and Linen of the Hospital
An Inventory Book
The Ackworth archives transferred to London in 1995 consisted of about seventy
items.4
2
Ibid.
3
Regulations for the Orphan Hospital at Shrewsbury – A/FH/M01/13. No Regulations have
survived for the other hospitals, but it is likely that the other masters also had to vet those
applying for jobs. These regulations were almost certainly drawn up by the Revd Dr Adams and
Roger Keynaston – see Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 6 December 1762 and 17 January 1767 –
A/FH/D2/1/1.
4
Gen.Cttee – A/FH/K02/006 – microfilm X041/015.
247
In the early days when only a few children had to be looked after, the Master’s or
Secretary’s job may not have seemed too demanding, but as the hospitals took in more
grown children, the work load must have been considerable in the bigger hospitals.
Amongst the Master’s duties (except at Aylesbury) was that of attending governors’
meetings and writing up the minutes. This task itself must have taken up a great deal of
time at Shrewsbury (306 meetings) and Chester (307). The Master was also
responsible for most of the correspondence (except again at Aylesbury). In many cases
he would have acted on the instruction of the governors, but there are occasions when
he had to deal with queries from London without consulting his committee (for example,
concerning individual children or minor discrepancies in the accounts). The four
Shrewsbury letter books contain copies of 557 letters sent from Shrewsbury from
February 28 1759 to August 22 1772.5 The three Ackworth letter books, which cover
the period from 18 January 1762 to 14 March 1777 contain copies of 438 letters.6 [No
Ackworth letter book has survived for the period from 1757 to 1761.] Even the Chester
hospital, one of the smallest with only 106 foundlings on the register, involved a fair
amount of correspondence (partly because the Chester governors were also
responsible for a large number of children at nurse). The Chester letter book contains
copies of ninety eight letters sent from Chester to London.7
The Masters were responsible for informing the governors when bills needed to be
paid. The governors would then provide them with the money needed. The systems for
paying bills varied somewhat from hospital to hospital. In all cases, though, the branch
hospitals’ funds were procured by drafts on the Treasurer of the London hospital. In
most of the branch hospitals the Master/Secretary handled very large sums of money.
5
A/FH/D02/005/001-004.
6
A/FH/Q/10-12.
7
A/FH/D04/002/001. Eighty seven of these were addressed to Collingwood, three to Taylor White
and two to the General Committee. See Chapter Five for the number of letters sent from London
to the branch hospitals.
248
Here is a typical item in a letter sent by Richard Hargreaves, the Secretary at Ackworth,
to London. ‘I have to advise You of Sir Roland Winn’s Drafts of the 16th pay [able] to
me at 28 Days for £300.’8 The minutes of the Shrewsbury hospital for 31 December
1764 record that £496-5-9d was paid to cover the Secretary’s disbursements.9 Quite
large sums were involved even in the smaller hospitals. On January 5 1768 the
Chester minutes ordered that £180 should be paid to Joshua Small, the Secretary.
The Masters or Secretaries were therefore in positions of trust as well as
responsibility. 10 The majority seem to have carried out their duties conscientiously.
Richard Hargreaves kept the Ackworth books in an exemplary manner. On his death in
November 1772 he was succeeded by his son John.11 In a letter to Sir Charles
Whitworth Dr. Lee said ‘I can assure you that we have a very high opinion of Young
Hargreaves, whom we have appointed to succeed to his Father for the present, as
thinking him more capable of the undertaking than any other we can find out.’12 John
Hargreaves held the post of Master until the hospital closed. Joshua Small at Chester
was also well thought of. On 28 April 1764 the Chester governors ordered that his
wages be increased [from £15] ‘to Twenty pounds per Ann m to commence from March
30th last being the time of his entering upon the Second years Service in consideration
of his good behaviour and additional trouble.’13
Only two of the full-time Secretaries had to be dismissed. On 15 November 1761 John
Warde the Treasurer and leading governor at Westerham, informed Thomas
8
24 July 1764, Ackworth letter Book – A/FH/Q/10.
9
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
10
Chester Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D4/1/1.
11
Ackworth Hospital Minutes, 24 November 1772 – A/FH/Q/8.
12
Letter dated 25 November, 1772 Ackworth Letter Book, vol.3 – A/FH/Q/12.
13
Chester Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D4/1/1. Joshua Small’s daughter was a servant at the hospital –
see Chester letter Book, 16 Sept. 1767 – A/FH/A15/007/001. She must be the Mary Small
appointed as girls’ nurse on 6 Sept. 1763 – see the Chester Minutes.
249
Collingwood that John Hoath, the Secretary, had been ‘very negligent in many Parts of
his Duty’ and had therefore been sacked.14 His successor, John Saunders, seem to
have been reliable and efficient. On the 19th February 1765 the governors at
Shrewsbury dismissed Thomas Morgan, ‘It appearing to the Board that Mr. Morgan the
Secretary hath been guilty of great Negligence in his Duty that his Accounts have been
for some time very erroneous to cover which he has been guilty of several erasures in
his books.’ He was also accused of having taken a lease of some land for his own use
‘under colour of its being for the use of the Hospital.’ Lastly he had on several
occasions absented himself form the hospital without leave.15 At first the governors
had been impressed by his record. On 5 January 1761, for example, they ‘Order’d that
a Gratuity of Five pounds be given to the Secretary for his Extraordinary Services.’ 16
Morgan’s successor, Samual Magee, carried out his duties faithfully, as far as we can
tell. He certainly kept the Shrewsbury Register more efficiently.
The only other Secretary who proved unsatisfactory was Robert Neale who held the
post at Aylesbury on a part-time basis. He seems to have realized that John Wilkes
was behaving dishonestly, but did not have the courage to report this to the General
Committee in London.17 Neale was in a difficult position, however, since if he had
reported his suspicions, he might well have antagonized the other Aylesbury
governors, one of whom, the Revd. Dr. John Stephens, was not only Vicar of the parish
church of St, Mary, but Master of the Aylesbury School, where Neale was an assistant
master. 18 We do not know whether Robert Dancer, the Steward of the Aylesbury
hospital, was aware of what was going on.
14
A/FH/A/6/1/14/19/4.
15
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
16
Ibid.
17
Lloyd Hart, op.cit., pp.61-75 and Nichols and Wray, op.cit., pp.178-179. No doubt stealing from a
charity is no worse than stealing from an individual, but somehow it seems worse.
18
Lloyd Hart, p.35.
250
THE MATRONS
The most important female employee in the branch hospitals was the Matron.
According to the Account of the Hospital,
‘The Matron or Mistress assists the Master in the Government of the
House, sees that the Children are kept clean, that they rise at proper
Hours, and instructs them in the Catechism and in the Duties of
Religion and Morality. She attends them at the Times of Divine
Service, sees they behave with due Reverence, and prevents all
Waste of Provisions, Cloathing, Furniture or other Things committed
to her Charge; and sees that the House be kept exactly clean and
that the Servants do their Duty.’19
In addition to their main tasks of looking after the children and supervising the female
staff (who, as we have seen, outnumbered the male servants) the Matrons also had to
pay some of the bills, though they did not handle as much money as the Masters. The
efficient running of the branch hospitals must have depended as much on the Matrons
as on the Masters. It is probable that the children came into contact with the Matrons
more often than with the Masters.
We know less about the Matron than the Masters, mainly because they did not have to
correspond with the London hospital and have therefore left less evidence of their
activities. The nature of their work depended, of course, on the size of the hospital. The
Barnet hospital seems never to have more then about forty children at one time and the
Matron’s staff would have consisted of not more than two or three assistants.20 She
probably had to undertake the task of teaching the children which would have been
delegated to others in larger hospitals. At Shrewsbury on the 9th of April 1766 the
Matron was in charge of thirty two female servants and responsible for the welfare of
581 children. 21 On the 31st December 1766 there were 610 children in the Ackworth
hospital. 22
19
A/FH/A1/5/2
20
See chart in Chapter Nine.
21
Officers & Servants at Shrewsbury Hospital – A/FH/D2/15/1.
22
See chart in Chapter Nine.
251
We know almost nothing about Mrs. Hiscock the Matron of the Chester hospital23 or
Elizabeth Dancer, the Matron at Aylesbury.24 There is no reason to believe that Mrs.
Dancer was implicated in the Wilkes scandal. Only four of the 103 children that were
sent to Aylesbury hospital died there which suggests she may have looked after them
well. She was probably the wife of George Dancer, the Master.
We have rather more information about some of the other Matrons. At Barnet Mrs.
West had persuaded the London governors to appoint Martha Cullarne as Matron and
her sister Sarah as her assistant.* She described them as ‘two Gentlewomen of my
immediate acquaintance.’ They had been brought to misfortune when their husbands
went bankrupt.25
‘I think they are very Fitt for it as they always managed their own
Children extremely well and are very neat and handy women & think they shall like the
way of getting a living better than any other.’26 Mrs West took such a close interest in
running the Barnet hospital that we can be sure she would have seen that they were
dismissed if they had become slack.
There are frequent references in the Westerham minutes to Mrs Wadham, the first
Matron. [She was almost certainly the Mrs. Wadham who was sent from London to
make arrangements for the first children to be sent to Westerham. She had been
matron of the infirmary in the London hospital.]27 As early as 4 September 1760, two
months after the first children to be sent down to the Westerham hospital, the
23
There are only four brief references to her in the Chester hospital Minutes on 7 June 1763, 16
August 1763, 4 October 1763 and 13 September 1769 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
24
Nichols and Wray, op.cit.,p.179.
*
Mrs West omitted to mention that they were her relations!
25
Based on an analysis of the General Registers – A/FH/A9/2/1 to A/FH/A9/2/3 – and the Register
of Grown Children – A/FH/A9/10.
26
Letter from Mrs. West to the Sub-Committee, 6 Sept. 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/1-.
27
Sub-Cttee, Wednesday 7 May 1760 – A/FH/3/5/4.
252
governors stated ‘that she has hitherto conducted the Business of the House with
prudence and economy.’28 She paid particular attention to the care of the sick
children. 29 Judging by an admirably clear report she wrote in 1761 on the illness of one
of the girls at Westerham she was well educated.30 In 1764 she was given two guineas
‘for the Extraordinary Care and Attendance during the Children being ill of the
Measles’. 31
Early in July 1766, however, she and her daughters were sacked on the
grounds that they had frequently gone to London without permission and that Mrs
Wadham went to London at the very time that Saunders, the secretary, was away for
inoculation. She had also put up a Mrs Cosyn, who had left her a legacy in her will, in
the hospital for a week, and she or one of her daughters had consistently attended Mrs
Cosyn night and day for weeks together right up to her death and had later used the
hospital’s servants and waggon to fetch the goods left to her in Mrs Cosyn’s will. The
Westerham governors replaced her and her daughters with Mrs Jane Williamson, the
widow of a physician, and her grand daughter.32
Mrs Williamson was still at
Westerham when it closed.33
The Matron at Ackworth was Richard Hargreaves’ wife. On 1st October 1757 the
governors resolved that ‘Mr. & Mrs. Hargreaves be Hired as Master & Matron from 7
Sept. last for £40-0-0 a year.’34 When her son succeeded to the post of Master on his
father’s death she continued in the post of Matron. We know very little about her, but
28
Westerham Hospital Minute – A/FH/D3/1/1.
29
See, for example, references in letters to London for 29 March 1761 (A/FH/A/6/1/14/8/47) and 19
April 1761 A/FH/A/6/1/14/8/49).
30
The case of Marg Vandeput, 3 December 1761 – A/FH/A/6/1/14/19/3.
31
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 3 Sept. 1764 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
32
See Mrs Wadham’s letter to the General Committee – (A/FH/A/6/1/19/20/33 and the letter sent by
Ward and Ellison to Collingwood to justify dismissing her (A/FH/A/6/1/19/20/70). For Mrs
Williamson see the letter of 1 December 1769 (A/FH/A/6/1/22/14/36).
33
Ibid. The first reference occurs on 27 April.
34
Ackworth Hospital Order Book – A/FH/Q/8.
253
since the Ackworth hospital seems to have been well run we must assume she was
efficient.
There was not the same continuity at Shrewsbury as at Ackworth. Five women held the
post of Matron between 1759 and 1772. The first, Mrs Eleanor Poghe, was appointed
on the 22nd January 1759 at a salary of £10 per annum.35 She did not last long. On 4
June 1759 the minutes record that ‘Mrs. Martha Powell was chose Matron to the room
of Mrs. Poghe who is to quit the first of August.’ In October 1759 Mrs. Powell was
given a gratuity of 40s per annum. On 5 January 1761, in spite of this vote of
confidence she gave notice that she would resign in one month’s time. On the 23rd
February 1761 her place was taken by a Mrs. Clowes, a widow from Lichfield. She
was to be paid £10 per annum with a gratuity of £2 p.a. Only three months after being
appointed she was dismissed on 22 May 1761, ‘Complaints having been made of some
Indiscretions of the Matron and her not keeping up a Proper Authority over the
Servants.’ Her successor, Mrs. Mary Tompkyns, was appointed on 30th May ‘to enter
upon her Office as soon as the other leaves it and to be allowed a Month for Trial. She
must have been a stronger character than her predecessor. On the 19th of December
one of the servants was dismissed for unruly behaviour and disobeying her orders. The
governors must have felt that Mrs. Tompkyns had served the hospital well for on
Christmas Eve 1767 they gave her £2.10.0d ‘as a present over and above her Wages
on her parting with the Hospl.’ A few days earlier (on the 10th December) they had
appointed Mrs. Jane Magee in her place. She was probably the wife of the Secretary or
Master, Samuel Magee. On the 3rd of January 1771 she was given a gratuity of £7 for
the work in 1770.36 It was only in the first two years of the hospital’s existence that the
Shrewsbury governors found it difficult to find the right person to act as Matron. Both
Mrs. Tompkyns and Mrs. Magee seem to have coped well with their demanding jobs.
35
Ibid.
36
See the Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1 – for all these references.
254
THE DAILY ROUTINE
Such an important matter as the daily routine must have had the approval of the
governors of the branch hospitals, but it was the duty of the master and the matron to
see that this was followed. In the smaller hospitals at Chester and Aylesbury, a rigid
routine may not have been necessary, but in the larger hospitals it would have been
essential if they were to run smoothly. At Barnet Mrs West probably decided how the
children should be occupied.
Shrewsbury is the only branch hospital for which we have details of the daily routine.
This was very similar to that at the London hospital.37 It is likely that the other large
branch hospitals were organized in much the same way. The following account comes
from the Regulations for the Government of the Orphans Hospital in Shrewsbury:38
‘The Children rise before Six in the Summer and never later than Seven in the
Winter. The large Children make the Beds sweep under them, empty the
Chamber Potts into the Pail and carry it down every morning early – Assisted by
the Nurses.
All the Children are washed Hands and Face and Comb’d before they come
down and soap is allow’d for that Purpose. Immediately after coming down
Prayers are said in the Dining Room one of the Children by Rotation repeating
them to the Rest.
Breakfast at seven in summer and Eight in Winter. At school from Eight to
Twelve the larger Children staying no longer than the saying of their lessons,
then go to the Work of the House Manufactory and labour and learn alternately
so that they may say two Lessons in the Morning and two after Dinner.
Dine at Twelve the Tables served by the larger Children and Grace is said by
one of the Children before they sit down & at rising. The Nurses carve and the
Children carry away their own Trenchers Piggins.
The large Children go to work at one and the smaller play from Dinner till two.
Go to school from two to five and play from five to six.
Sup at six – from supper till Bed time play abroad in the summer – in the Dining
Room in Winter – Prayers and go to Bed at Eight in Winter and Nine in
Summer.’
37
See section 5 of the Regulations quoted in Chapter Seven.
38
A/FH/M01/13. These must be the rules drawn up by Dr Adams and Roger Kynaston – See the
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 6 December 1762 and 17 January 1767 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
255
The daily routine seems quite enlightened.
All the children had some time for play.
The hours at school were perhaps rather long for the younger children but there may
have been breaks at times in the morning and afternoon. We may think that the other
children should not have been put to work in the manufactory, but this is not a criticism
that would have occurred to any contemporary. No doubt some of the children were
glad when it was their turn to go to the schoolroom, but of course others may have
preferred working in the manufactory.
The routine was certainly monotonous, especially when we bear in mind that the
children got no holidays away from the hospital. A different routine was followed on
Sunday, however, which must have been a welcome change for the children.
256
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE CHILDREN’S CLOTHES AND SHOES
CLOTHING
The Account of the Hospital (1759) stated that it was the duty of the governors of the
branch hospitals to ensure that the children’s clothes should be ‘substantially made’.
They were to see that the ‘Cloathing be equal in Goodness to the Samples, uniform
according to the Pattern of the Hospital’.1 The children, therefore, were presumably
dressed in much the same way as those in the London hospital.2 They probably looked
very like charity school children, although their outer clothes would have been brown
trimmed with red, rather than blue which was the colour favoured by many charity
schools.
In October 1757 the governors at Ackworth listed the clothing for boys:
‘Outside clothing of the Boys be of the cloth according to a sample produced by Mr
Milnes.... with Scarlet Bands as now used, & linen with Red Serge.
That the Breeches be of leather & that the working boys have leather gowns.
That the Stockings be of grey knit yarn, according to the patterns produced by Mr.
Birbeck.
That the Shoes be made according to the pattern produced by John Barton.
That two pattern Caps be made with all convenient speed, one of which shall be
sent to London.’3
1
A/FH/A1/5/2
2
See McClure, op.cit., pp.193-195 and the picture of a foundling boy and girl of 1 May 1747 or
p.192.
3
Ackworth Hospital Order Book, 22 October 1757 – A/FH/Q/8.
257
A similar list was not drawn up for the clothing of the girls, as the first of them did not
arrive at Ackworth until May 1758.
At Shrewsbury ‘Each Child is allowed two suits of Clothes, Two pair of Stockings and
shoes one Hat and three of each sort of Linnen Garments, these are in Charge of the
Nurses ... The Children’s linen is changed once a Week’ [Table linen was changed
twice a week and bedsheets once in six weeks.]4 This may seem a rather meagre
supply, but it is unlikely that the children of the poorer classes had more clothes than
this.
Some of the clothes were sent ready-made from London. In June 1761, for example,
Robert Neale wrote to ‘acquaint you that Outside Clothing is wanted for 24 Girls and
Eleven Boys.’5 When Mrs West was drawing up plans for the Barnet hospital she wrote
that ‘... the clothing must be found from the [London] Hospital.’ though she added that
after the first year she believed that the children at Barnet would be able to make most
of it themselves.6 On 19 December 1762 she asked ‘for clothes reddy made for 4
Boys.’7 On 19 March 1763 the Sub-Committee ‘Read a letter from J. Saunders Steward
of the Hospital at Westerham requesting the following Clothes for the Boys to be sent
to the Hospital, to wit
5
3
16
31
14
69
of No.
5
4
3
2
1
in all which will make with the 5 Suits already sent 74 in the whole.’8
4
Regulations of the Government of the Orphan Hospital in Shrewsbury – A/FH/M01/3.
5
Letter to Collingwood, 13 June 1761 – A/FH/A/6/1/14/13/7. For similar letters see
A/FH/A/6/1/15/12/7 (27 June, 1762), A/FH/A/6/1/16/13/13 (7 June 1763) and A/FH/A/6/1/17/13/4
(13 May 1764)
6
16 September 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/69.
7
19 December 1762
A/FH/A/6/1/19/20/36.
8
Sub-Cttee – A/FH/A03/005/005.
–
A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/74.
See
also
letter
of
20
October
1766
–
258
In April of the following year Saunders was instructed to write to London ‘for 5 Doz. of
Boys Hatts & 3 Doz. of Girls Hatts.’9
In many cases the London hospital merely supplied cloth, which the branch hospitals
had to get made up into clothes. In 1761, for example, Neale noted that ‘the piece of
Cloth of 20! Yds will Cloathe but 12 Boys.’10 There are many references in the
Westerham minutes to getting cloth from London. In February 1762, the SubCommittee agreed to send, amongst other things, the following items:
‘For 60 Boys
90 " yards of Yorkshire Cloth
30 Yards of Lancaster Sheeting
70 Yards Red Shaloon
6 Yards Buckram
60 doz Buttons
For 60 Girls
160 Yards Brown Serge
32 Yards Russia Drab
20 Yards Brown Linen
56 Yards Broad Binding
20 Yards Narrow Binding
2 oz Silk
4 Yards strong Cloth
11
All the branch hospitals made some woollen cloth for themselves, as we shall see in
Chapter Twenty. Ackworth and Shrewsbury eventually produced more than they
needed to clothe their own children. Some of the surplus was sent to London before
being sent on to Westerham, as the following entry shows: ‘That 2 prs of the Cloth
made at the Hospital at Shrewsbury & 56 Yards of Serge made at Ackworth be sent to
Westerham for Clothing the children there.’12 The Chester hospital got some of its cloth
directly from Ackworth. The Chester minutes for July 23 1765 Ordered ‘That a letter be
immediately wrote to the Secretary of the Ackworth Orphan Hospital for the same
9
Westerham Hospital Minutes, April 2 1764 – A/FH/A15/5/1.
10
19 July 1761 – A/FH/A/6/1/14/13/3. For another Aylesbury example see A/FH/A/6/1/13/14/31 (27
May 1760).
11
Sub-Cttee, Wednesday 3 February 1762 – A/FH/A03/005/005. For other examples see
A/FH/A/6/1/16/20/30 (10 March 1763), A/FH/A/6/1/16/17/22 (12 September 1763) and
A/FH/A/6/1/22/14/29.
12
Sub-Cttee, May 27 1762 – A/FH/A03/A05/A05.
259
quantity of blue frieze delivered from thence to the Hospital the last year & three pieces
of red serge for linings’.13
Although many of the children were employed in spinning flax into linen yarn, no linen
cloth (needed for shirts, shifts and stockings and presumably for underclothes, as well
as sheets and table cloths) was woven in the branch hospitals. Some linen cloth was
sent via London: on 5 December 1761, for example, the Sub-Committee ordered that
Linen ‘for 6 doz Shirts and 6 doz Shifts be sent to Westerham.’14 As we have seen,
brown linen was sent there in 1762 for the girls. Much of it, though, was bought from
local suppliers. As we saw in Chapter Twelve Sir Rowland Winn, the Ackworth
Treasurer, supplied linen cloth to that hospital and Mr Orange, a governor, supplied
Chester. Another linen draper, Mr Croughton, also provided Chester with linen cloth. 15
Much of the linen cloth was made into shirts and shifts by the Children themselves as
we shall see in Chapter Twenty.
The woollen cloth was often made up by adults rather than by the children. In some
cases these were hospital servants. Ackworth employed three dress makers: Jane
Ledger served from 1761 to 1773 and Jane Godmarsh from 1769 to 1770; the third,
Rachel Amison, was appointed in November 1764, but we do not know how long she
served. Ackworth had a full-time tailor, John Bambrough, from August 1764 to October
1769, at a salary of £9 a year. 16 In May 1761 the Westerham governors appointed a
full-time seamstress: ‘Whereas Eliz. Wadham [Mrs Wadham’s daughter] who has been
Occasionally employ’d in the House Makeing of the Childrens Coats at the Rate of 4s
by the Week and her Board and has Offered her Service to do the same and all the
13
Chester Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D4/1/1.
14
Sub-Cttee – A/FH/S03/005/005.
15
See, for example, the Chester minutes for 6 January 1767 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
16
Register of Servants at Ackworth – A/FH/Q/60. [Rachel Amison was listed as Runaway.]
260
Needlework at the Rate of 2s by the Week and her Board on Condition that she be
constantly employ’d, it is the Opinion of this Committee that the number of Children
being now increased and increasing it will be necessary to have such a Person.’17 In
1765 the Shrewsbury governors decided to advertise for a tailor, but ordered that in the
meantime ‘John Pugh (Taylor) be employ’d to mend the Childrens Cloths till some
Person be appointed by the Committee for that purpose.’18 It is not clear whether her or
his successor made clothes as well as repairing them. Two tailors were on the staff at
Shrewsbury from April 1766 to July 1769 and one tailor was employed from June 1770
to June 1771. 19 In February 1767 the Chester governors ‘Ordered That John Barrow
and Sarah Barrow be employed in the Hospital to make and mend the Clothes for the
Children in the House... and to make all the outward Clothing for the Children at
Nurse.’20
Clothes were also made by tailors who worked on their own account. In September
1762 (before the Barnet hospital was opened) Mrs West asked that cloth should be
sent unmade ‘that they may fit the Children to be made stronger than they now [are]
emagin I can have them done here at the same price.’21 In November 1761, according
to the Westerham minutes, ‘Mrs Wadham having represented that the Children are in
want of 6 Dozen of shirts and 6 Dozen of shifts which we can have made hear at 2s 6d
per dozen, Desires that they will Consider weather it moste Expedient to send the Cloth
to have it made hear & send them ready made and that we Desire to have Cloth and
other Materials for New Cloathing of the Children as soon as Posable for the reason
that we shall not Otherwise be able to gett the Close made against the spring and also
17
Westerham Minutes, 28 May 1761 – A/FH/D3/1/1. She seems to have been on piece-work
wages.
18
Shrewsbury Minutes, 6 June 1765 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
19
Shrewsbury, List of Officers and Servants – A/FH/D2/15/1.
20
Chester Minutes, 10 February1767 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
21
13 Sept. ‘62 – A/FH/A/6/15/19/70.
261
by Allowing time we can have them made so much the cheaper.’22 In May 1769 the
governors recorded that ‘The Childrens Cloaths were made up at Westerham for 2/6d
each till the Taylor was hired into this House.’23 The Chester minutes for 9 October
1764 authorized bills to three tailors to be paid:
‘To John Kelly Taylor
£2-2-0
To John Barrow Taylor
2-16-0
To Mr Quoy Taylor
1-10-0’
24
There are several references to tailors’ bills in the Shrewsbury minutes. In February
1764, for example, the governors ordered that £11-17-0 should be paid to ‘Mr
Humphreys in full for making the Boys Cloaths.’25 In the following month they
authorized the payment of £11-6-0 to John Griffiths ‘for making the Girls Cloaths.’26
Much of the children’s clothing at Ackworth was made by tailors working as
independent artisans. The following account, for example, lists the following payments
to outside tailors for 1766:
John Catlow
William Catlow
Richard Nelstrop
Nelstrop & Clayton
William Nelstrop
Richard Johnson
John Thrush
Richard Crossland
£
s
d
4– 4– 0
11 – 7 – 10
11 – 9 – 4
5 – 18 – 0
3– 2– 6
0– 8– 0
2– 8– 0
5 – 15 – 0
27
Thus £43–12–8d was spent on outside tailors compared with only £9 on paying
Bamborough’s wages for that year.
22
Westerham Hospital Minutes, November 26, 1761 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
23
Ibid:, 22 May 1769.
24
Chester Minutes – A/FH/D4/1/1.
25
Shrewsbury Minutes, 2 February 1764 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
26
Ibid. 5 March 1764. For other examples see entries for 3 March 1760 and 19 March 1761.
27
Clothing Accounts – A/FH/Q/28
262
It is likely that the governors aimed to give each child a new set of clothes each year.
As we have seen the Westerham governors in November 1761 were concerned that
the clothes needed might not be ready for the following spring. In January 1761 the
Shrewsbury governors ‘Order’d that the Children be Cloath’d by the End of next Month
under the Direction of Colonel Congreve and Mr. Kynaston.’28
All the children, whether or not they were employed in making clothes, were expected
to keep their own clothes in good condition. In a letter to Mr Small, the Secretary of the
Westerham hospital, dated 2 August 1766, Collingwood wrote that ‘with relation to the
Instruction of the Children; the Boys and Girls to mend their own clothes so as to be
able to keep themselves tight, as an Article of the most useful Oeconomy and essential
to the future Welfare of the Children, that proper Instruction be provided accordingly, in
the manner most agreeable to the Commee for managing the Affairs of your
Hospital.’29 Similar letters were sent to John Warde at Westerham, Robert Neale at
Aylesbury and Richard Hargreaves at Ackworth. When John and Sarah Barrow were
appointed to make and mend the children’s clothes they were required ‘to instruct the
Boys and Girls likewise’.30 In 1769 the Sub-Committee agreed that the Westerham
governors were justified in employing a full-time tailor since he could help out in an
emergency on the farm ‘as well as instructing the Children to mend their own
Clothes.’31
SHOES
At Barnet the shoes were provided from London. In December 1762 Mrs West asked
Mrs Leicester to ‘desire Mr Tucker to send me two dozen of shoes the same as the last
28
Shrewsbury Minutes – 5 January 1761 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
29
Copy Book of Letters, No. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
30
Chester Minutes, 10 February 1767 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
31
Sub-Cttee, Saturday 27 May 1769 – A/FH/A03/005/008.
263
as they were as good and much cheaper than I buy here.’32 In May 1763 she asked for
two dozen more pairs.33 Some of the shoes for Westerham also came from London. In
December 1760 the governors there ‘Ordered that Mr Hoath do write to the Hospital in
London for 3 Dozs of Shoes for the Children at Wellstreet, there being not a sufficient
Quantity to be had in the County.’34 In a letter of 3 August 1760 Neale complained that
there were four fewer pairs of shoes sent from London to Aylesbury than there should
have been. 35 Some shoes, though, were evidently bought locally. A letter of 6 February
1766 refers to a payment of £1-5-2d to ‘This Paten for Shoes.’36 The other branch
hospitals bought the children’s shoes locally. In 1763, for example, the Chester
governors ordered ‘That 40 pair of Calf skin shoes be bespoke of Widow Golbourn at 2
shillings a pair.’37
Shoes were a major item of expenditure at Shrewsbury. In the period down to 13 April
1765 the governors paid William Schofield £65-5-0d for shoes and Evans £123-18-6d.
Schofield’s name then drops out of the minutes, but Evans was paid £118-0-0d for the
period 26 September 1765 to 14 April 1767.38 A great deal of money was also spent
on shoes at Ackworth. In 1766 £171-8-8d was paid to local craftsmen for making and
mending shoes and a cobbler was also employed as a servant for £3-13-8d, making a
total of £175-2-4d for that year alone.39
32
Letter of 19 December 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/74.
33
Letter of 12 May 1763 – A/FH/6/1/16/20/31.
34
Westerham Minutes, 18 December 1760 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
35
A/FH/A/6/1/13/14/19.
36
A/FH/A/6/1/19/14/1.
37
Chester Minutes, 21 June 1763 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
38
Shrewsbury Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
39
Clothing Accounts – A/FH/Q/28.
264
Probably the children’s clothes and shoes were adequate in most cases. Had large
numbers been seen in rags or any of the children gone barefoot, the Foundling
Hospital’s critics would surely have seized on these facts as a away of discrediting the
charity.
265
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE CHILDREN’S FOOD
The surviving information about the children’s diet is disappointingly sketchy.
It was
probably similar to that at London, though the branch governors may have found it easier
to provide the children with wholesome food.
Barnet
In a letter to Collingwood in October 1762 Mrs West said ‘as to diet I propose the Children
should have chiefly milk for Breakfast & supper Meat one Day Puding on other or any
thing the season affords much of their strength depends on being well nourished.’1 In 1764
she argued that ‘Children might be maintain quit as cheap near London as distant of each
hospital had Land, I often wish a bit at Hadley off the Chase, which I think might easily be
obtained & would make great saving Provisions of all kind have been this year
uncommonly dear or mine wou’d have been cheaper than they have.’2 This suggestion
that the Foundling Hospital should buy some land for the use of the Barnet hospital was
not followed up. The fact that more was spent when prices were high suggests that Mrs
West did not make cuts in the amount of food provided for the children.
Aylesbury
In 1767, after the last children had left the Aylesbury hospital, Collingwood wrote to Neale
saying he was ordered ‘to desire that the Produce of the Garden belonging to the Hospital
at Aylesbury may be immediately disposed of there.’3 This garden, which, according to the
Sub-Committee, was just over an acre in extent, would presumably have been used to
1
2 October 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/17/79.
2
28 July 1764 – A/FH/A/6/1/17/19/41.
3
Copy Book of Letters, No.3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
266
provide the children with vegetables. The Sub-Committee also referred to ‘a parcel of
Meadow or Pasture Ground’ of more than an acre. Rather confusingly, it is referred to as
being adjoining ‘the Garden or Orchard,’ so that the children may have had apples or
pears on occasion. 4 The Aylesbury accounts for 1765 list £23-0-3d paid to local people for
all sorts of goods and services, but the only payment for a foodstuff was to John Dell for
malt, but this would have been used for brewing beer for the staff. In the same year a
payment of £77-16-11d was made to Mr. Dancer, the Master. 5 This was probably spent on
food for the children.
Chester
We know very little about the diet in the Chester hospital. In 1763 the Chester governors
‘Ordered that a hundred measures of Pottatoes be brought & Carrots for the Winter
Stock.’6 There is a reference in 1767 to the high cost of wheat, beef, veal, mutton and
potatoes as justifying an increase in the pay for nurses supervised by inspectors.7 It is
probable that these items also featured in the hospital’s expenditure. In the same year
Collingwood noted ‘House Expences in many Article, that is to say Bread, Meat, etc. £222-3d.’8 Cheshire was a major dairy farming area, so that the children probably had plenty
of milk and cheese.
Shrewsbury
The children’s diet at Shrewsbury may have been partly based on that of London. In
February 1759, before the first foundling arrived, Roger Kynaston showed the Shrewsbury
governors the ‘Table of Diet used in the London hospital:
4
Sub-Cttee, Saturday 18 November 1769 – A/FH/A03/A05/008.
5
6 February 1766 – A/FH/A/6/19/14/1.
6
Chester Hospital Minutes, 18 October 1763 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
7
Chester Letter Book, 10 June 1767 – A/FH/D4/2/1.
8
Letter to Mr Small, 26 March 1767 – Copy Book of Letters, No.3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
267
Day
Breakfast
Dinner
Supper
Sunday
Bread
Roast Beef
Bread
Monday
Milk Pottage
Dumplins
Bread & Cheese
Tuesday
Gruel
Boiled Beef
Bread
Wednesday Milk Pottage
Pudding Boiled or Baked
Bread
Thursday
Gruel
Boiled Mutton or
Baked Mutton with Potatoes
Bread
Friday
Milk Pottage in Winter Bread with Roots or
Cold Milk in Summer Peas Pottage
Bread & Cheese
Saturday
Gruel
Bread & Cheese
Beans or Dumplins Potatoes
and Milk
Note that they have Pork only in the Winter Season and have always some sort of Greens
with their meat.’9
In one respect the weekly bill of fare at Shrewsbury may have differed from that of the
London hospital. In a letter to the General Committee of 16 April 1765 the governors
stated that the children’s food was ‘Chiefly Roots and Vegetables with the produce of the
Dairy.’10 Perhaps, then, beef did not often appear on the menu. On the 21 September
1761 the governors decided that the children should have ‘Roast beef and Pudding for
dinner to celebrate the coronation of George III and Queen Charlotte.’ This would not
have been much of a treat if beef was provided every week, unless perhaps it was usually
just boiled beef or the children got bigger portions that day. 11
The hospital had its own farm which eventually consisted of about 70 acres, part being
held on leasehold tenure and part being freehold. No reports survive giving exact details
of what it produced each year, but we can form some idea from sporadic references in the
9
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 27 February 1759 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
10
A/FH/A/6/1/18/18/16.
11
Shrewsbury Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
268
minutes. As early as September 1759 the governors decided that three milch cows should
be bought and there are later references to the purchase of cows.12 On 3 December
1759, Richard Lee, who was the carpenter employed in the construction of the branch
hospital being built at Kingsland on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, was paid for ‘making a
cow house, presses, etc.’ and on the 19th, David Thomas was paid for ‘Labours in making
a dairy.’ The cows presumably supplied the hospital with milk. This would have ensured
that the milk was wholesome, though it is unlikely that the milk on sale in Shrewsbury
would have been polluted in the way that milk sold in London often was. The reference to
the dairy in the letter of 1765 quoted above shows that the hospital still kept cows at that
time.
We know that potatoes were grown on the branch hospital’s land. On 18 February 1760 it
was decided ‘That Potatoes be placed on the side of the Hill.’ Roger Kynaston was asked
to supervise the planting. [The Shrewsbury governors turned their hands to all sorts of
tasks concerning the building and running of the hospital]. On 3 March the governors
authorised the payment of £2.9.3 to David Thomas for breaking up land for potatoes.
It is likely that the other ‘Roots and Vegetables’ were also grown on the hospital’s farm
since there is no evidence that they were purchased from local farmers. The fact that
Edward Reynolds was appointed on 8 October 1763 as farm bailiff suggests this was the
case, since such a post would hardly have been necessary if the farm was only used for
dairy cattle and growing potatoes. Sir Richard Corbett and Kynaston were asked to draw
up instructions for Reynolds ‘describing his duty in the Management of the Farm
superintending the labourers and such affairs as the Hospital shall entrust to his care and
to present the same for the Considerations of the Board.’ The governors approved their
instructions at the next meeting. 12A
12
Unfortunately they do not seem to have survived.
Ibid., 22 September 1759, 27 September 1759, 4 September 1760, 4 February 1760, 17 March
1760, 5 September 1761. 12A. Ibid. 8 October and 12 October 1763.
269
Some foodstuffs were purchased from local suppliers. There are regular references in the
minutes to the payment to baker for supplying bread and baking pies. [We do not know
what was in the pies]. Cheese was brought from a Mrs Tomlins. From 29 September
1761 the minutes record quite large sums paid to a Mr Tipton for groceries but they do not
say exactly what he supplied.
According to the 1765 letter to the General Committee already mentioned, the children
had only water to drink ‘except in particular cases.’ It may surprise readers, therefore, to
learn that from 2 January 1760 there were payments for malt from a local malster and that
on 27 April 1761 the governors considered a suggestion from Taylor White to build a
permanent brewhouse and washhouse. They agreed to this and on 3 August 1761 they
approved Thomas Pritchard’s plan. The beer, however, would have been for the staff not
the children. On 23 August the governors ordered ‘That the Servants of the Hospital be
not permitted to drink Tea but in the care of Sickness’. This was probably to keep down
costs and to the fear that tea-drinking might lead to time-wasting. This decision must have
pleased Jonas Hanway who believed the consumption of tea led to scurvy, insomnia and
stomach disorders as well as rotting the teeth.*
Westerham
In a letter from Westerham to London in July 1760 John Warde declared ‘We are in great
Need of a Table for the Regulation of the Children’s Diet.’13 In September Hoath wrote
that he had received it.14 It may have been identical to that sent to Shrewsbury in the
previous year. Bread must have been an imported item of diet. In February 1761 the
*
Hanway even published An Essay on Tea in 1756 attacking the pernicious practice of drinking
tea, much to the irritation of that avid tea-drinker Dr Samuel Johnson.
13
2 July 1760 – A/FH/A/6/1/13/21/82.
14
1 September 1760 – A/FH/A/6/1/13/8/52.
270
Westerham governors noted ‘That it is the Opinion of this Committee that the under taking
the Bakery for the family by the increase thereof more than can be performed by a Woman
Servant James Burnet a Baker having Offered to perform the Bakeing at two Shillings per
ton Ordered that he be employed in doing the same.’15 The Westerham farm produced
more cereals than were needed for the children. In December 1767 Collingwood wrote to
John Warde correcting the bills sent for flour that had been sent up from Westerham to
London in November 1766, and January and July 1767.16 There are two references to
flour sent to London in 1768. The Westerham farm also produced a surplus of potatoes.17
In December 1761 the governors ordered ‘That Mr Collingwood be inform’d that we have
got about 30 Bushells of Potatoes to spare, and if approved of we can send them to the
Hospital at London.’18 Apples also formed part of the children’s diet. In October 1762
Saunders wrote to Collingwood explaining that ‘we have no Apples fit to send to London.
We gathered only for our own house the Others are all Shook Downe and Brooke in falling
that they will not keep.’19 The governors tried to ensure that the children got enough milk.
In 1764 Saunders wrote to Collingwood that he had been interested to find out whether ‘Mr
Rhodes the Cowkeeper near your hospital will send 2 or 3 of his good Cows.... It being
thought they will be more of advantage to the Hospital than Any we can get in this Country
[i.e. County].’20 In June 1767 Saunders wrote to London for a barrel of rice and in January
1768, for another barrel of rice and ‘a Barrell of Split Pease.’21 It seems likely that meat
formed part of the children’s diet. In 1761 the governors ordered Hoath to ‘buy a Sow and
Piggs or other Swine to increase the Stock of the Hosp’ and asked Mr Ellins to ‘buy in Six
15
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 19 February 1761 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
16
Copy Book of Letters, No. 4, 19 December 1767 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
17
Letter to Saunders 21 July and letter to John Warde, 17 November, Ibid.
18
Westerham Minutes, 24 December 1761 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
19
Letter of 26 October 1762 – A/FH/6/1/15/16/3.
20
13 February 1764 – A/FH/A/6/1/17/17/12.
21
8 June 1767 (A/FH/A/6/1/20/17/43) and 17 January 1768 (A/FH/A/6/1/21/17/41).
271
young Steers or Heifers,’22 In 1768 the Children’s Work Account mentions the sale of ham
and bacon. 23
Ackworth
In October 1757 the Ackworth governors ordered ‘That a table of Diet be prepared for the
Hospital and put up in some convenient place, & a copy of it sent to London. 24
Unfortunately this does not seem to have survived. There are only two other references to
the children’s food in the Ackworth minutes.
In November 1759 the governors ordered that ‘a man be hired for Baker & Brewer & to do
such other business as his time will allow under the direction of the Master.’ (The beer
would have been for the officers and servants, not the children).25 In January 1765 the
governors resolved ‘In consequence of Dr. Cookson’s Report, that the Children have
Fresh meat three Days in each Week.’26
22
Westerham Minutes, 9 July 1761 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
23
A/FH/D03/009/001.
24
Ackworth Hospital Order Book, 22 October 1757 – A/FH/Q/8.
25
Ibid., 1 November 1759.
26
Ibid., 7 February 1765.
272
Expenditure on Food at Ackworth Hospital in 1766*
Breadmeal, flour & bran
Meat
Beans
Cheese
Peas
Treacle
Rice
Oatmeal
Salt
Sugar
Currants
Other items (pepper, cinnamon, sago,
nutmegs & nuts)
£ s d
988-0-10
166-2-10
80-6-3
77-19-3
38-10-8
27-10-2!
26-7-10
24-0-0
22-16-11
7-7-3
6-18-0
5-45-10
27
*[A payment of £17-13-4 for Oats & Beans, etc.’ has been omitted, since it is not clear what items were
included or how much of the expenditure was for foodstuffs. Expenditure on tea, hops and barley has been left
out as the tea and beer would have for the staff not the children. Where the sort of meat supplied is mentioned,
it is always beef. We can probably take it that all the meat listed in the accounts was beef.]
Over two-thirds of the expenditure went on the materials for making bread. Incidentally the
£988-0-10d spent on breadmeal, flour and bran went to one firm – Hugh Royston& Co.
Large sums were also spent on meat, beans, cheese, peas, rice, oatmeal and salt. Some
of the salt may have been used to preserve meat rather than as a condiment.
Some of the food for the staff and children must have come from the Ackworth hospital’s
own farm. By 1773 it comprised 127 acres, 84 acres surrounded by a ring fence and
another 43 acres is two plots about a mile to the east of the hospital. 28 Some of this land
must have been devoted to dairy farming. The hospital usually employed a dairy maid. In
fact ten dairy maids had this job at one time or another, the first, Sarah Cleesbrough,
being appointed in April 1757 and the last, Mary Temple, in November 1772.29 The
hospital spent £46-13-0 on buying cows with calves in 1766.30 Since there is no mention of
buying milk in the accounts for that year we must assume that the farm produced all the
27
Meal and Flour Account – A/FH/Q/01/045. Household and Husbandry Account – A/FH/Q/23.
28
Ackworth Order Book, 14 June 1773 – A/FH/Q/8.
29
Register of Servants at Ackworth Hospital – A/FH/Q/60.
30
Household and Husbandry Account – A/FH/Q/01/045.
273
milk needed. It is unlikely that much cheese was made, since, as we have seen, a large
sum was spent on buying cheese. Much of the farm was probably devoted to sheep
farming: £124-18-8d was spent on buying sheep in 1766.31 The sheep may perhaps have
been valued mainly for their wool, but presumably they also provided the staff and children
with mutton. Thirty pigs were bought in 1766 for £26-5-6, which must have provided a fair
amount of pork, ham or bacon.32
THE ADEQUACY OF THE CHILDREN’S DIET
We do not have enough evidence to make confident judgements about the adequacy of
the children’s diet in the branch hospitals. Mrs McClure has pointed out that cases of
lameness crooked legs and other deformities and weak or diseased eyes may have been
due to deficiencies in their diet.33 There were a number of such cases at Ackworth. But no
contemporary critic, as far as the writer is aware, accused the branch hospitals of not
feeding the children properly. The children probably had enough to eat, but did not always
get what we today would regard as a properly balanced diet.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
McClure, op.cit., p.210.
274
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE HEALTH OF THE CHILDREN IN THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
FRESH AIR AND EXERCISE
The governors realised that it was not enough to make sure the children were adequately
clothed and shod and had enough to eat. They understood the importance of fresh air and
exercise.
On 2 June 1761 Taylor White wrote to Kynaston at Shrewsbury that ‘I employ as many Boys
as I can out of Doors, in the Garden, and keeping, Courts etc, clean – this I find it for their
Health.’1 In the following year in a letter to Trafford Barnston concerning preparations at
Chester he said ‘I hope... you will not forget in your plan that Air and Exercise is as
necessary for Children as food & raiment & therefore will think of a proper place for that
Purpose.’2 Since Taylor White had to visit Chester regularly in the course of his legal work it
is likely that he checked to see that the children there spent some time in the open air, even
though the Chester hospital had no land of its own. There are several references to the
purchase of hats for the children there which would have been unnecessary if they hardly
ever went out of doors.3 The other hospitals had enough space for the children to play in.
Aylesbury, as we have seen, had about two acres of land in two plots (a garden and some
pasture or meadow land).3A
There was a small plot of land at Barnet.
Shrewsbury,
Ackworth and Westerham had plenty of land.
1
Copy Book of Letters, No.3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
2
Ibid, 4 November 1762.
3
See, for example, Chester Minutes, 25 April 1769 (order of ‘Seventy hats for the Children in the
House bound as usual’) – A/FH/D4/1/1.
3A
Sub-Cttee, Saturday, November 18 1769 – A/FH/A03/005/008.
275
The Shrewsbury Regulations stated that ‘The Boys are provided with play things that may
habituate them to robust Excercises such as Hoops Tops Balls etc.’4 There were separate
playing grounds for boys and girls at Westerham.5 Mrs West, in listing the advantages of a
house in the Barnet area which she believed would be suitable for the branch hospital there,
pointed out that there was ‘conveniences for [a] play ground for the Children.’6 In a letter to
the General Committee she said that her experiences as an inspector of children at nurse in
the Barnet area had convinced her that children needed to be active – ‘the number of
Children I have recovered from the weakest state, by moving them to women, that have time
to give them great exercise convinces me there is hardly any so bad but may be recovered
by it.’7
THE PROVISION OF MEDICAL CARE:
Barnet
The hospital at Barnet was not large enough to justify the appointment of honorary
physicians and surgeons or paid full-time apothecaries. It was also too small (and too near
London) to have its own infirmary. Mrs West had impressed the London governors with her
skill in looking after sick children under her inspection and this may be one reason why they
decided to establish a hospital at Barnet. In January 1761, almost two years before the
hospital opened, the Sub-Committee had decided to send some children ‘in a declining state
of health’ to her ‘as she has distinguished herself for her great attention to Children in such
Circumstance.’8
Her fellow Barnet inspector, Mr Roberts, an apothecary, had provided
medicines for her Barnet nursery and it is likely that he provided medicine for the Barnet
4
Regulations – A/FH/M01/13.
5
See references in the Westerham Hospital Minutes for 28 May 1761 (girls) and June 18 1761
(boys).
6
Letter to Collingwood, Sept. 8 1762 – in bundle A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/1 -.
7
11 October 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/73.
8
Sub-Cttee, 17 January 1761 – A/FH/A/3/5/4, p.160.
276
hospital. 9 In December 1767 Mrs West said she would send the apothecary’s bill to London
when it arrived, so either Mr Roberts or another apothecary had been called in.10 Mrs West
also received medicines from the London hospital. In July 1763 she asked that ‘Bark &
Rhubarb some magnesia & senel’ should be sent.11 In October 1762 the Sub-Committee
stated ‘That in case of any accident or violent sickness of any Children the Matrons be
obliged to give notice thereof by Letter to the Secretary of the Hospital.’12 In practice,
though, Mrs West rather than Mrs Cullarne corresponded with Collingwood. In 1767, for
example, she wrote three times to Collingwood about a girl she had taken to London who
suffered an alarming swelling in her thigh.13 The year before, McClellan, the London hospital
apothecary, pointed out that he had given assistance to Barnet, in addition to helping
Westerham and caring for the sick in the London hospital.
In May 1763 Mrs West wrote to Collingwood from Barnet that she had been obliged ‘to put
one out on the appearance of the Itch [scabies] she is Honour West that came from your
House for the Air 2 more in the same House would have been gon in had they not the Itch of
her 2 in an other place heve been prevented by the same distemper.’14 In 1767 she pointed
out that two of the children sent up to London to be inoculated against smallpox had come
back with the itch. 15 There is a reference to a girl sent to London ‘for advice for her Head
(possibly ringworm)16 In 1766 she wrote several letters asking for information about children
9
Ibid., 25 October 1760.
10
Letter of 1 December 1767 – A/FH/A/6/1/20/20/74.
11
8 July 1763 – A/FH/A/6/1/16/20/29.
12
Sub-Cttee, 16 October 1762 – A/FH/A/3/5/5.
13
16 June (A/FH/A/6/1/20/20/38), 14 July.
14
Letter of 12 May 1763 – A/FH/A/6/1/16/20/31.
15
28 May 1767 – A/FH/A/6/1/20/20/12.
16
13 June 1766 – A/FH/A/6/1/19/20/7.
277
who had been sent to London to be inoculated.17 In 1767 Mrs West got permission to have
some children inoculated locally by a Mr Sutton, who specialized in this procedure.18
Aylesbury
We know little about the treatment of sickness at Aylesbury. 19 In April 1760 Robert Neale
complained that ‘We have no medicines sent down to us, nor any Direction about the
management of the Children when they are sick.’20 In the following month Neale wrote that
‘As several of the Children break out in their Heads [ringworm?] we should be glad to
receive directions about proper Medicines for them this Spring.’21 A payment of 18s 8d’ to
John Argos Apothecary’ was recorded in 1766.22
There are several letters from Neale at Aylesbury urging Collingwood not to send children
who had not had smallpox.23 He was also concerned about the danger from other infectious
diseases. In December 1760 he wrote ‘I am directed to mention that we have no Infirmary to
receive any of the Children, that should happen to be visited with any Infectious disorders
the Governors hope that no Children will be sent here, but have had the Small Pox, and are
free from the Itch, or other Infectious Disorders.’24 In October 1761 permission was given to
17
21 August (A/FH/A/6/1/19/20/72), 12 September (A/FH/A/6/1/19/20),
5 October (A/FH/A/6/1/19/20/35) and 12 October (A/FH/A/6/1/19/20/36).
18
28 May (A/FH/A/6/1/20/20/12), 7 June (A/FH/A/6/1/20/13) and 4 June (A/FH/A/6/2/1).
19
Gen. Ct., Wednesday May 14 1766 – A/FH/A03/001/003 (microfilm X041/010).
20
Letter to Collingwood, dated 20 April 1760.
21
11 May, 1760 – A/FH/A/6/1/13/14/30.
22
6 February 1766 – A/FH/A/6/1/19/14/1.
23
See letters of 29 July 1760 (A/FH/A/6/1/13/14/20), 3 May 1761 (A/FH/A/6/1/14/13/11), 20 July
1761 (A/FH/A/6/1/14/13/10), 3 October 1764 (A/FH/A/6/1/17/13/6), 26 May 1765
(A/FH/A/6/1/18/13/11). The letter of 3 October 1764 also asked Collingwood to ensure that
children sent to Aylesbury were free from Scald Heads.
24
27 December 1760 – A/FH/A/6/1/13/14/17.
278
fit up three rooms as an infirmary, but it is not clear whether the plan was actually carried
out.25
The London governors were aware of the danger of spreading smallpox to Aylesbury. In
July 1761, for example, Collingwood wrote to Neale ‘There being 5 more Boys in the
Hospital that have had the Small Pox be pleased to order up a proper Person for to take
care of them to Aylesbury.’
26
We have already noted one reference in 1760 to a head
infection at Aylesbury. In May 1765 Neale noted that ‘Jane Humber, Mary Creed and Jane
Baynton are now under Cure of Scald Heads and are a fair Way of being well in a short
time.’27 In 1761 there is a reference to scurvy: ‘And No 1338 Mary Warburton, who labours
under a bad Scorbatic Disorder and not fit to be amongst Healthy Children, by order of the
Governors here will be ... returned to your Hospital... there being no infirmary here for the
reception of distempered Children.’28 The only other child specifically mentioned is Emma
Downes. She was too ill to be moved when the Aylesbury hospital closed and died of
consumption in November 1767. 29
Westerham
At Westerham, even though it was quite a large hospital, there was no full-time apothecary
and the task of looking after the sick children fell mainly to Mrs Wadham and her successor
Mrs Williamson. When necessary Mrs Wadham requested that medicines be sent to
Westerham from the London hospital.30 On one occasion in 1760, however, when it was
25
Nichols & Wray, op.cit., p.178.
26
21 July 1761 – Copy Book of Letters, No.3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1. See also letters of 23 June 1761,
21 July 1761 and 22 June 1765.
27
Letter of 24 May 1765 – A/FH/A/6/1/18/13/11.
28
3 May 1761 – A/FH/A/6/1/14/13/11.
29
15 July 1767 (A/FH/A/6/1/20/14/1) and 1 November 1767 (A/FH/A/6/1/20/14/16).
30
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 8 April 1765 (Mrs Wadham) & 29 June 1767 (Mrs Williamson) –
A/FH/D3/1/1.
279
feared that children with feverish symptoms might be suffering from measles, the SubCommittee instructed McClellan to go down to Westerham and report back on the state of
the children there. 31 He was also told to go to Westerham in 1765 to ‘assist and give
directions when several children went down with measles’.32 On 3 August 1765 he put in a
claim for expenses for eight journeys to Westerham and the hire of a horse for fifteen days. 33
Although, as far as we know, there was no honorary physician at Westerham, the SubCommittee in 1761 asked Dr Lane, the inspector at Sevenoaks and also a governor, to
select those children at the Westerham hospital that he thought suitable subjects for
inoculation. 34
In September 1762 Collingwood wrote to Westerham on behalf of the General Committee
‘reminding the said [Westerham] Committee that at present it does not appear that an
Infirmary is proposed, which is absolutely necessary in case any Children are sick, and
which is accordingly recommended to the Consideration of the said Committee.’35 Four days
later the Westerham governors resolved to fit out the Oast House as an infirmary.36 This
plan was apparently not put into execution. As late as October 1765 John Warde offered to
let a farmhouse for use as an infirmary.37 In a letter to Warde in January 1767 Taylor White
wrote ‘I should hope you would give the strictest Orders to separate the sick from the rest.’ 38
In January 1769 McClellan wrote to Mr Ellison concerning the itch that ‘I am likewise
directed to desire You to be so good as to cause the infected to be separated from the
31
Sub-Cttee, 24 July 1760 – A/FH/A/3/5/4.
32
Sub-Cttee, 1 June 1765 – A/FH/A/3/5/6.
33
Ibid.
34
Letter from the London hospital to Hoath, 29 August 1761 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
35
Copy Book of Letters No. 3, 2 Sept 1762 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
36
Westerham Minutes, 6 September 1762 – A/FH/A/15/6.
37
A/FH/A/6/1/18/18/97.
38
Copy Book of Letters, No.3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
280
rest.’39 The rather puzzling failure to set up an infirmary may be due to the fact that
Westerham was near enough to London for the children to be sent to one of the London
hospital’s infirmaries.
In addition to measles the Westerham sources refer to several cases of whooping cough,
dysentery and the itch. On 2 July 1761 the Westerham minutes recorded that two children
sent from the nursery at Seal ‘being Very bad with the Whooping Cough have been sent to
nurse under the Inspection of Mr Warde. A week later another child from Seal with whooping
cough was sent to Mr Warde.40 In January 1765 the Sub-Committee noted that ‘The
apothecary visited the Children at the Hospital at Westerham Jan 12 1765 & found 20 ill with
Dysenteries many of whom had the whooping cough complicated with it, two of them are
since dead, which with 6 that died before he went, make eight of that disease.’41 There are
several references to children suffering from the Itch. On 29 June 1767 the Westerham
minutes noted that ‘It having been Represented by Mrs Williamson & Mrs Saunders that the
Servants went thro’ an extraordinary fatigue for Six weeks in heating & carrying Water etc
up & down Stairs during the time of the Children having the Itch Ordered that they be paid a
Gratuity of 5s Each And 10s Each to the Matron & Steward.’42 In January 1769 Collingwood
wrote to Mr Ellison pointing out that many of the children recently sent to London from
Westerham had the itch and telling the Westerham governors to keep the infected children
away from the rest.43
39
Copy Book of Letters, No.4 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
40
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 2 July and 9 July 1761 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
41
Sub-Cttee, 25 Jan 1765 – A/FH/A03/005/006.
42
Westerham Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D3/1/1.
43
Letter of 7 January 1769, Copy Book of Letters, No.4 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
281
Chester
At Chester in 1764 the governors appointed Mr Croughton and Mr Crewe as part-time
apothecaries and surgeons to look after both the children at nurse and in the hospital.44
Eventually the governors split the work, Crewe continuing as House Apothecary and a Mr
Abneth taking over the task of visiting sick children at nurse. 45 As we saw in Chapter Twelve,
the man with the best attendance record was Dr. Denton (247 meetings). Presumably his
advice was sought in difficult cases.
When preparations were being made for the opening of the Chester hospital Taylor White
wrote to Trafford Barnston ‘I think if there should be any sick children you will have interest
to get them a place in the Chester infirmary on making a proper acknowledgement,’46 We
know that a number of children suffering from the itch (scabies) were sent to the Chester
General Infirmary in 1763. In June the governors ordered ‘That eighteen pence per week be
paid for each Child kept at the Infirmary 3 weeks for the Itch being 10 in No. Amounts to £25. At the same time allowed the Nurse Six Shillings for the trouble in attending them.’47 The
fact that Dr. Denton was one of the physicians of the Chester General Infirmary no doubt
made it easier to arrange this co-operation. Children suffering from minor non-contagious
diseases were probably looked after without being moved from their own dormitories. There
would have been no room to set up separate rooms for the sick.
We have already seen that there were cases of the itch at Chester in 1763. In a letter to
London Trafford Barnston wrote that ‘Ten of the second Detachment [from Shrewsbury] that
arrived here on Monday the 16th of May were ... strongly distempered with the Itch.’ This
44
Chester Hospital Minutes, 20 March 1764 – A/FH/A15/007/001.
45
Ibid., 9 and 16 April, 1765.
46
Copy Book of Letters, No.3, 4 November 1763 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
47
Chester Hospital Minutes, 21 June 1763 (A/FH/A15/007/001) and Chester Hospital Letter
Books, 25 June 1763 (A/FH/D4/2/1.
282
means that half the children sent from Shrewsbury on that date were suffering from the
itch.48 Some of the children at Chester also suffered from scald heads. The governors
believed it had been introduced from Shrewsbury. In December 1765 they ‘Ordered That
five shillings a head be paid the Woman for the care of 18 Children with Scald heads who
both attended upward of six months for half the time twice a Day six or eight Children
brought that Disorder from Shrewsbury.’49 We know that some children at Chester died from
smallpox, fever, and consumption and presumably there were other cases where the
children survived. 50
Shrewsbury
At Shrewsbury a Dr Owen’s offer to ‘Attend the Hospital in Physician Gratis’ was accepted
on the very day that the first children arrived. 51 He may have been Dr Pryce Owen, who
served as one of the honorary physicians of the Salop Infirmary from November 1757 until
his death in July 1786.52 Two weeks later Mr. Whitfield was appointed Honorary Surgeon –
possibly John Whitfield who served as one of the Salop Infirmary surgeons from April 1747
until his death in April 1766.53 On the same day as Mr Whitfield was appointed, the
Shrewsbury governors came to an agreement with the Salop Infirmary that their apothecary,
Samuel Winnall, should attend the foundlings in the time he could spare from the Infirmary.54
Winnall held the post of Secretary of the Infirmary as well as apothecary from September
1758 to May 1763. 55 He eventually shared the work of looking after the foundlings with Mr
48
Chester Hospital Letter Book, 25 June 1763 – A/FH/D4/2/1.
49
Chester Minutes, 31 December 1765 – A/FH/D4/1/1.
50
See, for example, letters of 13 July 1765, 31 March 1767, 23 April 1768, 30 April 1768, 11
March 1769 – Chester Hospital Letter Book (A/FH/D4/2/1).
51
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 19 February 1759 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
52
H Bevan, Records of the Salop Infirmary [Shrewsbury, 1847]
53
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 5 March 1759 – A/FH/D2/1/1 and Bevan, op.cit.
54
Ibid.
55
Bevan, op.cit.
283
James Winnal, possibly his son.56 They were paid for visiting the sick children at nurse as
well as for looking after the grown children in the hospital. Eventually the governors
appointed Mr Thomas Meyrick Resident Surgeon and Apothocary.57 He resigned in 1767
and was replaced by Mr Henry Linger who was in turn replaced by Mr Thomas Blomfield.58
The governors at Shrewsbury began negotiations in 1759 for renting a house on Clairmont
Hill for an infirmary59 and it was evidently in use by 1760.60 In September 1760 they ordered
that the money due to ‘Mr Pritchard for the Rent of his House for Inoculating the Children be
paid’. 61 In 1764 Taylor White supported a plan of the Revd Dr Adams to buy some property
in Kingsland near the hospital ‘with a view to use that place as an Infirmary or place of
Inoculation.’62 The buildings there were converted into two wards.63 We know how many
children were in the infirmary at selected dates from 9 April 1766 to 31 July 1772 for nearly
every month. The following chart gives the numbers for just thirteen dates.
56
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 9 July 1763 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
57
Ibid., 31 December 1767.
58
Ibid., 24 June 1769.
59
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 21 July and 5 August 1759 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
60
Ibid., 4 February 1760.
61
Ibid., 15 September 1700.
62
Copy Book of Letters, No.3, 9 June 1764 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
63
Shrewsbury Minutes, 30 July 1764 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
284
Within the
Home
473
525
545
569
537
497
359
177
91
84
65
72
15
9 April 1766
8 October 1766
30 April 1767
31 October 1767
30 April 1768
31 October 1768
31 July 1769
30 April 1770
31 October 1770
30 April 1771
31 October 1771
30 April 1772
31 July 1772
At the
Infirmary
21
66
25
27
46
51
25
23
8
6
25
8
–
Total
494
591
570
596
583
548
384
200
99
90
90
80
15
64
The proportion of children in the Shrewsbury infirmary varied quite markedly. It was 4.3% on
9 April 1766 and 27.8% on 31 October 1771. Unfortunately the illnesses these children were
suffering from were not recorded.
A letter to the Sub-Committee from Shrewsbury, dated 17th January 1770, gives an account
of the ‘distempered Children under the Care of the Hospital there.’ It lists nine boys and
three girls:
Boys
Girls
1
1
4
2
1
Hectic Fever
Scrophulous,
recovering
Scrophulous
Consumption
Weakness in his back
2 Diseased hip
65
1 Consumption
At that time there were 309 children in the Shrewsbury hospital. This seems a remarkably
small number of invalids, but by the beginning of 1770 large numbers of children had been
sent from Shrewsbury to Ackworth and the Ackworth governors believed that the
Shrewsbury governors were taking the opportunity to get rid of some of their sick children. In
a letter to London dated 8 July 1769 the Revd Dr Lee had noted that of sixteen boys just
64
State of the Orphan Hospital at Shrewsbury – A/FH/D2/15/1.
65
Sub-Cttee, 20 January 1770 – A/FH/A05/A05/008.
285
sent to Ackworth’ Three of the Boys are invalids, 1 Lame of a Thigh, one of a Lame Arm and
one Blind of an Eye by a Burn, and his face very bad.’66
Ackworth
At Ackworth three men, John Cookson, Jervas Disney and Robert Davison, held posts of
honorary physicians at one time or another. 67 All three were on the governing committee. Dr.
Cookson and Dr. Disney were amongst the thirty original members. Dr. Davison was
appointed to the committee in May 1770. Cookson attended thirteen meetings from 15 April
1757 to 3 November 1763, Disney attended forty two meetings from 15 April 1757 to 7
November 1765 and Davison attended fifteen meetings from 3 August 1772 to 22 February
1774, his last attendance being the year after the last grown children had been sent to
London. 68 The physicians were asked for their advice from time to time. On 5 July 1759, for
example, Disney reported that ‘the Business of the House requires the Attendance of an
Apothecary immediately.’69 In 1763, when a new apothecary was appointed it was agreed
that Dr Cookson and Dr Disney should have the task of approving his assistant.70 On 7
December 1772 Davison was asked to examine all the children who were ‘thought incapable
of being Apprenticed.’71 Most of the work of dealing with sick children, though, fell to the
apothecary. On 6 September 1759 the Ackworth governors appointed William Buchan as
the first full-time salaried surgeon and apothecary.72 He had to visit the children in the
nurseries in the surrounding countryside as well as looking after the grown children. In
66
Ackworth Hospital Letter Book, vol.2, 8 July 1769 – A/FH/Q/11.
67
Ackworth Hospital Order Book – 5 July 1759 (Disney), 3 November 1763 (Cookson and
Disney), 7 February 1765 (Cookson), 1 July 1771 (Cookson), 3 August 1772 (Davison), 7
December 1772 (Davison), 3 May 1773 (Davison) – A/FH/Q/8.
68
Ibid., plus A/FH/Q/0013 and A/FH/Q/004.
69
Ackworth Order Book – A/FH/Q/8.
70
Ibid., 3 November 1763.
71
Ibid.,
72
Ibid.,
286
October 1763 he was dismissed for making ‘unjust and insolent reflections on the Governors
in General and violent Insinuations of Fraud agst a Person not named but supposed to be
the Master’ [Richard Hargreaves].73 He had already clashed with the governors for
announcing, without permission, that he would take on pupils who would have ‘frequent
Opportunities of seeing Humane Bodies open’d, as also seeing the Various Operations of
Surgery perform’d, both on living and dead subjects.’ The governors had insisted that no
operation should be performed on dead children without permission.74 Buchan was clearly a
difficult man to work with, but may have been good at his job. In 1769 he made a name for
himself by publishing his Domestic Medicine, or the Family Physician, which went through
nineteen editions. He seems to have mellowed in later life.75 On 3 November 1763 Thomas
Cope took his place at Ackworth.76 The governors evidently had a high opinion of him. On 6
November 1765 they granted him a gratuity of £20 over and above his salary ‘for his
Extraordinary Care & attendance during the time the Dysentery raged.’77 The apothecary’s
account amounted to £89.17.0d for the year 1761. In the same period the bill for the
Ackworth hospital’s servants totalled £147.17.2d.78 The governors were clearly ready to
spend a great deal of money on trying to keep the children healthy.
As early as October 1757, just two months after the first children arrived at Ackworth
hospital, the governors there decided that an infirmary should be built.79 At first it was
probably quite small. In September 1758 they resolved that ‘considering the Strength of the
few Children now in the Hospital That there is no occasion for a Matron to attend the
73
Ibid.,
74
Ibid., 2 December 1762.
75
See J. T. Smith, A Book for a Rainy Day [Methuen, 1905 edition], pp. 184-185.
76
Ackworth Order Book – A/FH/Q/B
77
Ibid.
78
Sub-Cttee, 16 January 1762 – A/FH/A/3/5/5, p.15.
79
Ackworth Hospital Order Book, 22 October 1757 – A/FH/Q/8.
287
Infirmary at present.’80 In May 1759, however, they decided that such a post was justified
and a Mrs Whittaker was appointed. Her salary of £10 per annum was much higher than
that of the cooks and nurses (£3 per annum) which suggests that they regarded the job as
important. 81 In November 1763 the Sub-Committee was informed that the Revd Dr Lee had
arranged ‘for the Purchase of a House to be used at Ackworth as an Infirmary there with an
Orchard Garden and other conveniences.’82 This was clearly intended as an additional
infirmary since the Ackworth governors had just ordered that the existing infirmary should be
repaired. 83
Two volumes record the number of children who were sick at Ackworth from September
1759 to February 1773.84 The following figures for fifteen dates are taken from these reports.
Number of Sick Children at Ackworth for Selected Months,
September 1759 to February 1773.
Month
September 1759
„
1760
„
1761
December 1762
„
1763
„
1764
„
1765
„
1766
„
1767
„
1768
„
1769
„
1770
„
1771
„
1772
February 1773
In the
Country
55
23
30
35
32
13
28
23
23
20
20
–
–
–
–
In the
Infirmary
14
13
16
52
40
127
68
32
57
30
75
40
19
22
13
Total
69
36
46
87
72
140
96
55
80
32
95
80
Ibid., 7 September 1758.
81
Register of Servants at Ackworth, 19 May 1759 to 21 January 1761 – A/FH/Q/60
82
Sub-Cttee, 12 November 1763 – A/FH/A/3/5/5.
83
Ackworth Hospital Order Book, 3 November 1763 – A/FH/Q/8.
84
Monthly Statistics of the Sick at Ackworth, Sept.29 1759 – May 1770 (A/FH/Q/70) and June
1770 – February 1773 (A/FH/Q/71).
288
The monthly statistics, as we shall see later, note the illnesses from which the children
suffered. Not all the children classed as sick would have been ill for the entire month. The
figures merely record the number of children who were in the country for their health or in
the infirmary at some stage during the month. It is not clear whether the figures for this
infirmary refer solely to grown children sent from the hospital or whether there were also
some sick children sent in from their country nurses. Because of the way the figures are
recorded it is not possible to work out what proportion of the Ackworth’s hospital’s grown
children were in the infirmary at any one time. Nevertheless we can get a rough idea of the
incidence of sickness by comparing the numbers in the infirmary in a given month with the
number of grown children on the hospital’s register at the end of the month.
September 1759
„
1761
December 1763
„
1765
„
1767
„
1769
„
1771
Number of Sick Children
in the Infirmary for
Selected Months,
September 1759 to
December 1771
14
16
40
68
57
75
19
Number of Grown
Children in the
Hospital’s Register at
the end of the Month.
85
121
174
349
576
565
221
130
We know far more about the incidence of disease at Ackworth than at the other branch
hospitals.
The Monthly Reports show what complaints the children were suffering from.
The records for fourteen months taken from the period from March 1760 to February 1773
list forty five different conditions from ague (malaria) to whooping cough. The number of
children that were in the infirmary for part of the month or for the whole month varied
enormously. In March 1760, for example, only twelve children were in the infirmary for part
of the month at least; in June 1766 the figure was 201. In that month the infirmary had to
deal with 162 cases of measles. See Appendix F for details.
85
Ibid., plus Ackworth General Register – A/FH/Q/064.
289
Some of the entries in the Monthly Reports are rather puzzling. ‘Intermittent’ refers to
intermittent fever, which was presumably malaria (ague). We do not know the reason why
there were so many entries of sore eyes and sore mouths, though it is likely they were
caused by an infectious disease. The cases of sore feet and sore heads may have been due
to ringworm.
One of the commonest complaints, as at Westerham and Chester, was the itch.
The
infirmary records show that the incidence of the disease varied markedly. In thirty months in
the period from March 1760 to February 1773 no children in the infirmary were suffering
from that disease. There were, however, only a few long periods where the infirmary had no
such cases. The longest such period was from February 1761 to June 1761. For seventy six
months there were ten or more cases; in 29 of these there were twenty or more cases.
There were several long periods when there were large numbers of cases (for example,
May 1762 to January 1764 and June 1764 to January 1765). The worst period, though, was
from July 1766 to February 1768.
Number of Children Admitted to the Ackworth Infirmary with the Itch
July 1766 – February 1768
1766
1767
1768
July
August
September
October
November
December
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
January
February
98
100
–
100
15
20
55
44
30
25
60
50
40
36
30
20
44
40
37
45
290
In fourteen of these twenty months children with the itch accounted for more than half of all
the children passing through the infirmary. Almost certainly far fewer children would have
suffered from this highly infectious disease had they been looked after in the homes of
nurses. The disease, though, was not lethal. On 8 July 1763 twenty two children in the
Ackworth infirmary were suffering from the itch. All of them were eventually discharged as
cured.86 If we can judge by the Ackworth infirmary records, children could be cured of the
disease in a few weeks. On 8 July 1763 twenty two children in the Ackworth infirmary were
suffering from the itch. All of them were eventually discharged as cured, eleven in that
month, nine in August and two early in September.87
The itch was a very trying complaint, but many children suffered from far more serious
diseases or infirmities. In a long report from Ackworth to London it was reported that on 1
January 1769 there were 261 children in the Ackworth hospital (56 boys and 205 girls). It
was thought that it would be impossible to apprentice 66 of their children (33 boys and 33
girls) ‘on Account of Infirmities.’
‘Of the ... 33 Boys
7 are Idiots
6 lost the use of their hands
2 Stiff Elbow
1 Scrophulous
1 Scald head
2 Dumb
2 who have only each an eye
1 Burnt Eyelid
1 Short-Sighted
3 lame of the legs
1 Crooked legs
86
Monthly Statistics.
87
Journal of the Sick in the Infirmary – A/FH/Q/72.
291
THE LOSS OF LIFE AT THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
Most of the children who suffered from illness or injuries survived, but diseases such as
consumption, dysentery and smallpox were sometimes fatal. Three hundred and sixty grown
children died in the branch hospitals. Here are the figures, with the London evidence
included for the sake of comparison:
Hospital
London
(2 June 1756 to
31 July 1773)
Ackworth
Shrewsbury
Westerham
Chester
Aylesbury
Barnet
Total
Deaths
Boys
Girls
276
131
145
169
122
52
8
5
4
636
77
53
23
6
1
1
292
92
69
29
2
4
3
344
88
Because the ages of children varied on entry so much and because their length of stay
ranged from a few days to a few years, comparisons of death rates do not reveal much
about the standard of care. For what it is worth, though, here are the number of deaths as a
percentage of grown children on the registers:
Hospital
Number on the
Register or
Reconstituted Register
London
(2 June 1756 to 31
July 1773)
Ackworth
Shrewsbury
Westerham
Chester
Aylesbury
Barnet
Percentage that
died while at
the hospital *
3331
8.3
2664
1092
469
106
103
57
6.3
11.2
11.1
7.5
4.9
7.0
* Corrected to one place of decimal.
88
For sources see footnote 2, Chapter Seven.
89
Ibid.
89
292
A very large number of children sent to Ackworth in the period 1766 to 1772 spent only a
short period there, which helps to explain the ‘low’ percentage of deaths for the whole period
1757 to 1773.
Fatal Diseases in the Branch Hospitals
We know the causes of death (or supposed causes) for all the children at Ackworth and just
over 58% of the children in the other branch hospitals. This means that we have the causes
of death for almost 78% of the children. In only 45% of cases was the cause of death noted
at Shrewsbury. The percentage for Westerham is 86% and for Chester, Aylesbury and
Barnet combined 64.7%. The failure to record the cause of death in so many cases at
Shrewsbury is particularly regrettable since, as we have seen, the Shrewsbury hospital was
of comparable importance to Ackworth.
Causes of Death in the Branch Hospitals (where recorded)
– omitting cases where only one child died of a particular disease
Disease
Consumption
Fevers
Dysentery
Smallpox
Measles
Convulsions
Mortification
Marasmus
Drowsey
Whooping Cough
Apoplexy
Abscesses
Cancer
Palsy
Tetanus
Total
Boys
Girls
55
52
49
32
21
13
12
11
10
6
2
2
2
2
2
271
28
18
29
13
8
6
4
2
5
2
2
–
2
2
1
122
27
34
20
19
13
7
8
9
5
4
–
2
–
–
1
149
90
The following chart gives a breakdown of the figures. The Chester, Aylesbury and Barnet
figures have been grouped together as they account for only a small proportion of fatal
illnesses.
90
Ibid.
293
Causes of Death at Ackworth, Shrewsbury, Westerham, Chester, Aylesbury
and Barnet
Ackworth
Consumption
Fevers
Dysentery
Smallpox
Measles
Convulsions
Mortification
Marasmus
Drowsey
Whooping Cough
Apoplexy
Abscesses
Cancer
Palsy
Tetanus
34
23
43
30
6
6
4
–
7
4
2
2
2
–
1
164
Shrewsbury
Westerham
8
14
2
2
7
1
4
11
1
1
–
–
–
2
7
14
3
–
8
6
4
–
1
–
–
–
–
–
53
43
Chester,
Aylesbury and
Barnet
6
1
1
–
–
–
–
–
1
1
–
–
–
–
1
11
271
At first sight the causes of death in the branch hospitals seem much the same as in the
London hospital: smallpox, fevers and dysentery accounted for about half the deaths in the
London hospital where the cause of death was recorded; the percentage for the branch
hospitals taken together was 42%.
When the figures are examined more closely, however, one significant difference emerges.
Consumption killed far more children in the branch hospitals than in the London hospital.
There are only four deaths in the London hospital attributed to consumption, but 55 were
recorded as having died of that disease in the branch hospitals. Thirty four of these died at
Ackworth, but it is quite likely that some of the children sent there from Chester and
Shrewsbury were already suffering from that disease. We do not know the reason for this
very marked contrast between the London hospital and the branch hospitals.
294
The Ackworth figures reveal an alarming number of deaths from dysentery. (43 compared
with 18 for London).91 The first cases in the infirmary were recorded in November 1764. No
cases were listed after February 1768. The number of cases between November 1764 and
February 1768 varied quite sharply. For eight months in that period there were no cases at
all.
Number of Cases of Dysentery in the Ackworth Infirmary,
November 1764 to February 1768 92
1764
1765
1766
Nov.
Dec.
Jan.
Feb.
March
April
May
June - Sept
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
Jan.
Feb.
March
April
May
June
July
Aug.
Sept.
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
27
17
13
17
15
3
5
Nil
8
7
15
10
4
4
6
Nil
12
2
Nil
3
1
1
Nil
1767
1768
Jan.
Feb.
March
April
May
June
July
Aug.
Sept.
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
Jan.
Feb.
1
2
5
1
1
3
2
2
3
2
2
1
Nil
1
It is clear that the Ackworth governors did not understand the causes of the disease. They
believed that a change of diet might help. On 8 January 1765, for example, the governors
ordered ‘That as the Dysentery rages much in the Hospital, the Physicians be requested to
visit the Infirmary and give such Directions as they shall think necessary with regard to Diet,
etc. In the mean time the Potatoes to be carefully inspected & Greens given very
91
Register of deaths at Ackworth, 1757 – 1773 – A/FH/001/005/001.
92
Monthly Reports – A/FH/Q/70.
295
sparingly.’93 Whatever changes the physicians introduced did not eradicate the disease. On
10 April the Secretary wrote to Collingwood in London informing him that of the eleven
children that had died in April, six had suffered from dysentery.94 As we can see from the
Infirmary records, however, the disease returned. The most likely cause of infection was
poor sanitations and hygiene. In November 1765 the governors ordered ‘That the necessary
Houses [lavatories], be removed, or altered so as to be sweet and Clean.’95 Had these
changes been ordered earlier many lives may have been saved, though we must remember
that they had no effective method of removing germs from the water supply.96
Three of the four other diseases to which the branch hospitals attributed more than twenty
deaths – consumption or T.B. (55 deaths), smallpox (32) and measles (21) – were all
contagious. In the case of the fourth disease – fevers (52 deaths) – we cannot be sure of the
nature of the illness which killed them.
In the eighteenth century there was nothing that could be done to cure children suffering
from consumption or from measles, although these diseases were not always fatal. The
London governors did their best to stop measles spreading to the branch hospitals. In a
letter to Thomas Morgan, the Secretary of the Shrewsbury hospital, dated 1 August 1761,
Collingwood wrote that ‘As many of the Children in this Hospital have the Measles, the Gent.
Of the Committee don’t chuse to have any more returned from Nurse. You are therefore
desired to postpone the sending up of any more Nurses for Children & to stop the Motion of
the Caravan till further Notice.’97 The London governors were not always successful in
preventing the spread of the disease, however. In a letter from Ackworth to London in 1765
93
Ackworth Hospital Order Book – A/FH/Q/8.
94
Ackworth Hospital Letter Book – A/FH/Q/10.
95
Ackworth Hospital Order Book.
96
Ibid., 7 November 1765.
97
Copy Book of Letters, vol.3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
296
Hargreaves claimed ‘you sent us a Child down some time ago which had the Measles, the
Infection has spread thro’ the House & we have now above 200 in them.’ He also reported
that smallpox was ‘now very strong in the Hospital & we have not yet got clear of the
Dysentery.98
The London governors were particularly anxious that the children should be inoculated
against smallpox before they entered the branch hospitals. In August 1763, the SubCommittee ‘Resolved to recommend to the General Committee to order a General Letter to
all Inspectors before they send the Children to this Hospital or to Shrewsbury or Ackworth to
be very particular in their enquiry if the Children have had the Small Pox or if there is any
circumstance that render it doubtful whether they have had it or not and to acquaint the
Secretary accordingly.’99 In the following month the Sub-Committee ordered ‘That Mr.
McClellan [the London’s hospital’s apothecary] do go to the Hospital at Hadley [Barnet] and
acquaint Mrs West with the intention of inoculating all the Children there in order to prevent
any Child catching the Small Pox in the common way.’100 The branch hospitals had already
adopted the practice of inoculating the children. As early as August 1759 the Shrewsbury
governors authorized Dr. Adams and Mr. Kynaston to ‘Agree for a House in the Country to
Inoculate the Children.’101 There are a number of later references to the need to hire suitable
premises in the Shrewsbury area. One of them on 19 May 1760 refers to the urgency of the
matter ‘As the smallpox began to spread in Town.’102 Looking after the children ‘under
inoculation’ was one of James Winall’s most important tasks. 103 On 26 April 1763 he
declared that ‘the Number under Operation at one time did rarely exceed 14 but now there
98
99
Copy Book of Letters from Ackworth, vol.2 – A/FH/Q/11 [11 June 1766].
Sub-Cttee Minutes, Saturday 27 August 1763 – vol.5 A/FH/A03/005/005
100
Ibid. Sept. 17, 1763.
101
Shrewsbury Committee Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
102
Ibid. See also 15 September 1760 and 20 July 1761.
103
Ibid. See 24 December 1762 and 9 July 1763.
297
are forty Inoculated and probably the next time the Number may still be increased.’104
Although he was making a case for an increase in his salary, there is no reason to doubt his
statement.
The Ackworth governors were as conscientious as those at Shrewsbury in tackling
smallpox. On 22 October 1757 they declared ‘That all the children who have not had the
smallpox be inoculated at the first convenient opportunity after their arrival at Ackworth.’105
They were not, however, able to prevent some children catching the disease by infection
rather than inoculation. On 1 October 1761, for example, they ordered ‘That as the Small
Pox has broken out & are now in the infirmary no Children be received from the Nursery this
Day but such as have had the Small Pox... that all in the Hospital that have not had the
Small Pox be forthwith Inoculated.’106 In spite of these precautions, however, a number of
children died of that disease in the next few months. In a letter to London dated 7 July 1762
Richard Hargreaves reported that five of the fourteen deaths at Ackworth since the previous
Michaelmas [i.e. 29 September] had been due to smallpox.107 These victims had either not
been inoculated or the inoculation had not ‘taken’. On 8 July 1763 thirty three of the eighty
two children in the Ackworth infirmary were there because they had been inoculated;
another eight had caught the disease by infection. One of the inoculated children died but
the other thirty two survived; none of the eight who caught the disease by infection died.108
The Ackworth governors never managed to get all the children at risk inoculated. In a letter
of 20 April 1765 sent to Hargreaves from London. Thomas Collingwood reported that the
General Committee had been alarmed to learn that four of the eleven children that had died
in the previous month had suffered from smallpox. As these children were from seven to
104
Ibid.
105
Ackworth Committee Order Book – A/FH/Q/8. See also the entry for 6 March 1760.
106
Ibid.
107
Ackworth Letter Book – A/FH/Q/72
108
Journal of the Sick in the Infirmaries – A/FH/Q/72.
298
eight years old the London governors thought they ought to have been inoculated ‘sometime
since.’109 Nevertheless, a large number were inoculated at Ackworth. On 3 July 1766 the
Ackworth governors ordered ‘That a Book be sent for called Inoculation made easy.’110 In a
letter of 14 August 1766 to London Hargreaves showed that 296 children had been
inoculated and ‘there are only 35 Children under the care of this Committee that have not
had the Small Pox.’111 When we consider that 2664 children passed through the Ackworth
hospital, it is not surprising that not all of them were inoculated. The fact that only 30 died of
that disease is surely quite impressive.
In the case of other infectious diseases, the children in the branch hospitals were probably
more at risk than children living with their parents. In the case of smallpox, however, children
inoculated in the branch hospitals may have been safer than children living at home, unless
their parents were wealthy enough to have them inoculated.
Inoculation for small pox was the one great advance in medicine in the eighteenth century.
For most other diseases there had been little improvement in treatment. Many children
suffered from diseases which we are now able to prevent or cure. All we can say is that the
governors of the branch hospitals, like those in London, did their best for the foundlings
under their care.
109
Copy Book of Letters, vol.3 – A/FH/A/6/21.
110
Ackworth Order Book – A/FH/Q/8.
111
Copy Book of Letters from Ackworth, vol.2 – A/FH/Q/11.
299
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EDUCATION IN THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
According to the Account of the Hospital (1759) it was the duty of the governors of the
branch hospital to see that the children were instructed ‘in the principles of the Christian
Religion.’1 We have already seen what an active part the Revd. Dr Timothy Lee played at
Ackworth and the Revd. Dr Adams at Shrewsbury, so it is unlikely that this duty was
neglected in those hospitals.
In a letter of November 1761 to Thomas Morgan, the Secretary of the Shrewsbury
Hospital, Collingwood stated he had enclosed ‘a few of the Morning and Evening prayers
used by the Children in this Hospital.’2 In August 1762 the Sub-Committee ordered ‘That
50 of the Prayers now in use in this Hospital be sent to Aylesbury, 50 to the Hospital at
Westerham, 100 to Shrewsbury and 100 to Ackworth for a present supply.’ They were
described as ‘much more easy and intelligible to children than the former prayers.’3 In the
following month the Westerham governors decided ‘That a New form of Prayer for the
Children sent from London be henceforward used and that they be Posted Over Each
Dining Room Chimney.’4
It is likely that daily prayers were part of the routine of all the branch hospitals. We have
already seen that at Shrewsbury, ‘Immediately after coming down [from their dormitories
or wards] Prayers are said in the Dining Room, one of the Children by Rotation repeating
1
A/FH/A1/5/2 See Chapter Sixteen.
2
17 November 1761, Copy Book of letter, No. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
3
Sub-Cttee, August 1762 – A/FH/A/3/5/5.
4
Westerham Hospital Minutes, September 6, 1762 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
300
them to the Rest.’ Grace was said before and after each meal. The children also said
their prayers before going to bed. It was laid down that the school teachers ‘are to hear
the Children say their Catechism once a week at least [and] are to be attentive to their
Morals and good Behaviour.’5
Probably all the children at the branch hospital that were well went to the local parish
church on Sundays.
On 22nd October 1757 the Ackworth governors resolved ‘That a Gallery or loft be built on
the Northside of the Church at Ackworth, for the sole and seperate use of the Hospital,
and that the Arch Bishop be applied to for his Faculty, to enlarge the said Isle for that
purpose.’6 [Dr. Lee was Rector of Ackworth.] In February 1761 it was ‘Ordered That Two
Seats be erected in the Church for the Master, Matron and other Servants of this
Hospital.’7
On March 5th 1759, only a fortnight after the first fourteen girls had arrived at Shrewsbury,
the governors there ‘Ordered that the Thanks of the Board be given to the Minister,
Churchwardens and Parishioners of St Julian’s for the leave the children have to Attend
divine service at their Church.’8 In July 1765 the governors ‘ordered that the Secretary call
over the Children that are in the House every Sunday Morning before Church.’9 The
hospital’s regulations stated that ‘All the children that are able to go to Divine Service
every Sunday Morning and Evening Attended by the School Masters and Mistresses or
such of the Family Servants as the Masters shall appoint for that Purpose’.10 In January
5
Regulations for the Government of the Orphan Hospital in Shrewsbury – A/FH/MO1/3.
6
Ackworth Hospital order Book – A/FH/Q/8.
7
Ibid.
8
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
9
Ibid.
10
Regulations for the Government of the Orphan Hospital in Shrewsbury – A/FH/MO1/13.
301
1760 it was ‘Ordered that Ten shillings be given as a new year’s gift to the Clerk Sexton
and Beedles for Cleaning the Church of St Julians parish where the Children Attend divine
service, be distributed amongst them as the Rev. Mr Wingfield, Minister of St Julians, shall
think proper.’
Identical payments were authorized on 29 December 1760 and 28
December 1761. 11
In 1765 the Shrewsbury governors claimed that the children ‘are carefully instructed in the
Principles and duties of Religion, of which they frequently give publick and satisfactory
Accounts in some of our Town Churches.’12
In the following year the Shrewsbury governors, on learning that the head schoolmaster
intended to resign, decided to appoint a clergyman in his place who could ‘at the same
time serve the Hospital as Chaplain in Reading Prayers Morning and Evening to the
Family, in catechising the children and preaching or reading a Sermon on Sundays when
the Weather or other accident prevent their attending in the Service in Church.’ The Revd.
John Jones was appointed at a salary of £30 per annum (twice the salary of the head
schoolmaster he was replacing), plus free board and lodging.13
In 1761 the Westerham governors decided ‘That proper Benches be provided for the
convenience of the children’s Attendance on Divine Service and that Mr Bodicote and Mr
Manny be requested to fix upon a proper Place in the Church and to give Directions
accordingly.’14 In August 1762 they ordered ‘That 5 Shillings be given to the Clerk for
Cleaning the Children’s seats in the Church.’15 In 1770, the year in which the Westerham
11
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
12
Letter to the General Committee, 16 April 1765 – A/FH/A/6/1/18/18/6.
13
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 18 March, 1766 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
14
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 27 March 1761 – A/FH/A15/6.
15
th
Ibid., 14 August, 1762.
302
Hospital closed, Mr Saunders was told that all ‘the Benches belonging to the Westerham
Hospital in the Westerham Church, are to be given to that Church’.16 We do not know how
often the children went to the Church. The hospital was about two miles from the church,
so it is unlikely the children went when the weather was really bad.17
The hospital was clearly on good terms with the minister as this rather grim entry in the
minutes for 1761 shows:
‘Mr Ellison having represented that he had used to make a Compliment to the Minister of
the Parish Church of one Hundred of Faggots or a Cord of Wood.
That the Civility be continued to Mr Lewes haveing allways Buried the Nurse Children of
this Hospital without any Fee.’18 Gifts of faggots were also recorded on 26 May 1762 and
10 June 1765.19
In September 1762 Mrs West wrote to London explaining that one advantage of the house
she proposed to rent for the Barnet hospital was that it ‘had a dry coswy [causeway] to the
Church as a large pue in it’ was available.20 2 October 1762 she wrote to say the children
would need new coats every year ‘as they must be clean, to go to Church.’21
We have no evidence about churchgoing at the Chester and Aylesbury hospitals. Chester
was a cathedral city with no less than nine parish churches (one actually in the
16
Copy Book of letters, No. 4 – 4 Sept. 1770 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
17
Sub-Committee, 16 May, 1761 – A/FH/A03/005/004.
18
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 9 July 1761 – A/FH/A15/6.
19
Ibid.
20
6 Sept. 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/1 –
21
11 Oct. 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/73.
303
cathedral). 22 Three of the inspectors of nursery children there were clergymen.23 It would
be surprising if the Chester hospital children had not gone to church on Sundays. One of
the leading governors at Aylesbury was, as we have seen, the Revd. Dr Stephens, Vicar
of St Mary’s. He took John Wilkes’s place as Treasurer.24 It is likely that the Aylesbury
children attended that church.
TEACHING THE CHILDREN TO READ
The governors of the branch hospitals were expected to ensure that the grown children
could read properly by the time they were apprenticed. In a letter to Kynaston in January
1759 concerning preparations for opening the hospital at Shrewsbury, Taylor White said
he would send some ‘Spelling Books’ to Shrewsbury.25 In July 1763 Collingwood wrote to
Ackworth that ‘Fifty Spelling Books … are Ordered to be sent’ and presumably copies
were sent to the other branch hospitals as well.26 The fact that copies of prayers were
sent to the branch hospitals shows that the London governors assumed that some at least
of the children would be able to read.
When the children were apprenticed they were given written instructions, which points in
the same direction. In 1763 the Westerham governors told Saunders to ask Collingwood
‘to send us some of the printed papers of Instructions that used to be given with the
Indentures of Children when Apprenticed for their future good Conduct in life.’27 On 27
June 1769 the Chester governors ordered ‘That three hundred papers of Instructions for
22
J. Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty miles round Manchester (1795) p.394.
23
The Rev. Mr. Dickenson, the Rev. Mr John Baldwin and the Rev. Mr Williams. See entries in the
Church Hospital Minutes.
24
See Sub-Cttee, 30 May 1767 – A/FH/A03/005/007.
25
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
26
Copy Book of letters, No.3 16 July 1763 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
27
Westerham Hospital Minutes. 11 July 1763 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
304
the Children to be Apprenticed be forthwith Printed.’28 The children were also given Bibles
and Prayer Books when they were apprenticed. In May 1768 Richard Hargreaves wrote to
Collingwood from Ackworth acknowledging that Bibles and Prayer Books had arrived
safely, but that he needed ‘100 more of each sort’.29
As we saw in Chapter Nine a number of children at nurse in the 1760s went to school.
Towards the end of our period when children were usually staying longer in the country,
the nurses were required to see that the children received some education.30 A number of
children, therefore, may have known their letters and been able to read a little before they
entered one of the branch hospitals.
At Barnet the task of teaching the children to read presumably fell to Martha Cullarne and
her sister Sarah, the two gentlewomen who had been appointed to run the hospital at Mrs
West’s suggestion. In a letter of 17 September 1762 Mrs West said they would undertake
this task.31 On 28 December Mrs West asked the General Committee to ‘Send Books to
teach the children’. 32
There is a reference to the ‘Boys School and Ward’ at Aylesbury. As we have seen Mr
Neale, the Secretary, was a teacher at the grammar school there and he only worked
part time for the Aylesbury hospital, so the job of teaching the children to read may have
fallen to the Master or Steward of the hospital, Robert Dancer. On the 13th July 1767
Neale listed four boys and two girls who were to be placed out in apprentices to the
Aylesbury area. All six were said to be learning to read. Two of the boys were 16 years
28
Chester Hospital Minutes – A/FH/AK/007/001.
29
Ackworth letter Book, vol. 2 – A/FH/Q/11.
30
Sub-Cttee, 3 March 1770 – A/FH/A/3/5/8.
31
Letter from Mrs West to the Sub-Committee, 17 September 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/71.
32
A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/75.
305
old and one of the girls fifteen, which suggests that either the task of teaching them to
read had been neglected earlier or that they were slow learners.33
There are only a few references to the education of the children in the Westerham
records. On 24 July, 1760, only three weeks after the first foundlings had arrived at
Westerham, the governors there decided to ask the London governors whether they
could recommend a suitable person to act ‘as Nurse and Schoolmistress to the children,
they being hitherto without any means of Instruction’.34 In the following month they
ordered Hoath ‘to write to Mr Collingwood to desire that such Books as are Necessary to
teach the children their letters be forthwith sent’.35
On 23 January 1764 the new
Secretary, Saunders, asked Collingood to send ‘Some Alphabets for the children’.36
Saunders made another request for spelling books in 1766. In 1767 he was ordered to
write off for ’Alphabets and other Small Books’.37 In 1767 there is a reference ‘to the IllHealth of Margaret Newton who teaches the Boys there to read’.38
In January 1763, John Small was appointed ‘Secretary and Schoolmaster at the Orphan
Hospital at Chester.’39
In November 1764 the Chester governors ‘Ordered that the
dozen Books entitled Reading Made Easy be brought for the children at Nurse’.40 On 17
March 1767 Small was ordered to visit the Nurslings and find out ‘what progress they
make in their learning’. 41 He was not asked to report on the education of the grown
33
A/FH/A/6/1/20/14/13.
34
A/FH/6/1/13/8/56.
35
Westerham Minutes – A/FH/A15/5/1.
36
Copy Book of Letters, No.3 31 October 1765 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
37
Letter of 8 June 1767 – A/FH/A/6/20/17/43.
38
Westerham Minutes, 15 May 1767 – A/FH/A15/5/1.
39
Chester Hospital minutes, 10 January 1763 – A/FH/A15/007/001
40
Chester Hospital Minutes, 27 November 1764 – A/FH/D4/1/1/1.
41
Letter to London, 8 June 1767 – A/FH/A/6/20/17/43.
306
children in the hospital.
Presumably the governors were satisfied that they were being
taught properly.
In the larger branch hospitals the task of teaching the children to read was delegated to
schoolmasters (for the boys) and schoolmistresses (for the girls).
At Ackworth eight of the twenty-six male servants and thirteen of the 191 female
servants who were employed at one time or another served as teachers. They were
rather better paid than the other servants, the schoolmasters getting from £8.10.0d. to
£12.12.0d. per annum (husbandmen were paid between £8.0.0d and £8.9.0d). The
schoolmistresses usually got £5 per annum (the nurses were usually only paid
£3.10.0d).42
For a number of years the duty of teaching the children to read seems to
have been taken quite seriously. In September 1763 in a letter to London, Hargreaves
said that Dr Lee had told him that when he was in London he had asked for some
spelling books.
‘I desire you would enquire about ‘em and send them as soon as
possible for we are quite without.’43 In July of the following year Hargreaves reported
that ‘We are in great want of Spelling Books for the Children of this hospital. Our
Schoolmasters say that reading made easy will be the best.’44
In the late 1760s,
though, less emphasis was put on teaching the children to read. On 31 December 1767
there were 276 boys and 449 girls in the Ackworth hospital, but only two schoolmasters
and three schoolmistresses. 45
As we have already pointed out some of the children
may have learned to read at nurse and others who were transferred from the
Shrewsbury and Chester hospitals may also have been able to read before they entered
the Ackworth hospital. Even so, one would have thought that more than five teachers
would have been needed for 725 children.
42
Requite of Servants at Ackworth – A/FH/Q/60.
43
Ackworth Letter Book, - 30 August 1763 – A/FH/Q/10.
44
Ibid., 24 July 1764.
45
Ackworth Monthly Statistics and Requite of Servants at Ackworth.
307
In a letter dated 10 December 1772 sent to Sir Charles Whitworth, the new Treasurer of
the Foundling Hospital, Dr Lee admitted that ‘For these five or six years past of this
Hospital hath been more a place to put out Children, than to instruct them in reading; for
which reason, it was thought needless to keep a number of Schoolmasters to instruct the
Children, that probably would not stay in the House a month, and indeed some of them
were Apprenticed the day they arrived.’46
Education may have been taken more seriously at Shrewsbury.
In a letter the
Shrewsbury governors wrote to the General Committee in 1765 they declared that ‘All
are taught to read.’47 * The hospital’s regulations stated that ‘The school Master and
Mistress are to teach all the children to read English at the Hours allotted for that
Purpose and some few of them to write being such that the Committee shall appoint for
that purpose.’
According to the Regulations the children were to be ‘At school from
Eight to Twelve the larger Children staying no longer than the saying of their lessons,
then go to the Work of the House or Manufactory and labour and earn alternately so that
they may say two lessons in the morning and two after Dinner.’ The younger children
attended lessons in the morning and the afternoon.48
More teachers were employed at Shrewsbury than at Ackworth in the late 1760’s in
relation to the number of children.
46
Ackworth Letter Book, Vol 2 – A/FH/Q/12.
47
16 April, 1765 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/18/6. * But one of the tasks Thomas Day set himself when he took
two girls from the Foundling Hospital (one from Shrewsbury and one from London) was to teach
them to read. See Appendix N.
48
Regulations for the Government of the Orphan Hospital in Shrewsbury – A/FH/MO1/13.
308
Number of Officers and Servants at Shrewsbury Hospital, 9 April 1766 to 31 July
177149
Male Staff
Female Staff
Schoolmasters
Others
Schoolmistresses
Others
4
3
3
4
4
4
2
1
1
1
7
9
10
10
11
11
7
7
6
5
6
6
7
7
8
8
7
4
2
2
26
26
27
28
27
24
21
14
7
6
9 April 1766
16 July 1766
31 Jan 1767
31 July 1767
31 Jan 1768
31 Oct 1768
31 July 1769
31 Jan 1770
31 Jan 1771
31 July 1771
Number of Teachers in Relation to the Number of Children in Shrewsbury
Hospital, 9 April 1766 to 31 July 177150
Teachers
Grown Children*
10
9
10
11
12
12
9
5
3
3
494
501
574
600
591
548
384
220
92
90
9 April 1766
16 July 1766
31 Jan 1767
31 July 1767
31 Jan 1768
31 Oct 1768
31 July 1769
31 Jan 1770
31 Jan 1771
31 July 1771
*Includes children in the Infirmary.
The Shrewsbury governors did their best to appoint suitable teachers. In August 1762,
for example, they issued an advertisement in a Birmingham newspaper for a
schoolmaster and schoolmistress.51
Roger Kynaston was asked ‘to Inquire into the
Characters of the several Candidates.’52 As a result of his enquiries Joseph Austin and
his wife were appointed in October of that year.53
49
Officers and Servants at Shrewsbury Hospital – A/FH/D2/15/1.
50
Ibid.
51
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 26 August 1762 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
52
Ibid., 29 Sept. 1762.
53
Ibid., 11 Oct. 1762
In December 1762 ‘Samuel
309
Whitehouse and Joseph Austin and his wife who were taken in to the House …. upon
Trial appearing to be properly Qualified for their Respective Offices,’ were confirmed in
their posts. 54
In February 1764, after reading the ‘Certificates of their Characters’ a
head schoolmaster, 55 three assistant masters and their schoolmistresses were
appointed.
Most of the teachers appear to have been satisfactory. Mr Richard Leese, appointed
head schoolmaster in February 1764 was given a £1 gratuity in May 1765, so the
governors must have thought well of him.56
Some of the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, however, proved troublesome and
were sacked. In September 1762 the governors ‘Ordered that Mr Weaver Schoolmaster
be discharged.’57
We do not know whether he was thought to be incompetent. In
September 1764 complaints were made that Mr Wilcox, assistant schoolmaster, had
been guilty of ‘some irregular behaviour.’
He did not deny the charge and he and his
wife (who was a schoolmistress at the hospital) were sacked.58
In October 1764 Mr
Northal was sacked after the Secretary reported that he had given him ‘abusive
Language and he having been formerly been reprimanded for like offences against the
Matron.’59
[Ironically, the Secretary, Thomas Morgan, was himself sacked in February
1765].60 On the 18th April 1769 two schoolmistresses were appointed ‘in the Room of
Mrs Higginson and Mrs Weldon, ‘lately discharged.’
54
Ibid., 31 Dec 1762.
55
Ibid., 6 Feb. 1764.
56
Ibid., 7 May 1765.
57
Ibid., 6 Sept. 1762
58
Ibid., 7 Sept. 1762
59
Ibid., 5 Oct. 1765.
60
Ibid., 9 Feb. 1765.
We do not know why they were
310
dismissed, but at the same meeting the governors laid it down ‘that all the
Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses correct the Children with Birch rods and use no
Wands or Sticks on pain of Expulsion.’61
61
Ibid., 18 April, 1769.
311
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE CHILDREN’S EMPLOYMENT IN THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
MOTIVES FOR MAKING THE CHILDREN WORK
The branch hospitals were expected to see that all the older children had some work to do.
It will be recalled that the printed Regulation of the Shrewsbury hospital laid down that they
were to be at school ‘no longer than the saying of their lessons, then go to the work of the
House Manufactory and labour and learn alternately’.1 One reason for making the older
children work was no doubt to keep down costs. Some of the children, as we shall see,
were employed to make clothes and some of the articles produced were used for the
children thus saving the cost of buying them from merchants. Some goods were sold, this
bringing in money for the charity. Although quite large sums were involved in the bigger
hospitals, the net earnings from the children’s work were often quite modest.
It is likely that the governors were just as concerned with equipping the children for life
outside these hospitals, as they were in keeping costs down. Here the branch hospitals
faced the same problems as the London hospital. In the case of the girls, such work as
making clothes, tablecloths or sheets could be seen as a useful preparation for the future,
since most of them were destined to be domestic servants. Many of the boys, though would
be apprenticed to trades in which the skills they had learned as grown children would be
irrelevant. Even here, though, the fact that they had been inured to work probably made
them more attractive to potential masters and mistresses. After considering a particular
proposal from Shrewsbury to employ the children there, the Sub-Committee stated that ‘the
employment of the Children in any Manufactory is not with a view to teach them a Trade by
which they are to get a livelihood but to give them an early Turn to Industry by giving them
1
Regulations for the Government of the Orphan Hospital at Shrewsbury – A/FH/M01/13
312
constant employment’. 2 In April 1762 Collingwood wrote to Richard Hargreaves at Ackworth
about some serge sent from there to London, pointing out it was not up to standard. He
added that, ‘I am ordered to write ….. not out of a spirit of Criticism … for it is a spirit of
Industry not gain that is apprehended must be the Consequence of an Infant Manufactory.’3
At Ackworth even children suffering from quite severe disabilities were found tasks they
could cope with. In a letter to London dated 13 November 1769 concerning children classed
as idiots Timothy Lee wrote that, ‘I have the satisfaction of telling you that we leave no stone
unturned to make them all of some Utility.’4 In the case of idiots and those with physical
disabilities it was important to show those looking for apprentices that they were
employable. The governors also had to consider public opinion. It would have been hard to
justify using taxpayers' money on the older grown children if they had done no work at all.
THE WORK DONE BY THE CHILDREN
Our knowledge of the work the children did at Aylesbury is meagre. We know rather more
about the employment of children at Barnet and Chester and a great deal about the work
done at Westerham, Ackworth and Shrewsbury.
Aylesbury
In Neale’s summary of the Aylesbury minutes (the original minutes have not survived) there
is no mention of any work done by the children there. In January 1763 the Sub-Committee
resolved that the children at Aylesbury (and at Westerham) should learn to spin flax.5 In the
following month Neale asked the Sub-Committee to supply a spinning wheel and flax as
2
Sub-Cttee, 19 July 1760 – A/FH/A03/005/004.
3
Copy Book of Letters, No.3, 1 April 1762 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
4
Ackworth Hospital Letter Book – A/FH/Q/11.
5
Sub-Cttee, 8 January 1763 – A/FH/A03/A05/005.
313
promised. 6 A fortnight later the Sub-Committee thought that the hospitals at Aylesbury and
Westerham would ‘send Thread in a little time’. We do not know whether the Aylesbury
hospital did so. 7
A report written in 1765 to defend the Foundling Hospital’s record noted that at Aylesbury
‘There are 3 Boys and 11 Girls who have attained their Age of 10
years; the two elder Boys, 1 of 15, the other of 14, are employed in
the Garden and Household Service; the other Boy of 10 Years old, is
employed in Netting, Knitting, etc. with the lesser Children, till he can
be placed out.
In this Hospital the Children are mostly small, and employed in
Netting, Knitting, Spinning, Sewing and Household work.’8
Barnet
When Mrs West was drawing up plans for the Barnet hospital she pointed out that at first the
clothing would have to be provided by the governors but that ‘the children after the first year
may be able to make part of it.’9 [The intention was that only girls should be sent there at
first].
A few days later she stated that the two housekeepers she recommended ‘will teach
them Plain work [i.e. needlework] marking darning knitting & spinning & Reading.’10 On 11
October 1762 she suggested that any profits arising from the children’s work should go to
the housekeepers, though she thought such profits would amount to very little, as the
children would be mainly employed to keeping their own clothes in good order rather than
making garments for sale to the public.11
As far as we know this proposal was rejected,
though there is no evidence that the Barnet hospital ever produced any goods for sale. Mrs
West added that she was ‘desirous every method that is possible should be made use of to
6
Ibid., 26 February 1763.
7
Ibid., 12 February 1763.
8
The Case of the Governors and Guardians of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of
Exposed and Deserted Young Children, Foundling Hospital Library, Vol 1 – A/FH/M01/13.
9
Letter from Mrs West to the Sub-Committee, dated 6 September 1762 – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/1.
10
Letter to the Sub-Committee, 17 September 1762 – A/FH/A/6/7/15/19/71.
11
Letter to the General Committee – A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/73.
314
promote industry but at the same time not to forget the danger there is of increasing
mortality [i.e. by overwork] great vigour and Health is one principle thing that can render
them usefull in the future’. On 19 December, a few days before the Barnet hospital opened,
she said she thought the children would be able to make sheets, towels and tablecloths for
the use there if the cloth was sent from London.12
We do not know whether this
suggestion was followed by the governors. It is clear, though, that the children at Barnet
supplied the London hospital with some articles.
In August 1765 Mrs West wrote to
Collingwood ‘pray desire Mrs Leicester [the Matron of the London hospital] to send plenty of
work for your House as soon as possible.’13
The 1765 report already mentioned noted that at Barnet,
‘There are 40 Girls, none of whom have attained the Age of Nine Years.
They are brought up to spin, sew and do Household Work, and taught to read.’14
In October 1767 Mrs West wrote, ‘Shall send the shirts that are making here in a few Days
pray desire Mrs Leicester to gett a large quantity ready to send.’15 In February 1768, a few
weeks before the Barnet hospital closed, Mrs West in pointing out how well the two Mrs
Cullarmes had served the Barnet hospital referred to the ‘many Hundred Shirts that have
made & sent to the London Hospital.’16
12
A/FH/A/6/1/15/19/74.
13
Reference number omitted.
14
A/FM/H01/13
15
10 October 1767 – A/FH/A/6/1/20/20/2.
16
A/FH/A/6/1/21/18/49.
315
Chester
We have a number of references to work done by the grown children at Chester. On 25
June 1763 it was stated that ‘At present [the grown children] are taught to read and some of
the oldest girls to sow and knit.’17 On 9 August 1763 the governors ordered ‘That Elizabeth
Jones do instruct the Children in knitting.’18 A week later it was decided ‘That about twelve
pounds of wool two spinning wheels & requisite Cards be purchased for making yarn for
knitting.’19 On 15 September 1763 the governors ordered that six more spinning wheels for
spinning wool should be made. On 4 October 1763 it was decided that ‘a sufficient quantity
of Wool to keep the Children at Work’ should be bought.20 The governors were hampered,
though, in their attempts to train the children by the cramped conditions in the hospital. On
22 September 1764 they explained the problem in a letter to London:
‘The Children under our immediate care are instructed in those
branches of learning your Secretary mentions, but cannot spin with
such Expedition as is wished for want of Workroom tho’ they have in
less than twelve months finished one hundred and fifty yards of
Woollen Cloth, Yarn sufficient for about one hundred yards more, forty
yards of lining, & have knit several dozens of stockings.’21
Three years later they thought they had found a solution:
‘From the time the Hospital was first established you have received
frequent information by letter of the Inconvenience of the House we
now occupy, that it is impossible to carry on either the lines or
Woollen manufacture …….*
We have now the opportunity of procuring a Plot of Ground …. Where
may be erected a Workroom …. Large enough to employ all the
Children in the above manufacture …. And by which we shall be able
in years time to fabricate all the Cloaths both linen and Woollens of
the Nurslings and our own Family [i.e. those living in the hospital], and
to teach and prepare their Apprentices to the Weaving business.’22
*Manufacture here means weaving.
17
Chester Hospital Letter Book, 17 March 1767 – A/FH/A15/007/001.
18
Chester Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D4/1/1.
19
Ibid., 16 August 1763.
20
Ibid.
21
Chester Hospital Letter book – A/FH/A15/007/001.
22
Ibid., 17 March, 1767.
316
Nothing came of this scheme. 23
In spite of their difficulties the Chester hospital did manage to produce some goods for sale.
In the accounts for 1766 sent to the London hospital on 31 March 1767 the following items
are listed on the income side:
By manufactury for sundrys sold
By manufactury for Stock on hand
31 December 1765.
Earned by Children in the Home
£83.18.11.*
£63. 6. 1.
£20. 2. 0.
£83. 8. 1.*
24
*There is a slight discrepancy in the figures.
The children only contributed about 1% of the total income of the Chester hospital for 1766,
but the training the children received may well have helped them to gain apprenticeships.
We have already emphasized that there were far more children at nurse under the
supervision of the Chester governors than they were in the hospital. The governors did their
best to provide some work for those as well. At first this may seem surprising, until we recall
that many of the children at nurse were as old as those in the hospital. Had the hospital had
more ample accommodation they would no doubt have been taken in as grown children. In
September 1764 the governors stated that they had directed that they should be ‘taught to
read, knit, darn etc., whenever proper Teachers can be found.’25
On 31 December 1765
they ordered that ‘a halfpenny a pair for Knitting Stockings, be allowed the inspectors to be
distributed amongst the Children under their care in something Wearable by which the
industrious may be distinguished from the Slothfull.’26 On 29 April they ordered ‘That three
23
Copy book of letters, vol. 3, 26 March 1767 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
24
Chester Hospital Letter Book – A/FH/A/5/007/001.
25
Ibid., 22 September 1764.
26
Chester Hospital Minutes – A/FH/D4/1/1.
317
linen spinning wheels be made of the Cheapest sort for the use of the nurslings at
Bedeford.’27
A few months later they ordered another twelve spinning wheels ‘for the Children under Mr
Dickinsons Inspection at Tarvin and the remainder of the Children at Nurse as they shall be
wanted.’28
In the accounts for 1766 the children at nurse earned the Chester hospital
£6.3.2. presumably from the sale of yarn or stockings.29
Westerham
Our knowledge of the work done at Westerham is based on the minutes of the governors’
meetings there, the minutes of the Sub-Committee in London, the correspondence between
Westerham and London, the Westerham cashbook and, for 1763 to 1769, a book listing all
the work done there by the children.
As in the other hospitals the children were expected to keep their clothes in repair. In
August 29th, 1761 the Westerham governors asked that ‘Six Dozen of Small Thimbles and
some Thread’ be sent down.’30 In 1763 the Sub-Committee ordered ‘That Mrs Wadham do
take care to see that the Girls at Westerham learn to Darn’.31 On Saturday 27 May 1769 the
London governors agreed that the Westerham hospital was justified in employing a full-time
tailor since he could teach ‘the Children to mend their own Clothes.’32
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., 23 September, 1766.
29
Chester Hospital Letter Book, 31 Mach 1767 – A/FH/A15/007/001.
30
Westerham minutes – A/FH/A15/6.
31
Sub-letter, 23 February 1763 – A/FH/A03/A05/005.
32
Sub-Cttee – A/FH/A03/005/008.
318
The employment of the tailor was also justified on the grounds that he could help out on the
farm in an emergency. The farm seems to have been a fairly successful concern. Flour
was sent from Westerham to the hospital in London33 and hams, bacon and butter were sold
locally. On one occasion ten lambs and a calf were sold. 34
The farm no doubt made it
easier to provide food for the children, but it is not clear how much employment it provided
for the boys. In August 1761 Mrs Wadham reported that ‘the Larger Boys wear out their
breeches by Working in the Fields.’35
In 1766 the governors ordered ‘that John Saunders
make Enquiry into the Cost of a Hand Bell – it being Necessary for calling the Children from
their work in the Fields.’36 However, the sole reference to the farm in an account of work
done by the children in the period 26 April to 20 May 1769, ‘2 Days planting Potatoes’ by the
boys. 37 Only one boy is recorded as working full-time on the farm. On 1 August 1763 John
Saunders informed the governors in London that ‘John Paul is in good health And
Constantly Employed in Attending the Flock. That he is well instructed in the Laborious
parts of Husbandry.’38 Probably most of the boys were too young to be employed as farm
labourers. On one or two occasions some of the boys earned some money for the hospital
by clearing stones from the fields of neighbouring farmers39 and they may have had to carry
out the same tedious task on the hospital’s own farm.
An even more tedious task for the boys was unpicking old rope (oakum) for caulking ships. 40
This was a job usually given to inmates of workhouses or bridewells – the Sub-Committee in
33
See the letters of 19 December 1767 and 5 December 1769 sent from London to John Warde Esq.
Copy Book of Letters No. 4 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
34
Sub-Cttee, 27 May 1769.
35
Ibid., Sept. 29, 1766.
36
Westerham Minutes, 29 August 1761 – A/FH/A15/6.
37
Sub-Cttee, 27 May 1769 – A/FH/A03/005/008.
38
A/FH/A.16/1/16/17/17.
39
See, for example, the entry for 24 June 1768 and the Children’s Work Account –
A/FH/D03/009/001.
40
Westerham Minutes, 23 August 1765 – A/FH/D3//1/1.
319
1768 in fact asked the steward to enquire the price of picking oakum at St Giles’s
workhouse.41
Picking oakum was hardly useful training for boys who would have to be
apprenticed. An agreement was made with a Mr Robinson of Horsleydown in 1763.42 The
Children’s Work Account records that the boys were engaged in the work from December
1763 until the autumn of 1766.43 Robinson claimed that the work was badly done and
refused to pay. We do not know whether he paid up in the end.44
One suspects that the
reason the governors accepted Robinson’s proposal was that they were at that stage at a
loss to know how to keep the boys occupied. They eventually found them more suitable
work.
The governors had little difficulty in keeping the girls occupied. As we have already seen,
the Sub-Committee declared in 1763, ‘That it is the opinion of this Committee that the Girls
[at Aylesbury and Westerham] do learn to spin Flax. At the same time this Committee will
send some Wheels and some Flax in Spinning by way of sample to inform themselves
whether they can procure such sorts of Flax’.45
At Westerham the Sub-Committee’s plan was accepted. The Sub-Committee minute notes
that despatch of spinning wheels to Westerham and on several occasions the Westerham
governors asked for more to be sent.46 In 1764 the Westerham governors asked Saunders
if spinning wheels could be made locally. It is difficult to work out how many wheels were
41
Sub-Cttee, 23 January 1768 – A/FH/A03/005/007.
42
Westerham minutes, 22 August 1763 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
43
A/FH/D03/009.001.
44
Westerham minutes – 1 February 1768. Sub-Cttee, 27 February and 2 April 1768
A/FH/A03/005/007). There is a brief account of this dispute in Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p.173.
45
Sub-Cttee, Saturday 8 January 1763 – A/FH/A03/005/005.
46
17 September 1763, 21 January 17674 – A/FHA03/005/005.
Letters to Westerham 5 May 1764, Copy Book of Letters No.3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
Westerham Minutes – 20 June 1763, 23 April 1764, 1 October 1764 – A/FH/D3/1/1.
Letters from Saunders to London - 30 May 1763 (A/FH/A/6/1/1/16/17/4);
8 August 1763 (A/FH/A/6/1/16/17/2); 21 November 1763 (A/FH/A/6/1/16/17/20)
320
sent from London, because sometimes the Westerham governors complained that wheels
they had been promised had not yet arrived. It is likely, though, that when flax spinning was
properly under way at Westerham, at least twenty spinning wheels were in use, some of the
superior type that could spin two threads at a time. In 1763 Saunders informed the London
governors that they had at Westerham ‘near 40 Girls fit to spin’.47
In the same year the Sub-Committee recommended that ‘an Acre of Ground at the
Westerham and Shrewsbury hospitals [be] sown with the seed of the flax.’48
This
recommendation does not seem to have been acted on, at least at Westerham. Most of the
flax probably came from Yorkshire, going by sea from Hull to London and from there by
wagon to Westerham.49
Much of the linen thread was sent to London. In an account of linen manufacture for 1766 in
the Sub-Committee minutes, the following references to Westerham occur:
Flax sent to Westerham Hospital 120 lbs
Yarn from Westerham Hospital in store 1 Jan 1766
And received the same year
317 ! lbs
509_
In all
826 !
50
The first reference to spinning at Westerham treats it as an occupation of girls (see above).
In an account of the work done in 1769, which will be mentioned later, all the spinning was
done by the girls. Some of the references to spinning wheels, however, merely say that
they were for the use of the children, so we cannot be sure whether boys did any of the
spinning.
47
Letter of 12 September 1763 – A/FH/A/6/1/16/17/22.
48
Sub-Cttee, Saturday 20 August 1763 – A/FH/A03/005/005.
49
Letter to Saunders, 21 April 1767. Copy Book of Letters, No. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
50
Sub-Cttee, Saturday 7 March 1767 – A/FH/A03/A05/A06.
See also the letter to Saunders of 21 April 1767 – Copy Book of Letters, No. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
321
No weaving was done at Westerham and the cloth needed was sent from London.51
In
September 1763, for example, Saunders wrote to acknowledge that cloth for the boys had
arrived. 52
On 4th June 1764 the Westerham governors ordered Mr Saunders to ‘write to
London to Desire Cloth for 55 Sheets as Soon as Conveniently can be.’53
Although the
material was sent from London the children had to make the sheets. On 12 August 1765
Saunders wrote for ’60 Yds of Linen …. For Table Cloths’.54 Here again the children would
have had to make the tablecloths.
The children also had to make some items of clothing. As early as December 1761 the
London governors ‘ordered … that it be recommended to the Westerham Committee that if
any Children are big enough to be employed in making any part of their linen they should be
as early as possible imbued into the knowledge of this necessary duty’.55
No doubt they
were mostly engaged in making clothes for use in the hospital, but some of the items made
by the girls were sold. The girls also earned the hospital some money by ‘Needle Work
done for Ladies’. 56
On 12 January 1769 Collingwood informed Saunders that ‘This Comee observes there are
at Westerham Hospl 170 Girls … am ordered to desire that you will acquaint this Commee
to what manner they are emplo’d of and that you would (as practised in this Hospital) send
to this Comee an Acct of the Work performed by all the Children in the Westerham Hospital
51
12 September 1763 – A/FH/A/6/1/16/17/22.
52
A/FH/A/6/1/167.5.
53
Children’s Work Account, 21 December 1767 – A/FH/D03/009/001.
54
A/FH/A/6/1/18/18/94.
55
Sub-Cttee, 5 December 1761 – A/FH/003/005/005.
56
Children’s Work Account, 21 December 1767 – A/FH/D03/009/001.
322
for a fortnight, as so to Continue the same’.57
[The demand for unnecessary form filling is
not as recent as we might have thought].
These reports show that the girls were employed in a wide variety of tasks, including making
worsted and thread stockings, mittens, shirts, shifts, aprons and night caps and in spinning
linen yarn. The boys were also employed in making stockings. They also made breeches
and mended coats. More work was done by the girls than the boys but this is no doubt due
to the fact that at this time the girls at Westerham greatly outnumbered the boys in 1769. In
that year, when the Westerham hospital closed, 175 girls were sent to London but only 24
boys. 58
Ackworth
The earliest reference to the work done by the children at Ackworth that the present writer
has come across is an order in May 1758 that needles and various types of thread for
making purses should be sent to Ackworth. 59 Four months later the Ackworth governors
decided That Wheels Cards and other Instruments and Implements be forthwith provided in
order that some of the Children be employed in the Woollen Manufactory’.60
It was natural that they should have adopted this plan; the West Riding of Yorkshire was
already the greatest cloth producing area of England, having overtaken the West Country
and East Anglia in importance. In a letter to London in January 1759 Dr Timothy Lee stated
that,
57
Letter to Saunders, 12 January 1769 – Copy Book of Letters No. 4 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
58
See Appendix G.
59
Sub-Cttee, May 1758 – A/FH/A03/A05/002.
60
Ackworth Order Book, 7 Sept. 1758 – A/FH/Q/8.
323
‘The first beginning of our Woollen Manufactory was on the 10th of November,
by the Return you’ll see we have thrown 22 in that Branch of Employment
and some have made such progress therein as will enable us next Week to
show you a specimen of our performance. Two pieces of Flannel will be sent
you on Friday by the Newcastle Waggon and two more may be sent you next
week for they will both be out of the looms this week and be finished in 4
days more if the weather permit; we have one loom at work with these
Flannels and shall have enough very soon for Cloathing for the Boys. Our
Children are now spinning what is for that purpose. Then we are to have
another loom for Blankets, so that we shall never want employment for our
Children ……. Sixty is as many as we have room to employ for the present
and that number in a very short Time will be able to make the greatest part of
the Cloathing for all the Children belonging to the Charity’.
The only thing that was holding up progress, he argued, was the fact that they were short of
children who were old enough and strong enough for the work. He urged that ‘some strong
Boys and Girls from your hospital and the others where they have the largest Children’, be
sent to Ackworth.61
On 3 January 1760 the Ackworth governors,
‘Resolved
That all possible encouragement be given thereto [i.e. cloth manufacture] and
that Dr Lee be requested to solicit in the strongest possible Term the General
Committee, for some large Children to carry on the Business with a Spirit
equable to the importance of it.’62
In the early years, cloth manufacture did not employ the majority of the children, perhaps
because of the shortage of ‘large children’.
61
Letter dated 2 January 1759 in Nichols & Wray op. cit., p. 162. The whole letter is well worth reading.
62
Ackworth Order Book, A/FH/Q.8.
324
Occupation of the Boys and Girls at Ackworth, 2 February 1760
Boys
Total
Husbandry
Woollen Manufactory
Netting
Garden
School
59
2
16
18
1
19
1 Ideot, 1 Apothecary’s Servant, 1 sickly
Girls
Total
Household
Business
Woollen
Manufactory
Linen
Manufactory
Knitting
Sewing
School
57
4
6
7
26
4
9
1 Ideot 63
Cloth manufacture in time, however, became of considerable importance at Ackworth and
there are many references to it in the records. In April 1760 the Sub-Committee noted that
Sir Rowland Winn had informed them that the Ackworth hospital had made a profit of
£11.3.6. on 184 yards of cloth made by the children there. Winn had also stated that ‘400
Yards of Flannel are expected soon to be produced by the labor of the Children’.
The Sub-Committee were clearly impressed by the progress made at Ackworth:64
‘Resolved
That the success of the Woolen Manufactory at the Hospital at
Ackworth is a satisfactory proof that young Children are capable of
being usefully educated in that Manufactory’.65
By the summer of 1760 the Ackworth governors seem to have decided that the hospital
should concentrate on cloth production.
In June they resolved that once the manufactory
account had been settled they should decide ‘what branch of the manufactory shall be
chiefly push’d, after supplying the Hospital with what is wanting for Cloathing our own
63
Sub-Cttee, 2 February 1760 – A/FHA03/A05/004.
64
Ibid., 26 April 1760.
65
Ibid.
325
Children’. 66
In the following month the Ackworth governors ordered that ‘the Manufactory
of Bays & Friezes be continued & also such other goods as may be wanted for the use of
this & the other Hospitals’.67
The governors believed that much of the success of this enterprise was due to their
Secretary. Richard Hargreaves. In his letter of January 1759 Dr Lee wrote ‘To keep up the
Spirit of the Work I give daily attendances but all this is under the conduct of Mr Hargreaves,
who perfectly understands every Branch of the Business and with readiness performs the
Practical Parts of warping, weaving etc….. If he goes on as he has begun …. He’ll merit all
the encouragement we can given him, & …. May be looked upon to the management of this
great work as a very considerable Benefactor to this noble Charity’.68
At a meeting in October 1760 the governors
‘Having examined the state of the Manufactory Ordered
That thanks be given to Mr Hargreaves for his Extraordinary Care &
trouble & that the Treasurer Present him with Twenty Guineas’. 69
At one stage in 1761 the London governors became concerned that children might be kept
back to work in the manufactory who could be apprenticed, though they accepted that ‘some
of the Children of the Hospital should make Clothing [cloth?] for the rest, and therefore such
a reasonable limited number of the elder Children should be kept as will support the
Manufactory and instruct such of the Younger Children as experience may hereafter teach
to be desirable to breed up to a knowledge of Manufactory’.
They seem to have been
worried that Yorkshire clothiers might fear competition from the Ackworth hospital.
They
said ‘their great object in View being to give the Children a habit of Industry as early as
possible, but not to lead the manufacturers in your County (who they presume will be fond of
66
Ackworth Order Book, 5 June 1760 – A/FH/A/8.
67
Ibid., 10 July 1760.
68
Nichols & Wray, op. cit., p. 164.
69
Ibid., 2 October 1760.
326
taking the Children they taught) into an opinion that the Committee means to keep the
Children with a view to any profit, to arise from the manufactory, or to detain them in the
Hospital to such an Age as Children in Common life are generally kept by their Parents’.70
The London governors appear to have overcome their reservations and cloth production
continued as before at Ackworth.
Some of the cloth, as the resolution of 5 June 1760 already quoted shows,71 was used to
make clothes for the Ackworth children. Some cloth was sold, probably in Yorkshire.72 As
early as April 1760, the Sub-Committee, on learning how much flannel the Ackworth
governors believed would soon be made, urged them to sell it as the London hospital was
not at that time in need of flannel. In a letter to Collingwood at the end of 1762 Hargreaves
explained that the quantity of finished cloth at Ackworth ‘tis flucuating every day we having a
demand equal to our make (that is) we sell them as fast as we can get them finished’.73
Some of the cloth was sent to the London hospital for the use of the children there. On 14
June 1760 the Sub-Committee reported that they had compared the cloth bought from Mr
Milnes of Wakefield with that produced by the children at Ackworth. The Ackworth cloth was
heavier, but Milnes’s cloth was made from more finely spun wool. They must have decided
that the cloth was up to standard. From that time on there are quite a few references to
getting cloth from Ackworth.
On Saturday 6 December 1760, for example, the Sub-
Committee ordered Collingwood to write to Ackworth for 10 pair of small blankets, or if they
were not available, enough cloth to make them.74 In November 1761 Collingwood wrote to
70
Letter to Dr Timothy Lee, Sub-Cttee, 18 July 1761 – A/FH/A03/A05/004.
71
Ackworth Order Book , 5 June 1760 – A/FH/Q/8.
72
Sub-Cttee, 26 April 1760 – A/FH/A03/A05/004.
73
Ackworth Hospital Letter Book, 1 December 1762 – A/FH/Q/10.
74
Sub-Cttee, 6 December 1760 – A/FH/A03/005/004.
327
Hargreaves for 200 yards of copper-coloured cloth (for the boys) and about the same
quantity of serge for the girls.75 As a result of receiving this order the Ackworth governors
decided that ‘a Tryal be made of the manufactory of Serges in order to Cloath all the Girls
belonging to this Hospital’.76
In January 1763 Hargreaves complained in a letter to Collingwood ‘that in the course of the
last two years I have only sold you 58 yards of Cloath for Cloathing your Boys and in all that
time you’ve not bought so much as one Piece of Bays from us altho’ I am very certain we
have in our Power in either branche to serve you as well or better than you can be serv’d
elsewhere’. 77
No doubt in response to this letter the Sub-Committee in February 1763
ordered about 300 yards of brown cloth, 40 pieces of serge, 100 pair of blankets and 50 pair
of under blankets.78
One last example will suffice. In January 1769 the Sub-Committee
ordered ’50 pieces of brown serge and twelve pieces of white bays ‘to forward them as soon
as convenient’.79
These transactions were treated like ordinary commercial deals, the
Ackworth hospital being credited with the purchase price.80
On 7th December 1760 forty-two artists resolved as a gesture of support for the charity ‘to
appear next 5th November at the Artists Feast at the Foundling Hospital in Lambs Conduit
Fields in a suit of Clothes manufactured by the children of the Hospital at Acworth in
Yorkshire to be able of one colour & that they be made in Yorkshire’.
The clothes were to
75
28 November 1761 Copy Book of Letters, No.3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
76
Ackworth Hospital Order Book, 3 December 1761 - A/FH/Q/8.
77
Ackworth Hospital Letter Book, 18 January 1763 – A/FH/Q/10.
78
Sub-Cttee, 26 February 1763 – A/FH/A03/005/005.
79
Sub-Cttee, 28 January 1769 – A/FH/A03/005/007.
80
See for example a letter to Sir Rowland Winn, the Treasurer of the Ackworth hospital, dated 1 November
1760. Copy Book of Letters, No. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
328
be paid for by the artists.81 One wonders whether any of them wore these suits after the
event!
Most of the cloth sent to London was for the use of the foundlings. Much of it was used for
the children in the London hospital, but some of it was sent on to branch hospitals. In
December 1760 the Select Committee ordered that the blanketing that had come from
Ackworth should be examined to see whether ‘the width will do for the Beds of the size now
in use in this and the Hospital at Aylesbury, Westerham’.82 On 7 January 1761 Collingwood
wrote ‘that we have Cloth sufficient at this Hospital for the Clothing of the Children at
London, Westerham, and Aylesbury’.83
This suggests that had cloth been needed at
Westerham and Aylesbury, the governor would have considered getting it from Ackworth. In
the same letter Collingwood noted that they were not sure whether any cloth was needed at
Shrewsbury.
The Ackworth Manufactory Account shows that the children earned about £9,400 in the
period 1760 to 1773, though we should bear in mind that the profits after expenses were
taken into account would have been much lower. 84
Earnings of the Children at Ackworth, 1760 to 1773
(to the nearest £)
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
£231
£395
£498
£1047
£1388
£1276
£1033
£762
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
£898
£708
£355
£443
£688
_£217
£9,399
81
See Nichols & Wray, op. cit., p. 252 and the facsimile of the letter opposite p.167.
letter to Dr Lee dated 26 March 1761 – Copy Book of Letters No. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
82
Sub-Cttee, 27 December 1760 – A/FH/A03/A05/004.
83
Copy book of Letters, No. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
84
Ackworth Manufactory Account – A/FH/Q/17.
See also a
329
Shrewsbury
In its early years the Shrewsbury hospital bought some of the cloth needed for their grown
children from Ackworth. In September 1760 the Shrewsbury governors arranged for the
payment of £21.6.6d. for ‘13 pieces of Cloth and Ten pair of Blankets sent hither from the
Ackworth Hospital’. 85
In March of the following year the governors ordered that £4.17.6d.
should be paid to Ackworth for another ten pair of blankets.86
In May the governors
authorised a payment of £4.9.0d. in payment for ‘Blankets etc’. 87
In time, though, children
at the Shrewsbury hospital wove considerable quantities of cloth and no longer needed to
buy from Ackworth. Shrewsbury’s output, in fact, eventually rivalled Ackworth’s.
We know that some of the girls at Shrewsbury had been put to spinning (probably wool not
linen) when the hospital was established in 1759. The Shrewsbury Minutes for 7 May 1759
noted that ‘the Matron having Informed the Board that the little Girls being kept at Spinning
will prejudice their shape. Ordered that only the Large Girls be kept at Spinning and the
smaller at Knitting & Sewing’.88
[It is not clear what work the boys did in 1759]. In July
1759 there is a reference to £1.9.4d. ‘the produce of the Children’s Labor,’ which probably
refers to the sale of woollen yarn.89
In 1760 the governors reported that a Kidderminster carpet manufacturer would be ready to
employ the children in spinning coarse yarn.90
The Sub-Committee raised several
objections to the plan and it was abandoned. 91 A scheme put forward by a Mr Brouwerling
85
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 29 September 1760 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
86
Ibid., 12 March 1761.
87
Ibid., 12 May 1761.
88
Ibid.
89
Ibid., 2 July 1759.
90
Ibid., 19 May 1760.
91
Sub-Cttee, 19 July 1760 – A/FH/A03/005/004.
330
to employ the children ‘ in several branches of the silk and Woollen manufactory’ also fell
through. 92 The London governors believed that ‘the Woolen manufactory’ was ‘preferable to
all others’ but they felt that it would be better if it were organised by the governors without
involving the hospital in arrangements with clothiers.93
When we recall the trouble the
Westerham governors had later with Robinson over the contract for picking oakum they
may well have been right.
The London governors were anxious to persuade the Shrewsbury hospital to employ the
children in weaving cloth, not just in spinning yarn. In April 1760, after noting that ‘the
Woolen Manufactory’ at Ackworth had turned out to be a success, they declared ‘That it is
proper to attempt a like Manufactory at our Hospital at Shrewsbury’ and suggested that ‘ten
or twelve of the largest children at Shrewsbury’ should be sent to Ackworth to be trained.94
The Ackworth governors claimed that they had no room to accommodate them,95 but
eventually sent Thomas Booth to help set up looms at Shrewsbury.96
A Mr Mostyn of
Denbigh also helped them.97 In February 1761 the governors ordered that ‘Five Shillings be
given to Mr Booth and one shilling each to the Man and other Girls from Denbigh as Hansel
money on setting the first loom going.’98
A year later the Shrewsbury Secretary was
ordered to inform Mr Mostyn that they no longer needed these hands and was told to
discharge Booth. 99
92
Ibid.
93
Ibid., 16 August 1760.
94
Ibid., 26 April 1760.
95
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 31 July and 25 August 1760 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
96
Ibid., 29 December 1760.
97
Ibid., 5 November 1760.
98
Ibid., 2 February 1761.
99
Ibid., 2 February 1762.
331
The London governors hoped that the charity might eventually produce all the woollen cloth
it needed. In May 1761, while Mostyn’s hands and Booth were still at Shrewsbury, they
stated that ‘it is the opinion of this Committee that for the better establishment of this
Manufactory at the Hospitals at Ackworth and Salop, the Woollen Clothing for the use of all
the Children of this Corporation, as also the blankets and other Woollen Goods should be
made there’. 100
Some of the children at Shrewsbury were still employed in producing woollen yarn. On 29
June 1761, for example, the Secretary was ordered to ‘Buy at the Fair on Friday next six
Packs of Wool’, though some of this may have been used for knitting.101 In October 1761
the governors authorised a payment of £8 to a Mr Saxton ‘for a year’s Rent for the Spinning
house’. 102 In November the governor ‘ordered that the Children for the Future do Card and
Spin in the Garrets of the new Hospital, and that the present Manufactory house be Imploy’d
as an Infirmary’. 103 Presumably, the woollen yarn was used in the hospital’s own looms.
The Shrewsbury hospital had for a time its own dyehouse, so that all the processes of cloth
manufacture could be undertaken by the hospital. In January 1762, the governors ‘having
Considered the Expense and Inconveniency of sending it [the cloth] to be Dyed at a
Distance’ decided it would be a good plan to erect a dyehouse near the Riverside’.104 On
April 26th, 1762 Dr Adam and Mr Kynaston were ‘desired to direct the Building of it’.
Several types of cloth were woven at Shrewsbury. The children produced more than was
needed for their own clothes. Substantial quantities were sent to the London hospital once
production at Shrewsbury had got properly under way. In November 1761 Collingwood
100
Sub-Cttee, 16 May 1761 – A/FH/A03/005/004.
101
Shrewsbury minutes – A/FH/D2/1/1.
102
Ibid., 7 October 1761.
103
Ibid., 23 November, 1761.
104
Ibid., 11 January 1762.
332
wrote to Thomas Morgan, ‘to desire you will get made for the use of the Children of this
Hospital 200 Yds of Cloth ! and a half wide to make Jackets and Breaches, it will be
wanted about the beginning of April next’.
He added that ‘A Quantity of Serge like the
enclosed Pattern is also wanted for the Girls Coats and the Comm would be glad to know if
your Manufactory can produce it or any thing that may be substituted in its stead’.105 In
December he wrote again asking Morgan to ‘give direction that 200 Yards or thereabout of
each sort of the Cloth agreeable to the 2 patterns be sent to this Hosp’l’.106
In 1764 the
Sub-Committee ordered ‘That out of the Shrewsbury Cloth of 2s. 6d. a yard there be cut out
185 Suits of Boys Clothes’.107
At times the London hospital even had more cloth from Shrewsbury (and from Ackworth)
that it needed for the foundlings.
On the 12th February 1763 the Sub-Committee was
informed what the hospital had in store from Shrewsbury and Ackworth. The Shrewsbury
cloth comprised 67 " yards of brown cloth at 2s. a yard and 42 yards at 2s.6d. a yard.
Surplus cloth from Shrewsbury and Ackworth had been sent to Messrs Gastell and Hatsell’s
in the Strand on 6th December, but had not yet been sold. The Ackworth cloth consisted of
five different types of various colours, comprising in all 118 yards. The prices for these
cloths were much higher than for those retained in the hospital, so they were presumably of
a superior quality.108 A fortnight later Collingwood was instructed to ask Morgan to send
‘about one Hundred and fifty Yards of Brown Cloth to clothe the Boys in this Hospital’.109
The Shrewsbury governors were proud of the way cloth production had increased there.
105
Copy Book of Letters, No. 3, 28 November 1761 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
106
Ibid., 15 December 1761.
107
Sub-Cttee, 10 March 1764 – A/FH/A03/005/005.
108
Ibid.
109
Ibid., 26 February, 1763.
333
In a letter to the General Committee dated 16 April 1765 the Shrewsbury governors pointed
out that
‘The Accounts of our Manufactory have inform’d you that besides
cloathing themselves and in part the Children of your other Hospitals
we have from the labour of their Children served the County Liveries
of three Sheriffs, and have sold every year Cloth to the amount of
some hundred pounds; tho’ during the
greatest part of this time the
Hospital was not fully capable of admitting above half the Number it
now contains. … Our work is now in such Credit that we have sold a
considerable Quantity of fine narrow Cloth to the Clothiers
themselves; and have at this time underhand several Pieces that are
bespoken by some Dealers in Yorkshire if the Profits of our
manufacture in its infant State have been nearly balanced by the
Expense of Masters to teach, and of Looms and instruments to work
with, Expense is daily growing less; our Profits yearly increase; and
will, we doubt not, soon bear a considerable proportion to the
Expense of maintaining the Children in the House’.110
The fact that the children at Shrewsbury were able to produce so much cloth for their own
clothes and for the London hospital certainly helped to keep costs down, but the sum earned
by the children by the sale of cloth came nowhere near the cost of maintaining the children.
The London governors were surely right in arguing that the main justification for employing
children at Shrewsbury and in the other branch hospitals was to persuade potential masters
or mistresses that the children had been brought up to be industrious and were therefore
worth taking on as apprentices.
110
A/FH/A/6/1/18/18/16.
334
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
THE BRANCH HOSPITALS AND APPRENTICESHIP
THE ROLE OF MASTERS AND MISTRESSES
As was the case with children from the London Hospital the vast majority from the branch
hospitals were apprenticed to masters, but this was merely because married women could not
sign indentures on their own behalf. In practice many girls were instructed and supervised by
the masters’ wives. Sometimes a husband whose wife had died was left to look after a girl
apprentice that he did not know what to do with.* In November 1761, for example, Thomas
Jackson, an Ackworth whitesmith, asked the Ackworth governors to transfer his apprentice
Nancy White to another master, as his wife, a mantua maker, had just died. The governor
agreed that the apprenticeship should be assigned to another man whose wife was also a
mantua maker, provided the new master could provide a testimonial vouching that he was a
proper person to look after an apprentice.1
The task of finding suitable masters was left to the governors of the branch hospitals with little
supervision from London. Masters had to sign two copies of the indenture, which were then
sent to London to receive the Foundling Hospital’s seal. One copy was then returned to the
master; the other copy was kept in the London headquarters. The details were entered in an
apprenticeship book. This was merely to ensure that the Hospital’s books were kept up to
date.
Apprenticeships, of course, could not offer total protection to the foundlings.
many things that could go wrong.
apprenticeship.
There were
Masters might die before the end of the children’s
When this happened, the executors had to take over responsibility for
*
For the sake of brevity, references in this chapter are made to masters, but the points made apply equally
to those apprenticed to mistresses.
1
Ackworth Hospital Order Book, 5 November 1761 – A/FH/Q/8.
335
apprentices, but they were sometimes able to arrange transfers. On the death of the Revd
Thomas Trant, for example, the boy apprentice was assigned to the Revd. Dr Timothy Lee
and the girl to Richard Stathan.2 Masters sometimes became so poor that they could no
longer provide for their apprentices. [The governors were supposed to satisfy themselves that
potential masters would be able to look after their apprentices properly, but they could not, of
course, see into the future.] When masters sank into poverty their apprentices became the
responsibility of their parishes, provided they had been apprenticed for at least forty days, but
the governors were sometimes able to assign them to other masters. The governors would
also consider assigning an apprentice for other reasons. When in 1761 William Poyntz Esq.
wanted to be rid of his apprentice, Collingwood informed Dr Lee that he could not just hand
him back to Ackworth, but if he could find someone suitable to take over the apprenticeship,
the General Committee would agree to the transfer.3 In August 1762 Francis Pearson Esq. of
Pontefract wrote to the Sub-Committee asking for permission to turn over his apprentice,
Augustus St Quentin, to the sea service or husbandry, ‘Observing that the Boy is very
perverse but has no objection to the Sea.’ He was told he could do so provided he could find
a suitable master.4
In one case the Sub-Committee arranged for another Ackworth
apprentice, Thomas Revel, described by his master as a very bad character, to be sent to the
Marine Society, after attempts to find another master for him failed.5
Some apprentices ran away from their masters, either to their branch hospitals or to their
nurses.
These children were normally returned to their masters.
In December 1770
Hargreaves was informed that James Cutten had run away from his master, Thomas Milton, a
tailor of North Dalton in the East Riding of Yorkshire and had gone to his former nurse at
2
Gen. Cttee, Wed. 15 Aug. 1759 – A/FH/A03/A02/006. – Microfilm X041/015. When apprentices were
assigned to new masters indentures had to be endorsed by the General Committee.
3
Letter dated, February 7 1761 – Copy Book of Letters, Vol. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
4
Sub-Cttee, 28 August 1762 – A/FH/A03/005/005. It is not clear why he wrote to the Sub-Committee rather
than contacting the Ackworth governors.
5
Sub-Cttee, April 20, 1771 – A/FH/A03/005/009.
th
336
Luton.
Collingwood added, ‘I have wrote to his Master to give directions, for his being
returned to him’.6
Where masters had ill-treated their apprentices, however, the governors sometimes appealed
to the local Justices of the Peace to terminate the apprenticeships. These apprentices would
then be the responsibility of their parishes unless the governors were able to assign them to
new masters. In extreme cases the governors of the branch hospitals might prosecute the
masters. The topic of ill-treatment of apprentices will be considered later.
Sometimes children were claimed by their parents or friends. The masters had to agree to
surrendering the children. In January 1770 Collingwood wrote to Hargreaves at Ackworth to
send Ann Benfield to London, her master Mr Wormald of Leeds having agreed to surrender
her to her parents.7
apprentices.
Masters might insist on being compensated for the loss of their
In November 1770, Hargreaves was asked ‘what satisfaction Thomas
Parsonson expects from giving up the Child [Love Archer] to her Parent.’8
THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN APPRENTICED FROM THE BRANCH HOSPITALS
The London governors naturally wanted the children to be apprenticed as soon as they were
old enough since this would keep down the expense of running the charity and they were
answerable to the House of Commons for the use of funds granted for the maintenance of the
‘parliamentary children’. By the mid-1760s, they faced a huge task in finding places for the
hundreds of children who by then were old enough to leave. In 1767, as we saw in Chapter
Seven, the House of Commons earmarked some of the money granted to the Foundling
Hospital for apprenticeship fees as a way of getting children apprenticed more quickly in order
to reduce the burden on the taxpayer. This inducement no doubt encouraged men to come
6
Letter of 31 December 1770, Copy Book of Letters. Vol. 4. A/FH/6/2/2.
7
Letter of 18 January 1770 – ibid.
8
Letter of 15 Nov. 1770 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
337
forward to take the children, but it also meant that the London governors had sometimes to
warn the branch hospital not to apprentice more children because the apprenticeship grant for
that year had run out, though a few masters took children without fees.
Four thousand, five hundred and twenty-one children of the 14,934 taken in during the
General Reception survived their time with the Foundling Hospital: of these 4,318, were
apprenticed, 146 were claimed by their parents (or friends), 26 were discharged on reaching
the age of 21 and ten cannot be accounted for.9
The following table counts all 4,399 children apprenticed from the charity’s hospitals to the
period 2 June 1756 to 31 July 1773 and therefore includes some taken in before and after the
General Reception. Children apprenticed from their nurses have been omitted.
Number of Children Apprenticed, 2 June 1756 – 31 July 1773
From the London Hospital
From Ackworth Hospital
“
Shrewsbury “
“
Chester
“
“
Westerham
“
“
Aylesbury
“
“
Barnet
“
Boys
Girls
Total
775
1213
245
4
12
5
___2254
770
1151
179
32
6
2
___5
2145
1545
2364
424
36
18
7
___5
4399 10
*Excluding one girl later returned to London
The Ackworth figures are believed to be 100% correct. There are one or two entries in the
other registers which are not clear, but the table is believed to be substantially accurate.
9
General Registers, vols. 1 to 4 – A/FH/A9/2/1-4.
10
Apprenticeship Registers – A/FH/A12/003/001-002, microfilm X41/5.
Register of Grown Children, London Hospital - A/FH/A9/10.
Ackworth Apprentiships Registers - A/FH/Q/068 and 069.
Shrewsbury Registers - A/FH/A10/7/7, A/FH/D2/7/1 and A/FH/02/8/2.
Chester Registers - A/FH/A10/009/001, A/FH/D04/003/001 and A/FH/D04/006/001.
Westerham Register - A/FH/A10/8.
General Registers – A/FH/A09/002/001-004, microfilms X41/3 and X41/6 (for Aylesbury and Barnet Hospital
apprentices).
All the statistics in this chapter are based on these sources. Details of occupations and destinations take no
account of transfers.
338
As we saw in Chapter Seven the combined total of children apprenticed from their branch
hospitals (2853) is much greater than for these apprenticed from London (1545). The branch
hospitals accounted for almost two thirds of those apprenticed from the hospitals. It is hard to
believe that the London governors could have coped if all the children had had to be
apprenticed from London.
At first the number of children apprenticed was quite modest, but the number increased
dramatically in the late 1760s.
By the early 1770s the great majority of ‘parliamentary’
children had been apprenticed and the number therefore fell sharply.
Number of Children Apprenticed from the Branch Hospitals 1758 – 1773
Year
Boys
Girls
Total
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
3
12
3
5
6
17
38
90
81
184
564
395
70
7
3
___1
1479
2
8
8
6
2
3
34
68
13
71
333
454
287
32
51
___3
1375
5
20
11
11
8
20
72
158
94
255
897
849
357
39
54
___4
2854
It is clear that the branch hospitals found it easier to apprentice boys than girls down to 1768.
In that period 1003 boys were apprenticed but only 548 girls. In the later years the proportion
was almost reversed: 476 boys were apprenticed from 1769 onwards, compared to 827 girls.
The hospitals varied widely in their success rate in apprenticing the children, as the following
figures show:
339
Percentage of Children on the Registers or Reconstituted Registers Apprenticed
Hospital
Number on the register
or reconstituted register
Ackworth Hospital
Shrewsbury
Westerham
Chester
Aylesbury
Barnet
Number
Apprenticed
2664
1092
469
106
103
57
Percentage
Apprenticed
2364
424
18*
36*
7
___5
2854
88.7
38.8
3.8
33.9
6.8
8.8
*Omitting 108 apprenticed from the Chester nurseries.
*Including one boy returned to his father and one to his parents.
WESTERHAM
Westerham had by far the worst record in finding apprenticeships for their children. Only ten
of the boys went to masters unconnected to the hospital. Of the other two apprenticed, John
Exlaye was apprenticed in 1763 to John Ward, the Westerham treasurer who seems to have
taken him out of charity to work in his stable ‘he being a very small size and not likely to be fit
for Husbandry Employment’11 and Nathaniel Warwick, who was incontinent, was apprenticed
in 1764 to a local surgeon on the understanding that he could return him if he could not cure
him. 12 (He was returned in December 1765).
Of the six girls apprenticed from Westerham two were apprenticed in 1760 and one in 1761 to
John Arbuthnot of Ravensbury in Surrey to be employed in pencilling calicoes. These three
were part of a group of sixteen sent to Arbuthnot and it is probable that all the arrangements
were made in London.13
The other three girls were apprenticed in 1769 to household
business, one in London, one in Kent and one in Surrey. One of these girls was apprenticed
to Mrs Jane Williamson who was the hospital’s last Matron.14
11
Letter to London, 16 May 1763 – A/FH/A/6/1/16/17/2.
12
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 5 November 17654 and 23 December 1765 – A/FH/A15/5/1.
Westerham Register, 18 April 1765 – A/FH/A10/8.
13
Apprenticeships Registers – A/FH/A12/003/001 – 002. Microfilm X41/5.
14
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 8 June 1767 – A/FH/A15/5/1.
Westerham Register – A/FH/A10/8.
340
In June 1767 the governors put up advertisements at Westerham and Sevenoaks markets
informing potential masters that Parliament had granted ‘Small Sum by way of Fees to
promote the putting out of Foundling Children Apprenticed.’ But only six of the eighteen
children were apprenticed after that date.
In March 1768 the Westerham governors ordered
Saunders to inform the Sub-Committee in London ‘that very few persons Apply for Children at
this Hospital therefore this Committee have no chance of Apprenticing of the oldest Boys.’15
It is hard to explain why so few children were apprenticed from Westerham. There was little
industry in the Westerham area, but one would have expected that more boys would have
been apprenticed to local farmers and more girls would have found places as domestic
servants, especially as the hospital had a home farm and the girls were instructed in making
clothes. The failure is all the more remarkable given that almost two thirds of the children
(304 out of 469) had been taken into the hospital from local nurseries (the rest had come from
London). A number of the local gentry had acted as inspectors and many local women had
been employed as nurses. Many people would therefore have known some of the foundlings
who had been sent to the Westerham hospital.16
AYLESBURY
The Aylesbury hospital found apprenticeship for a slightly higher proportion of their children
even though over just 10% of the children were sent there straight from London (96 out of
103) and there were no nearby nurseries. Only seven children were apprenticed. All from
Aylesbury, however, were found masters in Buckinghamshire.
Five of the forty-seven boys
were apprenticed; two were apprenticed to husbandry to William Minshall, the Clerk of the
Peace for Buckinghamshire, one to John Dashwood Kay, Esq. (household business), one to a
clergyman (household business); only one boy, William Ellwood, was apprenticed to a working
15
Westerham Hospital Minutes, 28 March 1768.
16
Westerham Register – A/FH/A10/8.
341
man (a gardener and nurseryman). Two of the fifty-six girls were apprenticed, one, Betty
Wynell, to the Revd. John Stevens, the other, Louisa Simond, to ‘Thomas Green, Gent.’ Both
were apprenticed to household business.17
Since only seven children were apprenticed from the Aylesbury hospital and only four died
there, ninety two children had to be found places elsewhere: seventy two were sent to the
London hospital and ten each to Ackworth and Shrewsbury.18
BARNET
None of the five boys at Barnet was apprenticed, but Mrs West managed to get five of the fifty
girls apprenticed. All of these girls were apprenticed after the scheme of giving fees with the
children had been introduced. Mrs West was confident that she would be able to place out
quite a few of the girls. In May 1767 she wrote to London pointing out that ‘Several People
have apply’d for Children that are in Hadley House and want to know what money will be
given with them one is fixed on and several more when I can give an answer.’19 In February
1768 she complained that the fees offered were too small – ‘there is doubtless great dainger
of People taking them for the sake off money that are in necessities Sircumstances but when
that is not the case it’s a Cheap way of providing for them’.20 Mrs West was such an energetic
women that had she been given more time she would probably have succeeded in placing
more girls out, even though she felt the fees too small.
The Westerham, Aylesbury and
Barnet hospitals accounted for only a tiny proportion of those apprenticed from the branch
hospital. Had they apprenticed no children at all it would not have had much effect on the task
facing the Foundling Hospital. It may be that many of those living in the Home Counties that
17
Apprenticeship Register – A/FH/A12/003/001, microfilm X41/5.
18
General Registers – A/FH/A9/2/1, A/FH/A9/2/2 and A/FH/A9/2/3 – and the Register of Grown
Children (A/FH/A9/10).
19
28 May, 1767 – A/FH/A/6/1/20/20/12.
20
29 February 1765 – A/FH/A/6/1/21/18/43.
342
wanted to take foundlings as apprentices applied directly to the London hospital, without
considering the possibility of getting children from their branch hospitals.
No doubt the
London governors were disappointed at the failure to get more children apprenticed from
these hospitals, but they could have justified their existence on the grounds that they removed
children from the unhealthy smoke-filled atmosphere of London.
CHESTER
The situation at Chester was quite different from that at Aylesbury, Barnet and Westerham.
Large numbers of children under the care of the Chester governors were sent to nurse since,
as we have seen, the Blue Coat Hospital was too small for all the children to be looked after
there and plans to build a separate foundling hospital fell through. Chester was also different
from Shrewsbury and Ackworth.
There were large numbers of infants at nurse in the
neighbourhood of those hospitals, but they were usually sent on to the hospitals when they
were old enough. At Chester, though, most of the children remained with their nurses until
they were apprenticed. For this reason it would be misleading to judge Chester’s record by
just considering children apprenticed from the hospital, especially as the register of the
children in the Chester nurseries contains over twice as many names as the Chester hospital
register. In fact more children were apprenticed from their nurses than from the hospital.
There are 245 names (120 boys and 125 girls) on the register of the children’s nurseries and
106 on the register of the hospital (57 boys and 49 girls).21 Since twenty-seven boys and
eighteen girls were sent from their nurseries to the Chester hospital, the actual number of
foundlings cared for at Chester was 306 (150 boys and 156 girls). One hundred and forty-four
of these 306 children (45 boys and 99 girls) were apprenticed by the Chester governors
21
Register of Chester Children at Nurse – A/FH/A10/009/001
Chester Hospital Register – A/FH/A10/9.
343
(47.1%). 22 This is an impressive achievement, especially when we bear in mind that the first
children were only transferred to Chester in May 1763 and the last left as early as August
1769. All the 144 children were apprenticed within the space of two years, the first on 6
August 1767 and the last on 16 August 1769.
Only a few children were apprenticed in 1767, but the numbers then rose sharply:
Number of Apprentices from Chester Hospital
Boys
1767
1768
1769
1
1
2
4
Girls
2
9
21
32
Total
3
10
23
36
Number of Apprentices from the Chester Nurseries
1767
1768
1769
Boys
Girls
Total
5
23
13
41
3
15
49
67
8
38
_62
108
Number Apprenticed from Chester Hospital and Chester Nurseries
Boys
1767
1768
1769
6
24
15
45
Girls
Total
5
24
70
99
11
48
_85
144
Rather surprisingly, a higher proportion of the children on the register of the nurseries were
apprenticed than on the hospital register (48% compared with 34%). The training the children
had received in the hospital had evidently not made them more desirable as apprentices.
Trades to which Girls were Apprenticed from Chester
56
39
2
1
_1
99
22
to Household Business
to Dairy Business
to Household Business and Quilting
to Dairy Business and Household Business
to a Mantua Maker
Chester Apprenticeship Register – A/FH/D04/006/001. The rest of this section is based on an
analysis of this register.
344
Trades to which Boys were Apprenticed from Chester
25
6
5
3
3
1
1
_1
45
to Husbandry
to Weaving
to Household Business
to Shoemakers
to Taylors
to a Glove and Breeches Maker
to Gardening
to a Barber
Equally surprising is the fact that a higher proportion of the girls were apprenticed (63.5% - 99
out of 156) than of boys (30% - 45 out of 150). A large number of girls were apprenticed to
dairy business (the area round Chester was a great centre for dairy farming) but the number
of girls apprenticed to household business (56) outnumbered the number of boys apprenticed
from Chester (45).
All but four of the children (one girl and three boys) were apprenticed in Chester itself or in
places within a twelve mile radius of the city (most of them, in fact, were sent to places under
ten miles form the city).
Some of the children were apprenticed to their inspectors.
Magdalene Snow, for example, was apprenticed to Burdett Worthington, Esq., who supervised
the children at Ashton Tarvin and Joseph Park was apprenticed to the Rev. Thomas
Dickenson, the inspector in the parish of Tarvin.
A high percentage of all the children apprenticed, whether from their nurses or from the
hospital, went to masters living in areas where ‘inspection’ or ‘nurseries’ had been
established. Some of the children were apprenticed in the parishes where they had been
brought up by the nurses. Thomas Lock, for example, was apprenticed in Hardbridge and
Ann Manningham was apprenticed in the parish of Thornton. There are a number of cases
where the potential master was recommended by a governor or inspector. John Wright, for
example, was recommended by the Revd. Mr Worthington, the inspector at Barrow, and
several potential masters were recommended by Dr Alan Denton, who was both a governor
345
and inspector.
Even where masters were not specifically recommended by inspectors or
governors or where children were apprenticed from the hospital and sent to areas where they
had not been brought up at nurse, the fact that they normally were sent to areas where
‘’nurseries’ had been established must surely have been a safeguard, since anyone
suspecting that an apprentice was being ill-treated would have found it easy to report their
misgivings to one of the governors or inspectors living in the area. The writer has not, in fact,
come across any evidence of ill-treatment. The task of apprenticing the children at Chester
was carried out so well that it is a pity that the hospital was closed in 1769 and that many
children who would perhaps have had a chance of being apprenticed there, had to be sent to
Ackworth, though admittedly it is possible that it might have proved difficult by then to find any
more masters in the area round Chester.
SHREWSBURY
Far more children were apprenticed from the biggest hospitals, Shrewsbury and Ackworth.
The Shrewsbury hospital succeeded in placing out about three times as many children as
Chester, though this accounted for a smaller percentage of the number on the register. If all
the children at Shrewsbury are counted, including some at nurse who did not subsequently
enter the Shrewsbury hospital, the percentage is 35.8% (424 out of 1184).23
There are
discrepancies in the three registers, but as far as we can tell 1092 children passed through the
hospital itself (552 boys and 540 girls). If only these children are counted, on the assumption
that the children at nurse would not have been old enough to be apprenticed, then 38.8%
were apprenticed.
The governors placed out 44.4% of the boys from the hospital but only 33.1% of the girls.24
From 1760 to 1769, 237 boys were apprenticed, but only 106 girls. In the period 1770 to 1772
23
See the following Shrewsbury registers – A/FH/A10/7. A/FH/D2/7/1 and A/FH/D2/8/2. See Appendix L.
24
Ibid., plus the Apprenticeship Registers- A/FH/A12/003001-002, microfilm X41/5, for these and
subsequent figures for Shrewsbury apprentices.
346
far more girls were apprenticed than boys, but this is because so few boys remained at
Shrewsbury, partly because of the earlier success in placing out boys, but also because in
1769 far more boys had been sent to Ackworth (161 compared with 50 girls).25 On the 30th
June 1772, just before the Shrewsbury hospital closed, there were 57 girls left but only one
boy. 26
Children Apprenticed from Shrewsbury
Year
Boys
Girls
Total
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
2
2
2
2
4
9
9
13
139
55
8
__245
2
2
2
2
4
2
15
32
45
52
7
_14
179
4
4
2
4
6
13
11
28
171
100
60
7
_14
424
Six of the children were apprenticed to governors; Henry Powys took one girl; Sir Richard
Corbett took one boy for farm work and one girl as a domestic servant; Roger Kynaston took
one boy for farm work and one girl as a servant. One boy, William Penn, was apprenticed to
Samuel Pritchard, felt maker. Pritchard supplied the hospital with hats for the boys. Another
boy was apprenticed to Thomas Prosser, who supplied the hospital with medicines. Quite a
few of the first children to be placed out went to masters who were probably well known to
some of the governors.
The London governors who drew up plans for the Foundling Hospital had assumed, as we
have already pointed out, that the majority of boys would be apprenticed to the sea service or
25
Register of Children sent to Ackworth – A/FH/A10/008/001.
26
State of the Orphan Hospital at Shrewsbury – A/FH/D2/15/1.
347
husbandry, although they did mention ‘other labour’. But no boys were apprenticed to the sea
service and only thirteen to husbandry.
THE BOYS
The boys were apprenticed to a wide variety of tasks. In fact the apprenticeship records list
seventy different occupations, though some, especially in the metal trades, were closely
related to others.
Occupations to which the Boys were Apprenticed from Shrewsbury*
Number
Metal Trades
Cloth Manufacture
Leather Goods
Household Business
Husbandry
Clothing Trades
Food Trades
Barbers
Building Trades
Wood Trades
Miscellaneous
Percentage of Total
111
32
24
24
16
10
7
6
6
6
3
45.3%
13.1%
9.8%
9.8%
6.5%
4.1%
2.9%
2.4%
2.4%
2.4%
1.2%
* See Appendix H for details.
Destination of Boys apprenticed From Shrewsbury Hospital
Staffordshire
Shropshire
Worcestershire
Yorkshire
Flintshire
Montgomeryshire
Berkshire
Cardiganshire
Cheshire
Denbighshire
Derbyshire
111
74
36
13
4
2
1
1
1
1
__1
245
45.3%
30.2%
14.7%
5.3%
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
49.0%
These overall figures conceal important changes. Down to the end of 1766 only 30 boys were
apprenticed, eight to household business, four to husbandry and two to weavers; the other
sixteen were apprenticed to fifteen different occupations, ranging from bridge master to
thatcher. Most of these boys were apprenticed in Shropshire.
348
Destination of Boys Apprenticed from Shrewsbury Hospital, 1760-1766
Shropshire
Worcestershire
Denbighshire
23
6
_1
30
76.7%
20.0%
3.3%
In the period 767 to 1770 far more boys were apprenticed (215). This was mainly because
large numbers had now reached the right age for apprenticeship (most children were
apprenticed from Shrewsbury at the age of ten, eleven or twelve), but the introduction of
apprenticeship fees from the summer of 1767 must have made it easier to find masters.
The governors now had to look further afield for masters, and Shropshire ceased to be the
destination for most of the boys.
Destination of Boys Apprenticed from Shrewsbury Hospital, 1767 – 1770
Staffordshire
Shropshire
Worcestershire
Other counties
111
51
31
_22
215
51.6%
23.7%
14.4%
10.2%
Most of the boys sent to Worcestershire went to Kidderminster where they were apprenticed to
weaving (presumably carpet weaving). In fact 23 boys were apprenticed to weavers to that
town at this period (one had already been sent there). On 22 May 1768 the Rev. Mr. Orton sent
a long letter from Kidderminster concerning apprenticeship to weavers.27
He said that an
advertisement in the ‘Birmingham News’ had led several weavers to approach him about the
possibility of getting apprentices from the Shrewsbury hospital. These were journeymen who
worked for their employers. He said he had taken great care in writing references since ‘It is too
much the custom of the Journeymen Weavers here to take apprentices for the sake of the
Money given with them, and afterwards to starve and other ways neglect and abuse them.
There is rather a Prejudice against these Boys; as one or two of these, who are apprenticed
27
This letter is in a bundle marked A/FH/D/02/014. Most of the other letters in the bundle dealt
with applications for apprentices for those working in the metal trade at Wolverhampton in the
period 1767 to 1768. They are not individually numbered.
349
here are remarkably awkward, appear so different from other boys, and make much slower
progress in learning to Weave, that the Masters are discouraged from taking them.’ He urged
the governors to ’require their Masters & Teachers to take the greatest pains to make them brisk
and lively for here seem to be their capital defect.’ No doubt it was easier for boys who had
been brought up in a town specializing in carpet weaving to learn the trade, especially if their
fathers were themselves weavers and it may be that the boys from the Shrewsbury hospital had
become somewhat institutionalised. But only three boys had been apprenticed to Kidderminster
weavers by the time Orton wrote, so he hardly had enough evidence for his generalization.
From 1767 to 1770 just over half of all the boys were apprenticed in Staffordshire and it now
took over twice as many boys as Shropshire. Far more boys were being apprenticed to the
metal trades, particularly at Wolverhampton.
Up to the end of 1766 the metal trades had
accounted for only three of the forty-three apprenticeships, one in Shropshire, two in
Worcestershire. From 1767 to 1770, 108 of the 202 boys were apprenticed to these trades. In
1768, 84 boys were apprenticed to metal trades in Staffordshire, forty two to the makers of
buckles or their components, sixteen to locksmiths of various types; the other twenty six went to
a wide variety of trades, from corkscrew cutter to whitesmith. As far as we can tell, the great
majority of those applying for apprentices were journeymen, not independent masters.
Few of the Shrewsbury governors would have known much about the metal trades or the
Wolverhampton men who applied for apprentices. They had therefore to rely on letters of
recommendations from men of standing in that town.28 These letters were sometimes signed by
only one person, but many had several signatures, sometimes including those of the minister
and churchwarden of the parish in which the applicant lived. They were not in standard form,
but they normally state that the writer (or writers) had known him for some years and believed
him to be honest, sober and hardworking. These letters were not treated as mere formalities.
In one case, where the governors had doubts as to whether a letter was genuine, they checked
28
Ibid.
350
with someone who knew the writer’s handwriting. In one or two other cases they asked local
men in Shrewsbury to vouch for the standing of the writer or writers. The decision as to whether
to agree to an apprenticeship seemed often to have been made by one or more of the
governors. In several cases the Revd. Dr Adams, one of the most active governors, told the
Secretary, Samuel Magee, to go ahead. In some other cases Col. Congreve, Mr Tayleur or
Mr Blakeway approved the application. The governors did their best to see that the boys went
to reputable men, but unlike the Chester governors, they would not have been in a position to
know much about the way they were treated once they had been apprenticed.
THE GIRLS
One hundred and seventy-nine girls were apprenticed from the Shrewsbury hospital. Down to
the end of 1766 only fourteen were apprenticed; 144 were apprenticed in the period 1767 to
1770; the remaining 21 were apprenticed in 1771 and 1772. Those who could not be found
places were sent to Ackworth or London.
The girls were apprenticed to only seven occupations.
As one would expect the great majority
of the girls were apprenticed to household business.
Occupation to which Girls were Apprenticed from Shrewsbury
Household business
Wood screw maker
Silk throwster
Mantua maker
Staymaker
Clog maker
Glove & breeches maker
137
21
14
3
2
1
__1
179
Destination of Girls Apprenticed from Shrewsbury
Shropshire
Staffordshire
Montgomeryshire
Cheshire
Other counties
94
35
20
17
_13
179
Just over twenty-eight girls were placed out in Shrewsbury itself.
52.5%
19.6%
11.2%
9.5%
7.3%
351
As with the boys, the great majority in the first few years were apprenticed in Shropshire, eight
of them in Shrewsbury and three in nearby villages.
Destination of Girls Apprenticed from Shrewsbury Hospital, 1760-1766
Shropshire
Norfolk
Hampshire
12
1
_1
14
85.7%
7.1%
7.1%
Thirteen of these were apprenticed to household business; the fourteenth, Mary Haytor, was
apprenticed to a Shrewsbury staymaker.
After 1767, as the numbers that had to be found places increased, more girls had to be sent to
neighbouring counties.
Destination of Girls Apprenticed from Shrewsbury Hospital, 1767-1772
Shropshire
Staffordshire
Montgomeryshire
Cheshire
Other counties
82
35
20
17
_11
165
49.7%*
21.7%
12.1%
10.3%
6.7%
*Twenty of these girls were apprenticed in Shrewsbury.
The change was not so marked as for the boys, though. If we take the entire period from 1760
onwards, 52.5% of the girls were apprenticed in Shropshire (94 out of 179) compared with
30.2% of the boys (94 out of 245).
Presumably the Shrewsbury governors checked on the suitability of those offering to take girls
in the same way as they did for those wishing to take boys, though letters of recommendation
for those applying for girls have survived.
It was not enough to check on potential masters: a way of preventing them from neglecting
their children once they were in their care was also needed. In September 1767 the General
Committee wrote to Shrewsbury explaining that the London governors had adopted the
practice of withholding part of the apprentice fees given with the children and paying the
352
balance once they were satisfied that the children were being properly treated.29
The
Shrewsbury governors adopted the same plan. In 1768 the Apprentice Register records both
the fees agreed and the sums paid. It was usual to give £3 with boys but to withhold £1; for
girls the fee was usually £4, with £1 withheld.30 In January 1771 the Shrewsbury governors ‘In
consequence of several complaints being made of the ill-treatment of the Orphan children by
their Masters’ resolved that no Money shall be paid to Masters who may hereafter take
Children Apprentices till twelve months are expired after signing the Indentures, and the Year
end £4 will be conferr’d only on those who use their Apprentices well.’31
We do not know how effective their measures were. In the most serious case of ill-treatment
of girls that came to light these precautions had not been taken. In February 1767 John Wyatt
of Tatenhill in Staffordshire had taken eleven girls as apprentices as wood screw makers. In
April 1768 he took another ten girls with fees of £30. This money was paid straight away. 32
The governors probably agreed to this because they were so relieved to have found so many
places for the girls that had been apprenticed to Wyatt in the previous year. In 1774 Sarah
Drew, one of the girls apprenticed to Wyatt in 1767, revealed that Wyatt ‘Attempted to
debauch her at 11 Years of Age, and completed it afterwards and continued the same ill
usage till Christmas last and beat her if she refused to submit to his Will. That she likewise
was informed her Master had also debauched several other girls his Apprentices amongst
whom were Mary Johnson, Mary Rise and Ann Beauchamp who often talked of it.’33 The
General Committee resolved to inform John Hayne, Esq. of Burton-upon-Trent of these
allegations and said that an application should be made to magistrates in the area to get the
29
Copy Book of letter, No. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1 – 3 September 1767.
30
Apprenticeships Registers – A/FH/A/A12/003/001-002 – microfilm X41/5.
31
Shrewsbury Hospital Minutes, 3 January 1771 – A/FH/D2/1/1.
32
Apprenticeship Register.
33
Sub-Cttee, October 29. 1774 – A/FH/A.3/5/1. See also McClure, op. cit., p.134.
353
girls discharged from their apprenticeships.34 Had Wyatt’s mill been near Shrewsbury, the
governors might well have heard rumours of ill treatment and have got the girls discharged
earlier and transferred to another master.
ACKWORTH
Shrewsbury played a far more significant role in finding places for the foundlings than the
smaller branch hospitals, but it was nowhere near as important as Ackworth, which
apprenticed over four times as many children as Shrewsbury. In fact it apprenticed more
children than all the other branch hospitals and the London hospitals taken together: 2364
children were apprenticed from Ackworth compared with 2034 from the other five branch
hospitals plus the London hospital. The Ackworth governors succeeded in placing out 88.7%
of all the children that are recorded in the Ackworth registers. Between 1765 and 1770, 2162
children (1138 boys and 1034 girls) were apprenticed. In the years 1768 and 1769, 1433
children were apprenticed (1760 boys and 73 girls). It was a very impressive record.
Children Apprenticed from Ackworth35
Year
Boys
Girls
Total
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
3
12
1
3
4
11
30
80
71
165
424
336
62
7
3
___1
1213
2
8
4
3
2
1
32
64
11
51
288
385
235
25
37
___3
1151
5
20
5
6
6
12
62
144
82
216
712
721
297
32
40
___4
2364
34
Gen.Cttee, 2 Nov., 1774 – A/FH/K02/015, microfilm X041/018.
35
Ackworth Apprentice Registers – A/FH/Q/8 and A/FH/Q./9. All the following statistics are based on an
analysis of these registers.
354
Not only did the Ackworth governors have to find places for the children who had been taken
into the hospital from local nurseries and nurseries further afield, but, as we saw in Chapter
Fourteen, they also had to cope with 625 grown children sent from other branch hospitals; of
these 128 were sent from Chester and 423 from Shrewsbury. Many of these children were
old enough to be apprenticed.
In fact, large numbers of children were apprenticed from
Ackworth after having been in the hospital for only a few days or a few weeks; 637 were
apprenticed within one month of their arrival (not all from the other branch hospitals).
Children Apprenticed from Ackworth Hospital who had stayed for no more than one month.
Year
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
Stayed for up
to ten days
1
3
1
2
2
1
6
9
1
1
116
178
10
__1
332
Stayed from eleven
days to one month
1
2
8
3
68
172
51
__305
Total one month
or less
1
3
1
2
2
1
7
11
9
4
184
350
61
__1
637
It is easy now to understand why the Rev. Dr Timothy Lee had regarded teaching the children
to read as of secondary importance to the hospitals in the last few years. Many of the children
were apprenticed after such a short stay in the hospital that little progress could have been
made; in the period 1768 to 1770, just over one third (34.4%) of all the children apprenticed
had been at the hospital for one month or less (595 out of 1730).
355
The Ackworth governors could only know a very small proportion of the masters. In order to
ensure that only suitable people took apprentices the governors insisted that potential masters
provide a recommendation from their parishes. These testimonials soon followed a standard
pattern. Some were handwritten; in other cases the referee filled up blanks on a printed form.
Here is an example:
‘To the Committee of the Hospital at Ackworth, in the County of York,
for the Maintenance and Education of exposed and deserted young Children.
These are to certify that Joseph Hobson of Beighton in the Parish of Beighton
in the County of Derby has his legal Settlement in Beighton aforesaid, is of
the Protestant Religion, a House-Keeper, of good Character, and proper
Abilities to take an Apprentice and instruct him in the Business of Taylor.
As Witness our Hands the 15 Day of Dec. 1766
[Signed]
G Alderson assnt. Minister of Beighton
Ivo Marshall
)
John Rowbotham
) Churchwarden’36
The demand that the master should be of the Protestant religion seems rather bigoted, but it
should be borne in mind that the Forty Five rebellion was still a living memory. In other
respects the testimonials seem to cover the key points adequately. There was, however, no
requirement that the writers should state how well or how long they had known the applicant.
One cannot help thinking that it would have been possible for the ministers and
churchwardens to sign these forms with an easy conscience, provided they knew of no
particular reason for refusing to do so. They do not carry the same weight as those letters sent
from Wolverhampton to the Shrewsbury governors.
Most of the children (93.7%) were apprenticed between the ages of eight and thirteen as the
following figures show:
36
A/FH/D1/6/2/1.
356
Age of Children when Apprenticed from Ackworth
Age
Boys
Girls
Under 7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14 and above
46
129
362
341
201
91
24
__19
1213
39
49
156
356
288
163
56
__44
1151
It will be noticed that girls tended to be apprenticed at an older age than boys; 129 boys were
apprenticed at 8 years old, but only 49 girls; 91 boys were apprenticed aged 12 compared
with 163 girls. This was probably partly because boys were easier to place out than girls, but
the governors may well have been wary of apprenticing girls at too early an age. Many of the
children placed out at 7 years or under would have been apprenticed to the husbands of
nurses who had looked after them in the Ackworth area.
Both the governors of the General Committee in London and the Ackworth governors realized
the risks they were taking in apprenticing so many children, especially as some were placed
out a long way from Ackworth. In July 1767 the Ackworth governors ordered that a list of the
children apprenticed in the North and East Riding with their masters’ names be sent to the
governors living in those areas. 37 In September of that year Collingwood wrote to Hargreaves
on behalf of the General Committee about the need to keep up a connection with
apprentices. 38 On 1st October 1767 the Ackworth governors, though, pointed out that as many
children were apprenticed more than fifty miles from Ackworth it would not be possible to keep
in touch with all of them.39 In April 1771 the Ackworth governors decided to contact the J. P.’s
of each of the three Ridings of Yorkshire in order to enlist their help in keeping an eye on the
37
Ackworth Hospital Order Book, 2 July 1767 – A/FH/Q/8.
38
Letter to Hargreaves, 19 September 1767. Copy Book of Letters. Vol. 3 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
39
Ackworth Hospital Order Book
357
apprentices in their area. 40 This was a good idea but it is likely that large numbers of boys
and girls lost all contact with the Ackworth hospital and, in any case, some of the children
were apprenticed outside Yorkshire.
APPRENTICING THE BOYS
By the end of 1769, 1140 boys had been placed out.
Another 73 boys were found
apprenticeship in the period 1770 to 1773. In 1772 to 1773 when preparations were being
made to close the hospital at Ackworth only 28 boys had to be returned to London.
The governors had succeeded in placing out 91.4% of the boys on the Ackworth registers.
The vast majority of those boys (95.2%) were apprenticed in Yorkshire, as the following
figures show:
Destination of Boys Apprenticed from Ackworth
Yorkshire
Westmorland
County Durham
Derbyshire
Lincolnshire
Nottinghamshire
Lancashire
Cumberland
Leicestershire
Northumberland
Chester
1155
13
9
8
8
5
5
4
2
2
1
___1
1213
Norfolk
According to the apprenticeship registers, the boys were apprenticed to 217 occupations,
though in 59 cases only one boy is recorded as being apprenticed to a particular trade. Some
trades also overlapped with others.
For example, nine boys were apprenticed to peruke
makers, seven to peruke makers and barbers and four to barbers; one boy was apprenticed to
a file cutter and sixteen to file smiths.
Even when these points are taken into account,
however, the variety of jobs the boys were apprenticed to is remarkable.
40
Ibid. 1 April 1771.
358
Trades to which Boys were Apprenticed from Ackworth Hospital, 1758-1773*
Husbandry and related occupations
Metal Trades
Clothing Trades
Leather Goods
Cloth Manufacture
Household Business
Wood Trades
Sea service and rope making
Food Trades
Barbers
Building Trades
Miscellaneous
Number
Percentage of Total
572
164
112
78
77
40
32
30
30
21
20
__37
1213
47.2%
13.5%
9.2%
6.4%
6.3%
3.3%
2.6%
2.5%
2.5%
1.7%
1.6%
3.1%
* For details see Appendix I
Almost half (572 – 47.2%) of the boys were apprenticed to husbandry and related occupations.
This is in sharp contrast to the situation at Shrewsbury, where only 16 boys were apprenticed to
husbandry or gardening (only 6.5% of the Shrewsbury total).
More boys were apprenticed to the various metal trades at Ackworth (164) than at Shrewsbury
(111), although they only accounted for 13.5% at Ackworth, compared with 45.3% at
Shrewsbury.
If we exclude the 32 boys apprenticed to blacksmiths, on the grounds that
blacksmiths were found all over the country, then no less than 90.9% of all the boys apprenticed
to the metal trades were sent to South Yorkshire (120 out of 132) and no less then 109 of these
went to Sheffield or to the surrounding villages (the area known in the eighteenth century as
Hallamshire).
Sheffield played the same sort of role for the Ackworth hospital as
Wolverhampton for the Shrewsbury hospital. Of the 109 sent to the Sheffield area, 62 were
apprenticed to cutters, 20 to nailers and fifteen to file smiths and file cutters. Most of these boys
would have worked in small workshops – the era of great metal working factories in Sheffield lay
in the future.
359
Rather surprisingly the woollen industry, in spite of its great importance in Yorkshire, did not
take many Ackworth boys (though some of the boys apprenticed to husbandry may also have
been employed as weavers). Presumably most of the clothiers got the help they needed from
their own children or those of neighbours.
Another puzzling feature is that only thirty boys were apprenticed to the sea service, even
though Hull was an important port. There seems to have been little demand for boys who had
never been to sea because so many boys who had served in the Royal Navy during the Seven
Years’ War (1756-1763) were discharged after the Peace of Paris and found work in the
merchant service.
Cases of Ill-treatment of Boys
There were complaints that some of the boys were badly treated. In March 1771, the SubCommittee in London read a letter signed ‘a Friend of the Fatherless, and an Inhabitant of
Sheffield, in regard to the Ill-Treatment of some children of this Corporation placed out
Apprentices by the Committee at Ackworth.’41
In January 1773 the Ackworth governors
considered a letter from Samuel Harper, Esq. of Leeds asking that the Secretary should go to
Leeds to inspect the treatment of some of the Children apprenticed in that parish (not all
necessarily boys) and that he should bring with him a list of the names of those who had
recommended masters. Harper’s request must have been prompted by concern at the way
some of the apprentices at Leeds were being treated. The governors told Hargreaves to take
the list of names to Harper.42
41
Sub-Cttee, Saturday, 2 March 1771 – A/FH/A03/005/009.
42
Ackworth Order Book, 4 January 1773 – A/FH/Q/8.
360
There are two cases where apprentices were murdered. In May 1767 the governors decided
to prosecute Robert Cade for murdering one of his apprentices.43 Cade had taken a boy and
a girl as apprentices in December 1766 and we do not know which child had been killed. In
1771 John Smith, a Sheffield Park file smith, was committed to York Castle to stand trial for
murdering his apprentice, Alexander Nixen.44 The Ackworth governors had apparently long
had doubts about sending children to Sheffield. As early as July 1759 Dr Lee had written to
the
Sub-Committee
manufacturers. 45
about
whether
children
should
be
apprenticed
to
Sheffield
In June 1768 they had decided that none of the cutlers in Hallamshire
should have an apprentice without a certificate signed by the Master Cutler as well as the
ministers and churchwardens of his parish.46
Obviously we cannot judge the treatment of boys apprenticed from Ackworth from these two
horrifying cases of murder. Only a few cases of ill-treatment of boys were reported to the
Ackworth governors, though there may well have been other cases that the governors did not
learn about, either because no one knew what was going on or because those that knew
chose to keep quiet. We do not now how the vast majority of boys fared.
43
Ibid., 11 May 1767.
44
Sub-Cttee, Saturday, March 2 1771 – A/FH/A03/005/009.
45
Ibid., Saturday July 28, 1789 – A/FH/A03/005/003
46
Ackworth Order Book, 6 June 1768 – A/FH/Q/8.
361
APPRENTICING THE GIRLS
By the end of 1766 the Ackworth governors had placed out 215 boys but only 127 girls. When
apprentices’ fees were introduced in 1767, therefore, they decided to give more with girls than
with boys:
Boys over the age of nine £3.
Boys under the age of nine £4.
Girls over the age of ten £4.
Girls under the age of ten £6.47
This policy paid off. In the period 1767 to 1773 1024 girls were apprenticed compared with
998 boys. The governors, therefore, succeeded in placing out almost as many girls as boys in
the entire period (1151 compared with 1213): 86.1% of the girls were apprenticed and 91.4%
of the boys. In 1773, the year in which the Ackworth hospital closed, only 56 girls had to be
sent back to London. [In that same year 19 boys were also returned].
Most of the girls, like most of the boys, were apprenticed in Yorkshire, though a rather higher
proportion of the girls were apprenticed outside the county (14.9% of the girls compared with
4.8% of the boys).
Destination of Girls Apprenticed from Ackworth
Yorkshire
Lancashire
Derbyshire
Westmoreland
Cheshire
County Durham
Lincolnshire
Nottinghamshire
Leicestershire
Essex
Northamptonshire
980
105
28
18
10
3
2
2
1
1
1
____
1151
According to the Ackworth Apprenticeships Registers the girls were apprenticed to 25 trades:
47
Ackworth Order Book, 6 August 1767 – A/FH/Q/8.
362
As one would expect, the vast majority of girls from Ackworth (992 - 86.2%) were apprenticed
to household business. The only other occupations that counted for ten or more girls were
woollen manufacture (98 girls), mantua makers (22) and silk throwsters (10).
The second volume of the Ackworth Apprentice Register, covering the period 1769 to 1773,
lists the occupations of the masters (this information was not recorded in the first volume). In
this period 633 girls were apprenticed to household business to 114 masters. The occupation
of the master is recorded in 622 cases. Most girls were apprenticed to craftsmen.
The
following list records the occupation of masters where four or more girls were apprenticed.
This covers 81.5% (507 out of 622) of the girls.
Occupation of Masters where four or More Girls were Apprenticed from Ackworth,
1769-177348
Occupation
Number of Girls Apprenticed
Farmer
Clothier
Linen weaver
Cordwainer
Innkeeper
Silk weaver
Blacksmith
Baker
Gentleman
Carpenter/Joiner
Taylor
Fustian cutter
Gardener
Worsted weaver
Butcher
Hatter
Schoolmaster
Clergyman
Mason
Breeches maker
Miller
Shalloon maker
48
Ackworth Apprentice Register, 1769-1773. A/FH/Q/069.
220
66
35
20
17
23
12
11
11
10
10
9
9
8
7
7
7
6
6
5
4
4
363
Cases of Ill-treatment of Girls
As with the boys apprenticed from Ackworth we cannot tell how well or how badly most of the
girls were treated. We do, however, know of three cases where masters were taken to court
for ill-treating girls apprenticed to them.
In July 1767, Hargreaves received a letter
complaining of the ill-treatment of Jane Humber, who had been apprenticed to Joseph Still of
Keighley, a ribbon weaver, in January 1767. 49 In October 1767 he was ordered to go to
Keighley to gather evidence so that Still could be prosecuted at Knaresborough Sessions. 50
In July 1769 the Ackworth governors ordered that Robert Simm be prosecuted for the illtreatment of his apprentice girl. 51 In April 1771 the governors ordered that the assistance of
the Hospital be given in the prosecution of Pope at Pontefract Session for the ill treatment of
his apprentice. 52
In the following month the governors learned that Elizabeth Owen had been treated with
shocking brutality by her master Joshua Cox of Royston near Barnsley and by John Walker
and his wife to whom Fox had turned her over. John and Hannah Walker had made her work
from 6 a.m. to 7 and 8 p.m. and frequently to 3 a.m. the next day. Sometimes Walker and his
wife stripped off her clothes and made her work naked for most of the night. She often had
only two meals a day and became so exhausted that she could scarcely crawl. She was not
even allowed to relieve herself and on one occasion when she could hold on no longer and
dirtied the room she was forced to wash herself in the river even though there was ice on the
water. Hannah Williams had frequently beaten her so badly that she could not sit down or lie
upon her back. The Ackworth governors ordered that Fox, Walker and his wife should be
prosecuted. They thanked Mr Tooker, a lawyer based in London, for the help he had given in
the prosecution in this case and in other cases where Ackworth apprentices had been ill
49
Ackworth Hospital Order Book, 2 July 1767.
50
Ibid., 1 Oct. 1767.
51
Ibid., 3 July 1769.
52
Ibid., 1 April 1771, Pope seems to be the defendant referred to.
364
treated (not necessarily only girls) but did not say how many such cases of ill-treatment there
had been.. 53
In April 1771, the Revd. Dr Griffith, Fellow of Manchester College, reported to Ackworth that
one girl, Jemima Dixon, had been so harshly treated by her master William Butterworth of
Manchester that she had died on the 10th of that month. She was twelve years old. At the
inquest two days later the coroner’s jury found that he had refused to give the girl enough food
and had beaten her on the head, breast, shoulders, arms, back, belly, thighs, legs and feet.
The jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder. He had also ill-treated three other girls from
Ackworth but they survived. They had been too frightened of Butterworth to tell anyone. The
Ackworth governors, after consulting the General Committee, agreed to back the town of
Manchester in a prosecution at Lancaster Assizes. Butterworth was found guilty of murder but
reprieved by the trial judge.
In a letter to Hargreaves of September 5th, 1771 Collingwood wrote to Hargreaves to find out
what evidence had been given at the trial. Three weeks later the General Committee agreed
to petition the Earl of Rochford, one of the Secretaries of State, urging him not to pardon
Butterworth. They pointed out the other three apprentices had also been cruelly treated by
him and his wife an added:
‘That many of the Children Apprenticed out by the Charity with the Fees given
by Parliament have been most cruelly used by the Masters & Mistresses
Notwithstanding the utmost care of the Governors to Prevent there being
placed out to Poor Persons who take them only for the sake of a Little
Money.*
That nothing but proper Examples can prevent the like Crime for the future
And that although the Governors have Engaged in many prosecutions they
have not always had their Proper Effect.’
53
Ibid., 6 May 1771 and letters to London of 28 April 1771 – A/FH/Q/12.
*
The London governors had been so shocked at the cruel treatment of Elizabeth Owen, Jemima
Dixon and some others that as early as 31 May 1771 they decided to urge the Ackworth
Committee not to give any more apprentices fees.
365
[The governors did not say how many cases of ill-usage they had discovered and the statement
must be taken as referring to all cases of ill-treatment and not solely to girls apprenticed from
Ackworth].
Their petition had no effect. In October the General Committee learned that their petition had
arrived too late and Butterworth had already been pardoned.54
Mass Apprenticeship of Girls
Most of the masters took only one girl as an apprentice. Some took three or more. Only three
masters took more than five girls.
On September 4th 1769 Thomas Tatlock of Stockport apprenticed ten Ackworth girls as silk
throwsters (i.e. spinners).
Stockport was then one of the main centres for silk spinning,
probably employing about 2,000 people.55 On 2nd October the Ackworth governors decided not
to send any more girls to Tatlock, as it ‘was disagreeable to the Gentlemen of Stockport,’
presumably because they feared the girls might become a burden to the parish if Tatlock’s firm
went bankrupt.56 There is no evidence that the girls were ill-treated.
Sir James Lowther took eighteen girls to work in his woollen manufactory at Lowther in
Westmorland in November 1772.
[He had already taken 13 boys in December 1765 for
husbandry, the sea service and as banksmen.] Lowther had been appointed a governor of
the Foundling Hospital in 1762 and he was also a member of the Ackworth Committee, though
54
We know a great deal about the case. See Hargreaves’ letter to Dr Griffith of 7 May 1771, Dr Lees letter to
Taylor White of 28 April, 1771 and Hargreaves’ letter to Collingwood of 11 September 1771, which contains
a full account of the case against Butterworth – A/FH/Q/12.
See also the Ackworth minutes for 6 May 1777- A/FH/Q/8, the General Committee minutes of 31 May 1771,
18 September and 25 September 1771 – A/FH/K02/013, microfilm X041/017 – plus a letter to Collingwood
of 5 September 1771 – A/FH/A/6/2/2.
55
A. P. Wadsworth and Julia Mann, The Cotton Trade of Industrial Lancashire, 1600-1780 (Manchester
University Press, 1931). p.305.
56
Ackworth Hospital Order book – A/FH/Q.8. The firm in which Tatlock was a partner did in fact go bankrupt in
1773, but spinning still carried on in their mills, so the girls may not have been thrown on the parish. George
Unwin, Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights (Manchester University Press, 1924), p.27.
366
he never attended any meetings. In spite of these links, Lowther proved a very trying man to
deal with, failing to take all the children he had asked for, collecting others only after
interminable delays and not filling up the indentures properly.57 As far as we know, the boys
were not ill-treated, but in January 1773 the General Committee ‘Complaints having been
made in regard to the condition of the Children that were lately Apprenticed by the Ackworth
Committee to Sir James Lowther’, ordered the Secretary to write to Dr. Lee to find out what
conditions they were in when apprenticed and ‘whether they had any Natural Infirmity or
Defects.’58 Dr Lee replied to Collingwood on 25 January that the children were ‘in perfect
Health when they were sent from Ackworth,’ though two girls had lost an eye and one girl had
tender eyes. He pointed out that if Lowther had taken the girls earlier they might have suited
him better, but he had delayed so long that some of the girls earmarked for him had to be
apprenticed to other masters and other girls substituted. He added that ‘Chusing Apprentices
for other Persons is the very worst Employment.’59
The third case of the mass apprenticeships of girls from Ackworth was much more important
since it involved far more girls. Martin Brown of Holbeck, near Leeds, took seventy-four girls
to work in his woollen manufactory there, the first twenty in February 1764, four more in
August of that year, eight in June 1765 and forty-two in July 1765.
Brown planned to
manufacture a type of cloth that had not yet been produced in England.
The Ackworth
governors may have had doubts about the venture, but in May 1765 Taylor White encouraged
them to take a chance, arguing that ‘his design of instructing them in the art of making Cloth
57
See letters from London to Dr. Lee of 23 April 1765 and December 18, 1765, to Sir Rowland Winn of 27
April 1765, to Richard Hargreaves of 21 August 1766 and to Sir James Lowther of 15 September 1773
(A/FH/A/A/6/2/1 and A/FH/6/2/2;
Gen. Cttee, April 22, 1765, 30 April 1766, 21 May 1766, 27 May 1767 (A/FH/K02/008 and A/FH/K02/009 –
microfilms X041/015 and X041/016);
Sub-Cttee 4 July 1769 – A/FH/A03/005/008; Ackworth Order Book 5 February 1767, 5 October 1772 and 2
November 1772 – A/FH/Q/8.
58
Gen. Cttee, 20 January 1773 – A/FH/K02/014 – microfilm X04/012.
59
A/F/Q/12. The whole letter is worth reading.
367
like the French Cloth, which is fit for the East India Service, and Turkey Trade, will be of
infinite national benefit, if He succeeds; and therefore we ought to give him our utmost
assistance, as it may dispose of a great Number of Girls, in a manner to get them a
comfortable maintenance and introduce a most beneficial Branch of the woollen trade, which
is now totally in the hands of the French, it will also consume, [wool] not very good for other
purposes.’ He even suggested that the Ackworth governors might consider sending girls as
young as seven, giving Brown ‘the price of nursery and clothing’ for the first year. 60 It goes
against the grain to criticize a man who devoted so much of his life to the service of the
Foundling Hospital, but it was surely unwise to apprentice so many girls to an untried venture.
The experiment, in fact, proved a disastrous failure, though no one could have anticipated the
shocking outcome.
On April 6 1768 the General Committee noted:
‘Mr Hanway having reported that Mr Martin Brown of Holbeck had acquainted
him by the letter of the 23rd Feb: last that his situation was such, that he was a
loser of £3 a week by reason of the Expence of the Children he took of this
Hospital and that his Business had so after declined that he could not employ
the Children in the manner in which he first intended; and by his letter of the
30th March that 22 of the 74, had died in one year; and desiring to part with the
following Children.’ [20 names follow.]
The General Committee urged the Ackworth Committee to send someone to Holbeck and
‘examine the state of the 51 children in order to relieve Mr Brown, and preserve the children,
who seem to be in a perilous Condition, in the most effectual manner, and if thought proper to
dispose of the above 20 girls, by placing them out again in the best manner they can.’61
Three weeks later the General Committee decided that all the children at Holbeck should be
taken in by the hospital at Ackworth.62 The Ackworth governors were now faced with the task of
60
Letter to sir Rowland Winn, 2 May 1765 – A/FH/A/6/2/1.
61
Gen. Ctte, April 6, 1768 – A/FH/K02/011 – microfilm X041/016.
62
Ibid., April 27 1768.
368
placing out 50 girls* to new masters. The matter was urgent, since they were unable to use
parliamentary funds for maintaining them.
They could hardly expect the parish offices at
Holbeck to maintain them out of the poor rates.
It took a long time to find new masters, as the following figures of the numbers of Brown’s girls
at Ackworth show:
31 July 1768
31 October 1768
11 September 1769
31 October 1769
30 April 1771
50
34
19
13
3
By this Ackworth had found places for 44 of the girls; three had died.63 The tragic loss of life at
Holbeck could surely have been avoided if one of the Ackworth governors had visited Brown’s
manufactory earlier.
The governors presumably just assumed that the girls were being looked
after properly. 64
*
Brown was allowed to keep back one girl.
63
Ackworth Monthly Statistics – A/FH/Q/65, except for 11 September 1769 – letter from Dr. Lee
to Taylor White – A/FH/Q/11
64
There are many references to Brown in the records:
Ackworth Hospital order Book 7 February 1765, 7 March 1765, 4 April 1765, 19 April 1765, 2 May 1765, 3
October 1765, 1 October 1767, 5 May 1768, 20 May 1768, 6 June 1768, 1 August 1768 – AF/Q/8;
Gen. Cttee, 27 March 1764, 26 September 1764, 19 June 1765, 25 June 1765, 4 December 1765, 6 April
1768, 27 April 1768, 11 May 1768, 29 June 1768 – A/FH/KO2/009 and A/FH/K02/010 – microfilm
X041/016;
Sub-Cttee 27 April 1765, 15 June 1765, 22 June 1765, 17 October 1767 – A/FH/A03/005/006 and
A/FH/A03/05/007;
Letters to Ackworth 31 March 1764, 14 April 1764, 27 April 1765, 2 May 1765, 7 June 1765, 14
December 1765, 22 October 1767, 7 April 1768, 28 April 1768, 5 May 1768, 7 May 1768, 12 May 1768, 4
August 1768, 13 August 1768, 22 September 1768, 5 October 1768 – A/FH/A/6/2/1 and A/FH/A/6/2/2;
Letters to Brown 26 June 1765, 12 September 1765, 26 September 1765, 12 October 1765, 4 December
1765 – A/FH/A/6/2/1;
Letters from Ackworth to London 19 April 1765, are undated (end June 1765?), 6 July 1765, 9 September
1765, 8 October 1767 – A/FH/Q/10.
369
THE CASE FOR APPRENTICESHIP
We started the chapter by pointing out that apprenticeships could not guarantee the children
security. When we also consider the brutal treatment meted out to some of the children from
Ackworth and Shrewsbury we may even question whether it was wise to apprentice children in
the first place. We have already argued, though (in Chapter Seven) that here was no feasible
alternative. There were probably many cases where the children were treated as mere drudges
and received little worthwhile training.
Unless we have a very low view of human nature,
however, we can surely assume that cases of gross cruelty were rare. We can only hope that
the majority of the children were not overworked and learned some skills, which would give
them a reasonable start in life.
370
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
THE GENERAL RECEPTION: SUCCESS OR FAILURE?
INTRODUCTION
The General Reception aroused fierce controversy at the time and many books and
pamphlets were published attacking the policy of indiscriminate admission, especially in the
period 1759 to 1761.1 As we shall see, even Jonas Hanway, though one of the most active
governors, had reservations about indiscriminate admission and in some of his books his
defence of the charity was half-hearted.2
1
See, for example,
Joseph Massie, Farther Observations concerning the Foundling Hospital: Pointing out the ill Effects which
such a Hospital is likely to have upon the Religion, Liberty and domestic Happiness of the People of Great
Britain …. To which are prefixed, Former Observations concerning the said Hospital (London, 1759).
Anon., The Tendencies of the Foundling Hospital in its Present Extent considered in several Views. In
several letters of a Senator (London. 1760).
Anon., The Rise and Progress of the Foundling Hospital Considered: And the Reasons for putting a Stop
to the General Reception of All Children (London, 1761).
[David Stanfield], A Rejoinder to Mr Hanway’s Reply to C—A—‘s, Candid Remarks, comparing the New
Plan of a Foundling.
Other attacks on the charity included:
Anon., Joyful News to Bachelors and Maids, Being a Song, in Praise of the Foundling Hospital and the
London Hospital, Aldersgate Street. (London, 1760).
Anon., Some Objection to the Foundling Hospital, Considered by a Person in the Country to whom they
were sent (London, 1761).
Anon., Consideration on the Fatal Effects to a Trading Nation of the present Excess of Public Charities. In
which the Magdalene, Asylum, Foundling Hospitals for Sick and Lame, Lying in Hospitals, Charity
Schools, and the Dissenting Fund, are particularly considered. (London, 1763).
2
Hanway seems to have had as great a passion for writing as for philanthropy. Amongst his writings solely
or partly concerned with the Foundling Hospital are the following:
An Account of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children
(1959)
A Candid Historical Account of the Hospital for the Reception of Exposed and Deserted Young Children
(1760)
The Genuine Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman upon the Present Plan of the Foundling
Hospital (1760)
A Reply to C- A- , Author of the Candid Remarks on Mr Hanway’s Historical Account of the Foundling
Hospital (1760)
An Earnest Appeal for Mercy to the Children of the Poor (1766)
Letters on the Importance of the Rising Generation of the Labouring Part of Our Fellow-Subjects, 2 vols,
(1767)
371
THE COST OF THE GENERAL RECEPTION TO THE TAXPAYER
Some writers were alarmed at the cost to the taxpayer of funding the charity. Massie, for
example, argued that ‘if the Foundling Hospital should continue to be counternanced and
supported in that public and unlimited Manner which it hath been of late Years, I am humbly of
Opinion, that the charge thereof to the Public would not be so little by the end of the Century
as One million Pounds of Sterling per Annum.’3 Massie wrote in 1759 at a time when the
government grant was increasing sharply.
His fears do seem exaggerated, though there is
no way of knowing how much the Foundling Hospital would have cost the taxpayer if the
General Reception had not been brought to an end. In all the Government handed over about
£550,000 to pay for the maintenance of the 14,934 ‘parliamentary’ children taken in during the
General Reception. Each ‘parliamentary’ child therefore cost on average about £36.16.0d.
and only 4,511 lived to be apprenticed, to be claimed by parents or to be discharged on
reaching the age of 21.
The Parliamentary Grant to the Foundling Hospital, 1756 to 1771*
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
£10,000
£30,000
£30,000
£50,000
£40,000
£52,285
£55,950
£40,050
£30,000
£45,180
£33,893
£20,000
£40,500
£28,789
£13,150
£30,000
£549,7974
*To the nearest pound. These are the sums actually received each year. In some years only part of the sum
granted was handed over on time; the balance was handed over in the succeeding year and is included in that
year’s accounts. The grants continued after the General Reception ended because the House of Commons
accepted that they ought to pay for the maintenance of the ‘parliamentary’ children until they left the care of the
Hospital.
3
Farther Observation …., p.2.
4
Accounts Audited (1741-1787) – A/FH/A/4/1/2.
372
For comparison Jonas Hanway estimated that the total annual cost of the poor rates for
England and Wales at £1,300,000. [He believed that one-tenth of this was raised in London.]
Other estimates give rather higher or lower figures. If we accept Hanway’s figures as roughly
right, then in 1762, the year in which the largest sum was handed over to the Foundling
Hospital, the grant was equal to only 4.3% of the rates. If we then take the entire period of the
Parliamentary grant (i.e. 1756 to 1771) then it would have been equivalent to about 2.6% of
the sums that had been raised from poor rates. This is only a small proportion but it was an
additional burden since there is no evidence that poor rates diminished in London or
elsewhere during the General Reception, even though parishes who had sent infants to the
Foundling Hospital no longer had to find the money to maintain them.
ALARM AT THE HIGH DEATH RATE DURING THE GENERAL RECEPTION
Had critics been convinced that the Foundling Hospital was coping well with the increase in
numbers during the General Reception and was saving thousands of lives, they might have
been less worried about the cost of maintaining the ‘parliamentary’ children.
There was,
however, a common belief that the death rate amongst the foundlings was rising alarmingly.
Some later writers have also accepted this idea of a dramatic increase in the death rate. John
Brownlow declared that ‘instead of being a protection for the living, the institution became, as
it were, a charnel house for the dead!’5 More recently, Mrs McClure has argued that in the last
two years of the General Reception the death rate rocketed.6
Some historical controversies go on for years without much progress being made, but in this
case we have enough evidence to come to firm conclusions. As we saw in Chapter Six there
was a marked increase in the number of foundlings that died before they could be sent to
country nurses, but the overall death rate did not increase by anything like the same amount.
5
John Brownlow, Memoranda; or, Chronicles of the Foundling Hospital (London, Sampson Low, 1847). A
second edition was published in 1858 under the heading History and design of the Foundling Hospital. A
final edition, revised by W. S. Whittle, appeared in 1881 as History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital .
6
McClure, op. cit. p.p. 102 & Appendix III, p. 261.
373
The death rate was higher during the General Reception than during the previous period, but
not as high as we should expect, given the scale of the task facing the charity. There is also
no evidence of a dramatic rise in the death rate for those taken in during the last two years of
the General Reception compared with the first two years.
The Fate of Children taken in by the Foundling Hospital, 1741 – 17607
Number
Accepted
A. Before the
General Reception
1741 – 1750
a.
1751 – 1760
b.
Number that Died in
the care of the
Hospital
Percentage
681
703
1384
462
418
880
67.8
59.5
63.6
1,783
3,727
4,143
3,957
1,324
14,934
1.315
2.504
2.789
2.834
971
10,413
73.8
67.2
67.3
72.2
73.3
69.7
B. General Reception
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
a.
From 25 March,
c.
d.
b.
to 1 June,
c.
from 2 June,
d.
to 25 March
The proportion of children taken in before the General Reception that died while in the care of
the Hospital was 63.9%; for the General Reception it was 69.7%, an increase certainly, but
not a catastrophic one.
It is true, though, that in the early 1750’s it fell to 59.6%.
The
proportion during the General Reception was not much worse, however, than in the 1740’s.
There is one other point to be made here. Even in the very best years before the General
Reception (1751 and 1755) 56.8% of the intake died while in the care of the charity.
Contemporaries were wrong in thinking that there had been a catastrophic increase in the
death rate during the General Reception, but this does not, of course, mean that the
Foundling Hospital was, therefore, saving thousands of lives.
7
General Registers – A/FH/A9/1-4.
In order to assess how
374
successful the charity was, we have to try to find out what the chances of these children
surviving to adulthood would have been if they had not been sent to the Foundling Hospital.
This is a topic we shall consider later.
BELIEF THAT THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL WAS DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD
Many critics argued that the Foundling Hospital was doing more harm than good. They did
not dispute that the charity had been set up for the best of motives. The anonymous writer of
The Tendencies in 1760, for example, declared he could not but admire ‘the Greatness, as
well as the Goodness of the Design’, but he added that ‘the Design is one thing the Plan of it
another’.8 Many of these criticisms were repeated by later writers.9 Hanway believed there
was a strong case for keeping the Foundling Hospital, but argued that in future it should
concentrate on saving the lives of London children who would otherwise be at the mercy of
the Poor Law.
Hanway was himself criticized on the grounds that he was defending the
indefensible.10
THE POLICY OF INDISCRIMINATE ADMISSION
By far the most telling argument used against the Foundling Hospital was and is that the
charity accepted all infants below the specified age without any enquiry as to why they were
being handed over. This policy had been adopted from the very beginning, except that before
the General Reception the governors could reject children on the grounds that they were
suffering from an infectious disease and each intake was limited because of shortage of
funds. Once the General Reception commenced, however, the governors could no longer
8
The Tendencies, op. cit., p. 6.
9
See, for example, Thomas Bernard (the Treasurer of the Foundling Hospital towards the end of the
eighteenth century) An Account of the Foundling Hospital (First edition, 1795 – A/FH/A1/005/003. The
second edition is in the library of the London Metropolitan Archives.
10
Anon., Candid Remarks on Mr Hanway’s Candid Historical Account of the Foundling Hospital, and A more
nd
useful Plan humbly Recommended, in a letter to a Member of Parliament, (2 Ed., London, 1760).
[David Stanfield], A Rejoinder to Mr Hanway’s Reply to C- A-‘s Candid Remarks comparing The New Plan
of a Foundling Hospital, which is now offer’d by Mr. H., with the old one of our present Poor Laws; and
pointing out a few of the many advantages, which would result to the community; from the abolition of
both, and establishing in lieu of ‘em, National, or County Workhouses (London, 1770).
375
reject children – they had to accept all the children brought to the hospital in Lamb’s Conduit
Fields under the specified age. Before the General Reception the Foundling Hospital only had
enough money to take in small numbers of children, so that the policy of accepting children
without any questions being asked can have had little importance.
The policy had been adopted originally because it was feared that otherwise mothers might be
driven by shame to murder their babies. It would be recalled, though, that Hanway believed
that infanticide was a rare crime. An anonymous pamphleteer in 1761 agreed. He claimed
that an experienced Justice of the Peace ‘on accounts being published of children found
murdered and thrown on dung hills, he has often made strict enquiry … and that he only once
saw two children exposed in that manner, and they, upon examination, had marks that plainly
showed they had been used for anatomical purposes; all the other reports he enquired into
appeared to have been stories invented to serve particular purposes and to have no
foundation.’11
Clearly Thomas Coram must have believed that infanticide was a serious problem in London
at least, but he never said how many such cases he had seen. Coram began his campaign at
the height of the gin age and it may be that there were more cases of infanticide then than
later. The writer of The Tendencies did not think that infanticide was as rare as the author of
the Rise and Progress did, though he said that there had been no evidence of a decline in the
crime during the General Reception.12 In Chapter Two it was pointed out that few cases of
infanticide came before the Surrey Assizes or on the Northern Circuit in the eighteenth century
and there is no reason for imagining that there would be more cases in other areas.
11
Rise and Progress ….. p.17.
12
Rise and Progress …. p.17.
376
INCREASE IN FORNICATION AND BASTARDY?
Several critics argued that indiscriminate admission was bound to increase the number of
illegitimate births. The pamphleteer and statistician Joseph Massie wrote that ‘as People may
now enjoy natural Pleasures without bearing those consequential Charges, which they ought
to pay, and with an Exemption from Punishment and shame, the Consequence will be, one
Sort of Increase.’13
The writer of The Tendencies declared that the Foundling Hospital not only freed ‘Fornicating
Criminals’ from all punishment, but provided a ‘Bounty to their Bastard Infant produced to that
Hospital’ and ‘to every such Bastard Infant as they shall produce afterwards’. The General
Reception promoted the ‘Sin of Concubinage, and a General Inordinate Carnality of Manners’.
In time, if the policy was not changed ‘All the Whores and Whoremongers in the Kingdom’
would acquire ‘ ‘not only a Natural Incouragement but also a kind of Natural Sanction’. He
even agreed that the only way ‘to check …….that immense, swelling Torrent of licentious
Carnality’ was to revive the punishment for fornication, though it should not be so severe as to
tempt the mother to commit suicide.14
Later writers also believed that the General Reception must have led to a rise in the number of
illegitimate births. In the late nineteenth century for example, Sir George Nicholls argued that
‘the shame and burden consequent upon a departure from female virtue, are probably its most
potent safeguards, and if these be removed, by enabling the mother to obtain with secrecy as
regards herself, a maintenance for her child… an increase in bastardy…must be expected to
follow. Such, where foundling hospitals have been established, whether in France, in Italy, in
13
Farther Observations concerning the Foundling Hospital … , p.1.
14
Tendencies, op. cit., p.12, 13, 18 and 20.
377
England or Ireland have been found to be the result, and they may therefore be held, in no
slight degree, to create the evil which they are intended to mitigate.’15
It is hard to believe, though, that the fact that illegitimate infants could be sent to the Foundling
Hospital when the policy of indiscriminate admission was adopted would have led to an
increase in fornication.
We have already suggested that it was not so much shame, as
poverty that led mothers of illegitimate children to surrender their children.
We do not know whether there was any increase in the number of illegitimate births in London
during the General Reception. There is some evidence for an increase in the provinces, but
this set in long before the General Reception began and continued long after it ended.16 The
Foundling Hospital cannot therefore be blamed for this.
ENCOURAGEMENT OF DESERTION OF CHILDREN?
Some contemporaries argued that, by making it too easy to abandon a child, the Hospital
provided poor parents of legitimate as well as illegitimate children with a way of avoiding their
responsibilities to their children: ‘can it be expected that these Paupers will struggle with
Constant Difficulties, under the severest Labor, (and which Multitudes do to present struggle
with contentedly, even to the end of life,) when they have such a Commodious Access to
Ease and Relief?’17 Jonas Hanway declared that ‘A general knowledge of public grants for
secretly receiving children, will probably make many children foundlings, to one who is really
such… very good people will hardly ever part with their children; and it may be happy for the
children of very bad parents, that they do abandon them; but it would be absurd to argue on
15
Sir George Nicholls, A History of the English Poor Law London, P. S. King & Son, 1898 ed., pp. 27-28.
16
Peter Laslett Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge, 1980,) Chapter 3 Long-term
Trends in Bastardy, pp. 103-160.
17
Candid Remarks on Mr Hanway’s Candid Historical Account of the Foundling Hospital … (London 1760,
p. 12. Quoted in McClure, op. cit., p.108.
This pamphlet has been attributed to David Stansfield.
378
this principle, without considering, that there is a great part of mankind who will do their duty,
when no temptation is thrown in their way to prevent it… I apprehend too many, even in sober
wedlock, will in process of time take advantage of the indulgences of the public….’18
Hanway believed the fathers should accept their responsibilities. Even poor men could bring
up large families: ‘There are … instances innumerable of laborers and husbandmen … who
maintain themselves a wife, and six children, for six, seven or eight shillings a week.’19
Massie feared that the fact that public money was now financing the charity might be seen as
implying that Parliament condoned the practice of abandoning children.20
In time even
parents of legitimate children might feel no shame in doing so.
THE EFFECTS OF THE GENERAL RECEPTION ON THE NATION’S PROSPERITY, ON
THE PARENTS AND ON THE FOUNDLINGS THEMSELVES
Hanway believed that the country would be less prosperous if it became too easy to hand over
children to the Foundling Hospital: ‘It has generally been observed that the sober married
man, who has a family, works two, three or four hours in the day more than him that has none,
and generally in a more spirited and masterly manner. The same will also do more work when
provisions are dear than when they are cheap … the reason is plain, it is the consequence of
the love he bears to his wife and children, and the sense he has of his duty.’21 One of
Hanway’s critics agreed: ‘Will Poor People work when they have their Wants relieved without
it? Wil industry thrive, when the Principal Motive (namely their Children) which lead to it, are
18
A Candid Historical Account - , p.59 and pp. 45-46.
See also Hanway’s The Genuine Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman p. 54.
19
Candid Historical Account. P. 67.
20
Farther Observation … p.2.
21
Candid Account …. p. 22.
379
taken away? Wil Commerce and Manufactures flourish when, for want of their spurs to Labor,
non will Labor in the lowest Offices but on their own Terms?’22
Massie believed that if parents abandoned their children, there would be no one to look after
them in their old age and they would therefore become a burden on the Poor Law. He was
also concerned that the children might suffer when they left the care of the Foundling Hospital,
since they would have no relatives to turn to for help in time of trouble or to encourage them to
behave well. The knowledge that they had been abandoned by their parents, might embitter
them against society and become a very great ‘Encouragement to Dissoluteness.’23 [This was
probably one reason why the governors wanted the branch hospitals to be called orphan
hospitals.]
Parents who had abandoned their children might certainly pay the penalty in old age, but it
seems less likely that the children would turn against society, provided they had been looked
after well by their nurses and as ‘grown children’. All the children in the hospitals would have
been in the same position, so that they would not have felt like outsiders. Once apprenticed,
they would surely have begun to blend into the community. When their apprenticeship ended,
most of them no doubt married, so that their situation would not differ from that of the rest of
the labouring poor.
It was claimed that the boys would be ill-prepared for the world of work. ‘Who shall be most fit
for the servile part of husbandry, he that from childhood has been constantly accustomed to
the sight and use of the spade, the harrow, the plough, and other instruments of that sort, who
has been bred up to the feeding and management of horses, cows and sheep, or he who has
22
Candid Remarks on Mr Hanway’s Candid Account …… (London, 1760), p.25
23
Massie, op., cit., p.2.
380
been educated at a distance from all these objects?’24 But as we have seen the Foundling
Hospital had no difficulty in placing out boys as apprentices, several hundred of them to
husbandry. Many boys were apprenticed even before fees were introduced, which suggests
that they were valued for their own sake. There was also little difficulty in finding places for
the girls; as we have seen the vast majority were apprenticed to household business, and, as
in the case of the boys, those apprenticed before 1767 were found places without fees being
given.
FOUNDLINGS FROM THE PROVINCES
The thing that roused the most bitter opposition was the fact that large numbers of foundlings
now came from the country. It was surely a consequence of the policy of indiscriminate
admission that few can have foreseen. There does not seem to have been any great unease
about the number of foundlings in the provinces before the General Reception, yet thousands
of children were now sent to London.
For the first fifteen months of the General Reception the receiving clerks at the Foundling
Hospital recorded the place of origin of each child.
24
Rise and Progress, pp 39-41.
381
Areas Foundlings Came From, 2 June 1756 to 31 August 1757
London
Inner Home Counties
Outer Home Counties
Southern England
West Country
Midlands
East Anglia
The North
Welsh Border
Wales & Monmouthshire
Information Lacking
Grand Total All Foundlings
2506 [2555]
578 [529]
229
120
105
397
121
23
53
13
4145
75
4220*
*For sources and definitions see Chapter Eight. The first figure for London is for the Bills of Mortality area. The
figure in brackets adds to the total of those from Marylebone and St. Pancras. The figures in brackets for the Inner
Home Counties includes Marylebone and St. Pancras. The first figure excludes them.
Jonas Hanway was strongly opposed to this policy. In 1760, writing in the guise of a country
gentleman, he wrote: ‘I am sorry to tell you, I have observed of late, that all the children not
born in wedlock, in my country, as far as I can discover, be the parents ever so able to
maintain them, are hurried away to your hospital.’25
Jonas Hanway also argued that the ease of disposing of illegitimate children born in the
country even undermined marriage. He pointed out that ‘in the country it is common practice
(not universal) to come together, and if they prove it, as they term it [i.e. if the girl becomes
pregnant], then they marry. This is a law of honor, like a gamester’s debt; and it is happy
when the pledge of their love is cherished by themselves, without any temptation to part with
it; and more happy still, when these accidents happen, that the parties are not diverted from
marriage, by any other means of providing for the child …’26 We may think of such marriages
as ‘shot-gun’ weddings, but to eighteenth century villagers it may have been merely a matter
25
Genuine Sentiments ….. p. 2.
26
Candid Account, pp. 43-44.
382
of following accepted conventions. Hanway argued, in any case, that people should accept
the consequences of their actions.
Hanway was not convinced that, even where the parents of illegitimate children did not marry,
the burden on parish poor rates would be heavy. Before the General Reception it had been
normal to force a man to pay for the maintenance of any illegitimate child he had fathered
under penalty of imprisonment if he refused to do his duty. This was entirely justified since ‘it
is ten to one that the man made the first advance.’ [Fathers of illegitimate children in the
metropolis could also be made to pay for the upkeep of illegitimate children, but, as we have
seen, it must often have been hard to track them down.]
The Foundling Hospital, though, clearly provided the Poor Law authorities in the provinces
with an easy way of disposing of illegitimate children. The written tokens before the General
Reception period relate to children handed over by parents or other private persons, though it
is possible that some Poor Law officers may have succeeded in sending a few children to the
Hospital before 2 June 1756.
Before the Hospital adopted the policy of indiscriminate
admission, though, in the vast majority of cases the churchwardens and overseers of the poor
of the parish would have been obliged to support those children who had had a settlement, if
their mothers could not do so without help and if they had failed to compel the fathers to marry
the mothers or to pay for the upkeep of the children. Once the General Reception began, it
was easier and cheaper just to send illegitimate children to the Hospital. In most cases there
is no way of knowing whether pressure was put on parents or parent. In one or two cases the
Poor Law officers specifically state that the mother gave her consent, which suggests that the
public knew that in some cases mothers had not been consulted.27
27
*
One cannot help
One Example will suffice: Girl F. H. No.
D. of R. 5 April 1758.
Elizabeth Hillier Mother of the above mentioned Child doth hereby declare that she is willing and doth also
approve that her Child be sent to the Foundling Hospital. (Parish of Wotton under Edge, Gloucestershire).
A/FH/A9/1/91.
383
suspecting that churchwardens and overseers were often putting the interest of the ratepayers
above those of the mothers or the children. Only one case has been discovered where the
parish authorities showed any diffidence about sending a child.
The churchwardens and
overseers of the poor of Stoke Holy Cross in Norfolk explained that they were sending a
baseborn girl because the parish was very small and burdened with high rates and had no
wealthy parishioners.28
No doubt most Poor Law officers felt that, since the Hospital was now being funded out of
national taxation, they were quite entitled to send unwanted children there. The Foundling
Hospital had been set up, though, to tackle one of London’s most appalling problems, not to
ease the burden on the poor rates in the provinces.
The critics, though, almost certainly exaggerated the impact of the General Reception on
England’s towns and villages. We have estimated that about 6950 of children came from the
provinces during the General Reception (see Chapter Eight).*
This is certainly a large
number, but in the period 2 June 1756 to 31 August 1757 many communities sent no
foundlings at all and the vast majority of towns and villages that did send children sent only
one or two. In that period Birmingham sent twelve, Newbury eight, Bury St. Edmunds seven
and Oxford five, but these numbers were quite exceptional.
The fact that in the first fifteen months very few communities sent more than one or two
children, supports the view that the number of foundlings in the provinces was quite modest.
If a parish was prepared to send one foundling to London, then presumably it would have
been ready to send other foundlings as well. We may also wonder why a parish which had
only one child to support, did not do so rather than sending him or her to the Foundling
28
A/FH/A9/1/89 Girl No. 3771 D. of R. 20 March 1758.
*
We have no details for 75 of the 4220 children taken in during his period. It has been assumed
that 46 came from London and 29 from the provinces.
384
Hospital. Except in the case of very poor communities the burden of looking after one child
would surely not have been all that great on the ratepayers.
A number of critics argued that carting infants long distances to the Foundling Hospital was a
very foolish policy. Hanway declared that ‘The bringing of children great distances from the
country to London, to carry them back again to the country to be nursed was such a glaring
absurdity, no-body could digest.’29 It was suggested that many babies must have died on the
journey to London.
The writer of The Tendencies declared that ‘The Manner of sending
Infants from the Country, etc., to the Foundling Hospital at London since the Extension (viz)
by Waggon, Carts, Higglers, and unaccompanied careless persons, with a view to convey
them by the cheapest Vehicles, has been very Destructive to many of those Babes, through
want of Natural Succour necessary to their Infant Tenderness.’
30
According to Hanway, ‘It
was said at the beginning of 1758, that if care was not taken, the foundling hospital would do
mischief, by the number of children conveyed to London, many persons being employed for
this purpose who made a trade of it … the word trade, being used in the sense of traffic in
human life, implying a great inattention whether it was preserved or not, it could not but create
a great disgust.’31
We have no means of telling how many children, if any, died before they
reached London. They would not, of course, appear in the Foundling Hospital records, but it
is surely likely that if there had been many such cases we would have hard evidence to go on.
All we have to go on is hearsay. Taylor White, as we have seen, was very sceptical about this
so-called ‘evidence’.
It will be seen that some of the children came a long way from London. It would almost
certainly have been better for the children’s health if they had only been taken a short distance
to a place that could receive them on behalf of the charity, but this might well have led to more
29
Candid Account, p.23.
30
The Tendencies, p.10.
31
Candid Account, p.37.
385
children from the provinces being sent to the Hospital since the cost of conveying children
long distances was greater than for short journeys.
If the indiscriminate admission of infants from the provinces saved lives, then perhaps the
policy was justified, however serious the abuses to which it gave rise. As we have seen,
almost 70% of the children taken in during the General Reception died in the care of the
Foundling Hospital and many of these must have come from the provinces.
The rather
meagre evidence we have for mortality rates in the provinces suggests that mortality rates
would have been lowest in villages and highest in large towns.32
In few even of the
unhealthiest large towns, though, is it likely that 70% of the children had died by the age of
eleven or twelve (the ages when most children that had survived were apprenticed from the
Foundling Hospital). Dr. Marshall argued that younger children boarded out by the parish
authorities in rural areas were usually well looked after and she thinks their chances of
surviving were as good as that of other children in their areas. If she was right, sending
babies to the Foundling Hospital saved the poor rates, but is unlikely to have saved lives.
Children brought up in provincial workhouses, though, may have had a better chance of
surviving if they went to the Foundling Hospital, since many, perhaps most, workhouses by
the mid-eighteenth century were filthy, overcrowded and unhealthy places,33 though Hanway,
having visited many country workhouses, did not believe they were as bad as those in
London.
33A
We do not know what proportion of pauper infants from the provinces would
have been boarded and what proportion would have been brought up in workhouses if they
had not been sent to London. There is no way of knowing whether the total number of deaths
32
D. V. Glass, ed. The Population Controversy (Gregg International Publishing Ltd., 1973), p. 357.
Hanway, Letters on the Importance of the Rising Generation (London, 1767), vol. 1. pp. 216-217.
Sir Frederic Eden, The State of the Poor (1797), abridged edition (London Routledge, 1928), p. 262.
33
Dorothy Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century (1969), pp. 95-98.
33A
John Pugh, Remarkable occurrences in the Life of Jonas Hanway (1787), p. 189.
386
of children from the provinces would have been greater if they had not been sent to the
Foundling Hospital.
LONDON FOUNDLINGS
Even in the case of London foundlings, one cannot help thinking that it would have been
better to compel the London parishes to send their infant paupers to be cared for by country
nurses. Hanway’s Act of 1767 did enforce this reform, but it would surely have been possible
to pass a similar measure in the early eighteenth century, which would have made a foundling
hospital unnecessary.
David Stansfield argued against a foundling hospital ‘in a Protestant Country, like Britain,
where the Poor are amply provided for.’34 Joseph Massie also felt it had been a mistake to set
up a foundling hospital in London modelled on those on the Continent. ‘As to Foreign
Experience in Foundling Hospitals …. It is of little weight here, because the Circumstances of
those Nations in regard to Liberty and Plenty cannot be equalled’.35
[Massie did, however,
suggest that an institution might be necessary to prevent infanticide in London. We have
already pointed out though, that contemporaries probably exaggerated the extent of this
crime.]
Stansfield and Massie were too complacent about the treatment of London’s pauper infants,
but in one respect they were no doubt right. Large sums were raised by the London parishes
for the maintenance of the poor. What was needed was a better way of administering them.
Jonas Hanway did more than anyone in the mid-eighteenth century to expose the deficiencies
of the London Poor Law, but at times he seems to have despaired of carrying out radical
reform. He admitted that the Foundling Hospital was based on Continental examples where
34
Stansfield, op. cit., p.36. Quoted in Pinchbeck and Hewitt.
35
Massie, op. cit. p.3.
387
the poor were poorer than in England and there was no national system of poor relief, but in
his Candid Account, published in 1760, he argued that the Foundling Hospital was still needed
in London:
‘It is confessed, that if our poor-laws were executed with that skill and
tenderness, that regard to human misery, and public welfare, which they are
calculated for, the hospital would be absolutely unnecessary. In other
respects we differ essentially from all other countries; but unhappily for us,
men of fortune and education, thro’ an immoderate love of ease and
pleasure, having long since declined the charge of parochial office, the
mechanic, tho’ not supposed to enjoy leisure for such an employment, has
notwithstanding taken it up.’36
It might be thought that it was the abrupt ending of the General Reception plus the evidence
produced by Jonas Hanway in the 1760s that convinced M.P.s of the need for change, but a
Bill that would have brought about radical reform passed the Commons in 1716, following the
Parliamentary Report referred to in Chapter Two. Unfortunately it was rejected by the House
of Lords, no doubt because it was opposed by the London clergy and the governors of some
of the London charity schools.37 It would have been easy to have produced a similar Bill in the
next session which omitted the clauses that had offended these vested interests, but sadly
this step was not taken. A great opportunity to tackle the abuses of the system had been lost.
The Bill did not require pauper children to be sent to the country, but it would have been easy
to introduce such a measure later.
Had there been someone like Hanway in the early
eighteenth century prepared to campaign for reform, the worst abuses of the treatment of
London’s pauper infants might well have been eradicated long before the Foundling Hospital
received its charter in 1739. 38
36
Candid Account, pp. 28-30 and p.10.
37
Poors and Scavenger Rates Committee Report. See the Journals of the House of Commons, vol. XVIII.,
p. 345, 371, 387, 390, 392-396, Journals of the House of Lords, vol. XX p.365 and 372. The Report
contained a devastating indictment of slackness, incompetence and corruption in the parish of St Martin in
the Fields, a parish which had been selected for examination because it was generally held to be one of
the best run parishes in London.
38
The Select Vestries Bill of 5 June 1716 and a petition in favour of the Bill, plus the two opposed to it, are in
the archives of the House of Lords.
388
In 1723 reformers did, however, succeed in getting Parliament’s approval for a major change.
The Workhouse Act permitted parishes to set up workhouses and to impose a workhouse test
on applicants for relief.39 Between 1723 and 1730 thirty six parish workhouses were set up in
London and several others were established later.40 The anonymous writer of An Account of
Several Workhouses gave a favourable account of these new institutions and believed that
they would benefit ‘Friendless Orphans and Children of the Poor’ and that they would be
‘religiously and carefully educated’ and ‘be taught and accustomed to work and labour, as
their strength and capacities will bear, to those Employments or Manufactures that are the
greatest Benefit to the Publick.’ He also hoped that the practice of putting out children ‘to any
sorry Masters that will take them, without any Concern for their Education and Welfare’ would
come to an end.41 The aims of the supporters of the 1723 Act were the same as those who
backed the setting up of the Foundling Hospital.
But the hopes of reformers were not fulfilled and the loss of life amongst parish infants in
London workhouses by the mid-eighteenth century was appallingly high. The full extent of this
‘Massacre of the Infants’ was only revealed by Jonas Hanway in the 1760s, but well-informed
Londoners in the years before the General Reception must have known that few parish infants
survived their time in London workhouses.
Tim Hitcock has shown that out of 106 children born in the workhouse of St. Margaret’s
Westminster or taken in before reaching the age of 20 months in the period 1746 to 1750, 16
39
An Act for Amending the Laws relating to the Settlement, Employment and Relief of the Poor, Geo II, c.
VIII. Statues at Large, vol. 5, pp. 430-432.
Journals of the House of Commons, vol. II, pp. 58, 71, 77, 90, 93, 109, 172, 174 –177.
40
An Account of Several Workhouses (London, second edition 1732)
41
Ibid., pp. IX – X.
389
were discharged to their families, only 7 were apprenticed and 83 died – 78.3% of all the
children and 92.2% of those that stayed in the care of the parish.42
In 1767 Hanway produced some grim statistics for sixteen London parishes covering the
years from 1750 to 1755. In that period:
2339
1074
1265
1097
168
children were born in a workhouse or were taken in by one of the parishes.
were taken away.
remained in the care of the parishes.
of these died by the end of 1755.
survived in the care of the parishes.43
In three parishes all the children that remained in the care of the parish died. Only one parish
managed to save as many as 53.2% of the children. Here are the details.
Parish
St. George’s, Hanover Square
St Luke, Middlesex
{St Giles in the Field with
{St George, Bloomsbury
{St. Andrew above Bars with
{St George the Martyr
St. Ann, Westminster
St. Saviour, Southwark
St. Paul, Stockwell
St Martin in the Fields
{St. Margaret with
{St John, Westminster
Lambeth
Christ Church, Surrey
St. Giles without Cripplegate
St. Botolph without Aldgate
St. James, Westminster
Number that
remained in the
care of the parish
Number of
these that
Died
Died
Number
that
Survived
173
53
137
53
79.2%
100.0%
36
-
187
169
90.4%
18
227
36
65
21
165
222
28
56
11
158
97.8%
77.8%
82.2%
52.4%
95.8%
5
8
9
9
7
97
23
20
78
62
__58
1265
68
23
18
62
33
__58
1097
70.1%
100.0%
90.0%
79.5%
53.2%
100.0%
86.7%
29
2
16
29
__168
Hanway commented that if life depends on ‘wholesome air and aliment, the children of the
poor in London, must not be carried into narrow and confined spaces, where the houses are
42
Tim Hitock, Unlawfully begotten of her body: Illegitimacy and the Parish Poor in St Luke’ Chelsea; p.76., to
Hitcock et al., Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640 – 1840.
43
Importance of the Rising Generation, vol. 1, pp. 80-81.
390
small or in ruins, crowded with grown persons, old or sickly, nor such as have diseases.’ The
children of gin-sodden mothers were handed over to the care of workhouse women who were
indigent, filthy and decrepit.’44
The children sent out to parish nurses living in their own homes also had little chance of
survival.
‘Without the least exaggeration, there have been nurses in times past, who were
denominated killing nurses, as well they might, if no child ever came out alive.45 In 1766
Hanway stated that a Mrs Poole, a nurse employed by the churchwarden and overseers of St.
Clement Danes (a parish which at that time did not have a workhouse) had been given
twenty-three children to look after in nine months; two of them had been discharged, three
were still alive and eighteen had died. For ‘this piece of service to the parish’ she had been
paid two shillings a week for each child. [Incidentally, Hanway may have been unjust to Mrs
Poole. A nurse Poole, probably the same person, looked after pauper infants after Hanway’s
Act of 1767 and managed to keep most of them alive until they could be found places with
parish nurses in the country.46
This suggests that it was the system that was wrong, and it
may be unfair to put all the blame on the nurses.]
In a polemical work published in 1760, Hanway wrote:
‘You will be sensible, that whatever dark imagination some persons may
entertain of child-killing, and mangling the babies of slaughtered infants, etc.,
the evil we complain of, has principally consisted in this: that, for a great
number of years, God knows how long! the children of the numerous poor,
within the bills of mortality were suffered to die, in the hands of parish nurses,
and in the workhouse.’47
44
Hanway, An earnest appeal for Mercy, pp. 139 and 42. See Dorothy George, op. cit., footnote 1, p. 379
and p.42.
45
Hanway, Candid Account, p. 88.
46
Annual Register of Parish Poor Children, from 1767, Westminster Archives, B1258, microfilm box number
413.
47
Hanway, A Reply to C—.A. 1760, p.8.
391
The horrifyingly high death rate for London’s pauper children, on the eve of the General
Reception no doubt explains why Parliament agreed to finance the Foundling Hospital,
provided it agreed to accept all children offered under a specified age. M.P.s seem to have
lacked the willpower and determination to make one last attempt at a thoroughgoing reform of
the way the London parishes cared for pauper infants. Perhaps their support of the General
Reception can be defended on the grounds that the reform of the London Poor Law would
take time, and in the meantime, many pauper infants would die.
THE SAVING OF LIFE OF LONDON’S PAUPER INFANTS
In 1760 Jonas Hanway wrote,
‘I believe it will appear, upon examination, that since June 1756, many
parishes within the bills of mortality, have sent all their children to the
founding hospital; some with and some without secrecy. It is not
necessary to examine into the reasons of this conduct, it saved the
expence of nursing and promised for to preserve the lives of the infants,
which they had so long since found so difficult a task to perform, that
they at last sat down contented, the very attempt to preserve them
seeming to be a farce.’48
This must have saved lives but indiscriminate admission of London babies led to some
abuses. Some legitimate children were sent to the hospital by the Poor Law officers, even
though their pauper parents were still alive. The churchwardens and overseers of the parish
of St Luke’s Old Street in London sent no less than nine such children in just under a year (23
October 1756-17 October 1757), two of them, both boys, being sent on the same day.49 Four
of their children came from the parish workhouse.
We do not know what circumstances
brought the parents to seek help from the Poor Law. Unless they were totally unfit to look
after children the parish authorities should surely have continued to maintain the children as
well as the parents.
48
Candid Historical Account, pp. 84-86.
49
F. H. Nos. 5204 and 5208. Date of Reception 21 July 1757 – A/FH/A9.1.63.
392
How many lives of London pauper children were saved by the Foundling Hospital?
We
cannot be certain, of course, because we cannot tell how many of the children taken in by the
charity would have survived if they had not been accepted. We can, however, make a rough
estimate, once we have an idea of the number of children that would normally have been the
responsibility of the London parish authorities.
It will be recalled that Adrian Wilson has
estimated that there were about 1,000 infants a year ‘at a conservative estimate’ that could be
classed as foundlings in London before the General Reception. 50 We know how many infants
were under the care of the London parishes in 1765, five years after the General Reception
ended. Using the registers the London parishes now had to keep as a result of the 1762 Act
that he had pressed for (sometimes called the first Hanway Act), Jonas Hanway was able to
record the number of infants born in a workhouse and taken in by the London parishes for
1765. The following figures exclude those that were discharged during the year.
Infants in the Care of the London Parishes, 1765 51
Infants under One Year
13 parishes ‘without the Walls’
23 parishes in Middlesex and Surrey
The 10 parishes in Westminster
119
280
177
576
Hanway omitted the 97 parishes ‘within the Walls’ i.e. within the original city of London
boundaries) on the grounds that they had very few children in their care. Elsewhere he noted
that in 1765 there were 101 infants under the care of those parishes.52 The total for 1765 was
therefore 683.
50
See Chapter Two.
51
Hanway, An Ernest Appeal for Mercy to the Children of the Poor, 1766, p. 135.
52
Ibid. , vol. II. P.83.
393
Wilson’s figure gives a much higher figure than the actual returns for 1765, but, in the early
and mid-eighteenth century, at the height of the gin age, it is quite possible that the parishes
had more children to cope with than in the 1760s.
If we assume that the number of foundlings in London during the General Reception was
1,000 a year, then the number of infant paupers would have been about 3,830. We can
assume that almost all these children would have been sent to the Foundling Hospital in this
period. The proportion of children taken in during the General Reception that survived was
30.3%.
We can therefore estimate that about 1,160 survived. If these foundlings had
remained in the care of the London parishes probably about 90% would have died. The
saving of life would be about 780.
These calculations are obviously based on shaky
foundations, but we can safely conclude that the Foundling Hospital saved the lives of some
hundreds of paupers who would otherwise have been looked after by the London parishes.
INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF LONDON FOUNDLINGS DURING THE GENERAL
RECEPTION
Far more children were sent to the Foundling Hospital from London than would normally have
been taken in by the London parishes, however, and this makes it quite difficult to estimate
the number of lives of London children saved by the General Reception. We have already
estimated that 6,954 children came from the provinces during the General Reception. On this
estimate the number of London children would have been 7,980 (14,934 minus 6,954). If we
assume that, but for the General Reception, the London parishes would have had to look after
3,830, then there are 4,150 ‘extra foundlings’ to be accounted for.
It is clear that the General Reception must have led to a substantial increase in the number of
children being abandoned in London. In some cases the parish authorities may have been
readier to accept infants than before, knowing that they would be able to send them to the
Founding Hospital at no cost to the ratepayer. In other cases the billets show that children
394
were sent directly to the Hospital by their parents or by others who were looking after them.
The increase in the number of foundlings is so sharp that critics were probably right in
suggesting that the General Reception made it too easy for parents to abandon their
responsibilities.
Assuming that 30.3% of the 4,150 ‘extra foundlings’ survived their time with the Foundling
Hospital, about 1,260 would have survived.
What would have been the chances of these ‘extra foundlings’ surviving if the Foundling
Hospital had not taken them? We have little evidence to go on. John Landers has calculated
that in the period 1750 to 1774 27.3% of Quaker children in the Peel and Southwark Meetings
in London lived to see their tenth birthday.53 If we assume that the ‘extra foundlings’ would
have had the same chance of survival as the children of London Quakers in the Peel and
Southwark Meetings, we can estimate that about 1,130 of them would have survived outside
the Foundling Hospital. Our estimates suggest that the Foundling Hospital may have saved
the lives of about 130 of these ‘extra foundlings’. Again it must be stressed that these
calculations are only intended to give a rough idea of the number of lives that may have been
saved.
Our estimates suggest that the lives of about 900 London children (780 foundlings and 130
‘extra foundlings’) may have been saved, by being taken to the Foundling Hospital during the
General Reception.
As we have seen there is no way of knowing whether more of the
children sent from the provinces survived than would have been the case if they had not been
sent to the Foundling Hospitals.
_____________________________
53
Landers, op. cit., p. 136. But Southwark was a particularly unhealthy area.
*
See also Chapter Seven, supra p.p. 106-107 and Appendix K.
395
Anyone who examines the records of the Foundling Hospital during the General Reception is
bound to be impressed by the care taken of the children. The fact that so many men and
women were ready to devote so much time and effort to give them the best start in life that
their circumstances permitted throws an attractive light on an age which we often think of as
callous and brutal. But contemporary critics were surely right in arguing that the General
Reception had led to serious abuses which none of those backing the plan can have foreseen.
No one after 1760 suggested that the experiment of indiscriminate admission should be
repeated. 54
Jonas Hanway realised that now the London parishes could no longer send their pauper
infants to the Foundling Hospital it was vital to reform the Poor law. He revealed that of 576
children under one year old taken in in 1765 by London parishes, 64.8% (373) had died within
the year and that 211 of the 630 children between the ages of one and four taken died before
the end of the year (33.5%). Almost half of all the children under the age of four died in that
year (48.4%). It is extremely likely that other pauper children that had been discharged and
were looked after instead by their parents had a better chance of surviving.
In 1767 Parliament, no doubt shocked by the evidence Hanway had amassed, passed the Act
of Parliament usually known as the second Hanway Act.55
This laid it down that all the
children under two years old were to be sent to nurse at places at least five miles from London
and that children from two to six years to places at least three miles from London. Minimum
rates of pay for nurses were set out. Parishes could either make their own arrangements or
use the Foundling Hospital as their agent.
Most of the parishes made their own
54
Hanway, An Ernest Appeal for mercy to the Children of the Poor (1766), p. 135. Hanway gives a slightly
higher figure for the number of children under one year (1582) in his Rising Generation, vol. I. pp. 21-27.
The infant mortality rate must have been greater than 64.8% because not all those still alive at the end of
1768 would have reached their first birthday and some of these must have died under one year old in the
following year. Similarly some of the one to four year olds that survived 1765 would have died later.
55
7 Geo III, o.39. See John Stephen Taylor, Jonas Hanway (Scholar Press, 1985), Chapter VIII.
396
arrangements, though 822 children were sent to the Foundling Hospital from 1767 to 1798.56
In time, Hanway’s Act did bring about a decline in the mortality of London’s pauper infants A
Committee of the House of Commons of 1778 concluded that the Act ‘had produced salutary
effect in the preservation of lives of great numbers of the Infant Parish Poor’. 57 John Pugh,
who had acted as Jonas Hanway’s secretary, declared that the poor called it ‘the act for
keeping the children alive’. 58
If only this reform had been introduced fifty years earlier!
56
Register of Parish Children – A/FH/A9/3/1.
57
Reports of the Committee of the House of Commons. Vol. IX, Provision; Poor, 1774-1802.
Printed 1803.
58
Pugh, op. cit. p. 191.
397
POSTSCRIPT
LINKS WITH THE PERIOD OF THE GENERAL RECEPTION
It will be recalled that the Foundling hospital’s building in Lamb’s Conduit Fields was sold in
1926. Almost the entire structure was demolished and the only parts of the eighteenth century
hospital that survive today are the two colonnades.
[Most of the site, now called Coram’s
Fields, is owned by a separate charity and is used as a children’s playground]. All the works
of art were put into storage. In 1937 the Foundling Hospital’s administrative staff moved into a
new building in Brunswick Square (only a short distance from Coram’s Fields). It now houses
the Foundling Museum. [The buildings occupied by the Coram Family, as the charity is now
called, are next door.] The Court Room in the new Brunswick Square building has the same
dimensions as the original Court Room, and all the paintings that had been in that room, plus
Rysbrack’s overmantel, were put up in the right places. Even the elaborate plaster ceiling was
re-erected there.
All the other eighteenth century paintings, including Hogarth’s famous
portrait of Thomas Coram and his ‘March at Finchley’ and Charles Brooking’s fine seascape
were displayed in other areas of the new building. These pictures, plus others given to the
Foundling Hospital in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are on display in the museum.
Nothing survives today of the branch hospitals at Aylesbury and Barnet.
That part of the Chester Blue Coat School that had been occupied by the Foundling Hospital
reverted to the school. It was only as late as 1949 that the Blue Coat School was closed, but
the building (in Upper Northgate Street) survives. Until recently it was occupied by the History
Department of Chester University.
It took some years to dispose of the buildings at Ackworth and Shrewsbury.
The surviving Foundling hospital buildings at Coram’s Fields date from the nineteenth century.
398
The Ackworth building was eventually taken over by the Society of Friends for a boarding
school, due largely to the efforts of Dr. John Fothergill, one of the most influential Quakers.*
The school was opened in 1779 and still occupies the old Foundling Hospital, though other
buildings have been added over the years. In the nineteenth century the two wings of the
original building flanking the main block were raised a few feet, but the school has had the
good sense not to spoil the appearance of the original building. Today it looks much the same
as it must have done in the eighteenth century.
The old Shrewsbury hospital building at Kingsland has had a more unusual history.
The
building was unoccupied for a while. It was then used as a woollen factory run by Messrs.
James and Baker.
Part of the building was occupied in the summer by some of the
townspeople as Kingsland was felt to be a particularly healthy spot.59 It was taken over by the
Government during the American War of Independence as a gaol for Dutch prisoners-ofwar. 60 In 1784 the five Shrewsbury parishes plus Meole Brace united to open a house of
industry or workhouse there. The building proved to be much larger than needed even though
part of it was used as a private asylum and in 1871 it was given up when the six parishes
merged with the Atcham Union.
In 1875 the governors of Shrewsbury School took over the building (the school was finding its
buildings in Castle Gate too cramped). The building was remodelled by Arthur Blomfield in
1879 to 1882 and the boys moved to Kingsland in the latter year. Blomfield’s alterations did
*
John Fothergill (1712-1780) was one of London’s leading physicians in the late eighteenth century and a
naturalist of note. He also played a part in public affairs. No doubt inspired by his Quaker beliefs he had
tried, in collaboration with Benjamin Franklin, to find a way of reconciling Great Britain and her American
colonies so that war could be avoided.
59
Nichols and Wray, op. cit., p. 177.
60
John Howard, The State of Prisons in England and Wales (4 ed., 1792, pp. 190-191).
th
399
not completely alter the external appearance of the old Foundling Hospital building. Today it
is used for classrooms.
The Well Street hospital at Westerham was later renamed Chartwell.
It was bought by
Winston Churchill in 1921. He lived there from 1924 to 1964, the year before his death.
Chartwell is now owned by The National Trust.
There is one other, admittedly rather obvious, link with the General Reception period. There
must be hundreds (if not thousands) of people living today who are either descendants of
those children that were taken in in the period of indiscriminate admission and survived their
time in the care of the Foundling Hospital or of the governors, inspectors, nurses and the staff
of the London hospital and the branch hospitals who looked after them and the masters and
mistresses who took them as apprentices. Given the growing interest in family history more
people are likely in the future to uncover such connections.
400
APPENDIX A:
TABLE 1
CHILDREN TAKEN IN BY THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL FROM ITS OPENING ON 25
MARCH, 1741 TO 31 DECEMBER, 1800 (EXCLUDING PARISH POOR LAW CHILDREN)
A.
BEFORE THE GENERAL RECEPTION (25 MARCH 1741 TO 1 JUNE 1756 INCLUSIVE).
YEAR
TOTAL
DIED WHILE IN
THE CARE OF
THE HOSPITAL
DIED WITHIN
TWO YEARS
APPRENTICED
CLAIMED
BY
PARENTS
DISCHARGED
AGED 21
OTHER
1741a
1742
1743
1744
1745
1756
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756b
113
47
23
45
52
101
80
100
120
199
160
120
80
104
40
____
1,384
87
33
17
32
33
63
47
67
83
113
96
77
48
59
25
___
880
72
18
11
17
27
40
33
39
52
81
61
45
35
36
16
___
583
24
14
5
13
16
32
28
31
25
81
61
41
32
43
15
__
471
1
1
2
1
4
1
2
__
12
2
3
5
3
2
1
1
1
-
2
1
__
_3
B.
__
18
GENERAL RECEPTION (12 JUNE 1756 TO 25 MARCH 1760 INCLUSIVE).*
YEAR
TOTAL
1756c
1757
1758
1759
1760d
1783
3727
4143
3957
1324
_____
14,934
a.
b.
c.
d.
DIED WHILE IN
THE CARE OF
THE HOSPITAL
1315
2504
2789
2834
971
_____
10,413
25 March to 31 Dec
1 Jan to 1 June.
2 June to 31 Dec
1 Jan to 25 March
*See Table 2 for detailed figures.
DIED WITHIN
TWO YEARS
APPRENTICED
CLAIMED
BY
PARENTS
1132
2113
2442
2592
873
____
9,152
459
1176
1302
1075
327
____
4,339
5
37
36
45
23
___
146
DISCHARGED
AGED 21
4
7
13
1
1
__
26
OTHER
3
3
2
2
__
10
401
C.
AFTER THE GENERAL RECEPTION (26 MARCH 1760 TO 31 DECEMBER 1773 INCLUSIVE).
YEAR
1760e
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1759
1770
1771
1772
1773
e.
D.
TOTAL
DIED WHILE IN
THE CARE OF
THE HOSPITAL
9
11
6
41
99
4
25
33
51
36
43
18
78
91
___
545
3
2
15
44
1
5
11
26
20
20
5
42
51
___
245
DIED WITHIN
TWO YEARS
1
1
10
36
3
6
19
15
16
35
46
___
188
APPRENTICED
8
8
4
23
49
2
19
18
23
15
21
13
35
38
__
276
CLAIMED
BY
PARENTS
1
1
6
1
1
4
2
1
2
1
2
__
22
DISCHARGED
AGED 21
1
__
_1
OTHER
1
__
_1
26 March to 31 Dec.
1774 TO 1800
YEAR
TOTAL
1774
1775
1776
1777
1778
1779
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795***
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
112
85
109
117
114
106
114
106
109
52
62
54
42
11
11
12
4
18
25
35
53
64
71
64
57
70
79
____
1,756
61
41
64
72
61
53
57
50
47
23
25
28
17
1
4
3
2
10
6
17
29
16
21
26
24
23
35
___
817
18,619
12,355
Grand
Total
DIED WHILE IN
THE CARE OF
THE HOSPITAL
DIED WITHIN
TWO YEARS
APPRENTICED
CLAIMED
BY
PARENTS
DISCHARGED
AGED 21
OTHER
48
32
45
47
50
42
44
37
32
18
17
20
15
1
2
1
2
10
4
10
20
12
15
17
8
13
26
___
598
47
42
43
39
44
44
52
53
60
24
25
23
23
10
7
9
2
8
17
18
24
46
49
38
32
46
40
__
855
4
2
1
2
7
9
3
2
3
1
2
1
1
__
38
1
-__
1
1
3
1
2
2
9
3
10
22
1
2
-
10,521
5,941
218
46
59
2
1
1
1
4
__
_45
1741 – 1800
Those sent to sea or the Marine Society in 1795 -1800 have been put under the Apprenticed heading.
***One entry missing – the child has been entered under the Other heading.
Note
Some children were recorded as ‘Claimed and apprenticed’. They have been out under the Claimed
heading. Sources - Foundling Hospital Registers A/FH/A9/1-5. Some of the dates of death in the register
for the years 1741 to 1743 are illegible. For these years, therefore, the Memorandum Book for 1741 – 1757
has been used instead (A/FH/A9/5/1).
402
TABLE 2
CHILDREN TAKEN IN BY THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL DURING THE GENERAL
RECEPTION (2 JUNE, 1756 TO 25 MARCH, 1760 INCLUSIVE)
PART ONE: 1756-1758
DATE
TOTAL
DIED WHILE
IN THE CARE
OF THE
HOSPITAL
DIED WITHIN
TWO YEARS
APPRENTICED
CLAIMED BY DISCHARGED
PARENTS, OTHER AGED 21
RELATIVES OR
FRIENDS
OTHER
1756
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
441
229
188
185
191
258
291
_____
1,783
300
190
128
139
152
194
212
____
1,315
248
170
105
117
134
171
187
____
1,132
138
39
59
45
37
62
79
____
459
1
1
1
2
__
_5
2
2
__
_4
__
__
161
267
375
366
336
295
335
302
251
297
346
396
____
3,727
111
169
266
238
242
191
220
207
156
193
228
283
____
2,504
94
151
224
197
203
157
190
168
127
161
188
253
____
2,113
45
96
108
122
89
101
112
94
90
98
114
107
____
1,176
3
2
1
3
4
3
2
1
4
5
3
6
__
37
3
1
1
1
1
__
_7
2
1
__
_3
303
321
402
414
420
349
315
298
290
305
366
360
_____
4,143
218
221
248
278
257
229
192
201
201
207
258*
281
_____
2,789
189
184
195
247
226
200
162**
171**
187
178
242
261
____
2,442
80
97
149
134
158
111
120
93
89
93
102
76
____
1,302
4
1
2
2
4
6
3
3
4
5
2
___
36
1
2
3
1
2
1
1
1
1
__
13
1
1
1
1757
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
1758
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
*According to the Nursery Disposal Book the figure should be 261 – A/FH/A10/3/6
__
_3
403
PART TWO: 1759-1760
DATE
TOTAL
DIED WHILE
IN THE CARE
OF THE
HOSPITAL
DIED WITHIN
TWO YEARS
APPRENTICED
CLAIMED BY DISCHARGED
PARENTS, OTHER AGED 21
RELATIVES OR
FRIENDS
OTHER
263
273
289
220
217**
203
186
149
161
152
224
145
____
2,592
76
119
112
114
111
84
83
60
62
78
77
88
____
1,075
4
4
2
7
6
3
1
8
2
3
1
4
__
45
1
__
_1
2
__
_2
74
117
138
___
327
1
3
19
__
23
1
__
_1
1
1
__
_2
4,339
146
26
10
1759
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
374
413
419
372
357
318
288
243
238
264
322
349
____
3,957
283
290
304
251
240
231
202
175
174
183
244
257
____
2,834
360
448
516
____
1,324
285
327
359
___
971
14,934
10,413
1760
January
February
March
Grand
Total
**
262
293
318
___
873
9,152
th
th
th
st
th
th
The dates of death for children registered on 7 , 11 , 15 and 21 July, 1758, and on the 14 , 15 May, 1759,
th
are illegible and they are missing for those registered on 4 August, 1758: in all seventy entries are defective.
The gaps have been filled by assuming that the proportion of these children dying under two years was the
same as that for the rest of the children in their respective months.
Source: Foundling Hospital Registers A/FH/A9/1-4.
404
APPENDIX B:
THE RELATIVE NUMBER OF LEGITIMATE AND ILLEGITIMATE FOUNDLINGS
LEGITIMATE FOUNDLINGS
There has been no agreement amongst historians about whether the majority of foundlings
were illegitimate. Contemporaries probably assumed that most of them were. In a letter of
4 November 1762 to Trafford Barnston, Taylor White wrote that ‘I desire [the Chester
hospital] may have the name of the Orphan Hospital at Chester as the name foundling may
be used as a name of Reproach to the Children, as supposing them all illegitimate’.
Lawrence Stone, however, argued that a majority of London foundlings ‘seem to have been
legitimate children of couples who are financially unable to support them’.1
Adair has
suggested that perhaps one third to one half of foundlings may have been illegitimate in the
early eighteenth century, though he admits that there is no hard evidence to go on.2
Nicholas Rogers has put the figure much higher. He believes that 75% of the children
admitted to the Foundling Hospital in the period 1741 to 1760 were probably illegitimate. He
does not, however, provide any evidence for this belief.3 Adrian Wilson also believes that
the majority of London foundlings were illegitimate.
We have already seen, however, that some written tokens clearly refer to legitimate
children. There are thirteen cases in the period 1750 to 1755 of children born in the Lying-in
Hospital in Brownlow Street in Long Acre being sent to the foundling Hospital. The Lying-in
1
Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (London, 1977), p. 476.
2
Richard Adair, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Modern England (Manchester and New York,
Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 213.
3
N. Rogers, Carnal Knowledge, Illegitimacy in Eighteenth Century Westminster in Journal of Social
History, vol. 23 (1989), p. 356.
405
Hospital later renamed the British Lying-in Hospital, was set up in 1749 specifically to help
poor married women. 4
Dr. Fildes has pointed out that even before the Foundling Hospital opened, though, the vast
majority of foundlings were at least a few weeks old when they were abandoned. This has
led her to suggest that historians may have exaggerated the number of foundlings who were
illegitimate since it would have been in the interests of mothers of illegitimate children to get
rid of their babies as soon as possible. But the mother of an illegitimate child might well
have had to wait a few weeks until she regained her strength before seeking work again.
Some of these mothers may well have been reluctant to part with their babies and have kept
them until circumstances forced them to face facts. They may also have realised that their
babies would stand little chance of surviving if they were abandoned straight after birth.5
The evidence from other foundling hospitals in the eighteenth century, though, does add
weight to Dr. Fildes’s case.
As Brian Pullan has pointed out, governors of foundling
hospitals on the continent believed that at some period many foundlings were children of
married couples and it was realised that most foundling hospitals would have some
legitimate children to care for.6
Many foundlings taken to the Innocenti in Florence in the early eighteenth century were
believed to be legitimate.7 Joan Sherwood has shown that in 1760, about half the 808
children admitted by the Inclusa in Madrid were claimed as legitimate. 8
Isabel dos
Guimaraes Sá has argued that it was accepted in Portugal that some families with more
4
Foundling Hospital numbers 581, 604[?], 719, 848, 915[?], 941, 966, 979, 1203, 1222, 1257. For the
Lying-in Hospital see the Minutes in the London Metropolitan Archives – H14/BL1/A1/1/1. 915[?] is
described as an orphan, however. Presumably his mother died in childbirth.
For other examples of effect of poverty see Girl F. H. No. 3645 D. of R. 14 May 1757 [St. Luke’s, Old
Street). (A/FH/A9/1/55).
5
Fildes, Wet Nursing (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 152.
6
Pullan, op. cit., p.10.
7
Viazzo et al., op. cit., p. 79.
8
Sherwood, op. cit., Table 5:1 (p. 111) and Table 5:2 (p.113) & see p. 177.
406
children than they could support would send one or more of them to a foundling hospital.9
Olwen Hufton has shown that many of the foundlings sent to French foundling hospitals in
the eighteenth century were probably legitimate.10 The proportion of legitimate foundlings
apparently varied widely. About 15% of all foundlings left at the Paris foundling hospital in
1760 were thought to be legitimate. 11 Jean-Claude Peyronnet put the figures for Limoges as
high as four fifths in the eighteenth century.12
Legitimate children also seem to have been abandoned in the New World in the eighteenth
century. Russell-Wood points out that poor families in Bahia sometimes deposited children
in the turning wheel there. In some cases they apparently hoped that they might be able to
reclaim them when conditions improved.13
Obviously circumstances differed from country to country in the eighteenth century, but it
would be rather strange if the London Foundling Hospital was one of the few institutions
where legitimate children made up only a small proportion of those taken in.
ILLEGITIMATE FOUNDLINGS
Rogers and Wilson are probably right, however, in thinking that a majority of foundlings
(though not an overwhelming majority) were illegitimate, if only because unmarried mothers
were more likely to be driven by poverty to abandon their babies.
In 1980 Peter Laslett used the records of 98 parishes outside London to show that there
was a rise in the bastardy rate (the proportion of illegitimate to all births) in the provinces in
9
Isabel dos Guimaraes Sá, op. cit., p. 35, for Oporto.
10
Olwen Hufton, The Poor in the Eighteenth Century France, 1750-1789 (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1976), pp. 329-333.
11
René Lafabrèque, quoted in Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (London, Collins, 1976),
p. 173 and note 25, p. 312.
12
Ibid, p. 173 and note 24, p. 311.
13
Russell-Wood, op. cit., p. 309.
407
the eighteenth century.14 In the 1700s the rate was 1.8%; in the 1750s 3.35% and in the
1790s 5.07%.
Unfortunately Laslett did not produce any figures for London illegitimacy. In 1996 Richard
Adair, using a larger example of 250 parishes, confirmed Laslett’s picture of a rising
bastardy rate for the early eighteenth century. Adair also provided some figures for London,
based on 24 parishes in the City.15 Rather surprisingly, they give a low proportion of bastard
births. The proportion of illegitimate births did apparently rise in the period from 1701-10 to
1731-40, but then fell back. In 1741-54, only 0.5% of births were classed as illegitimate.
This sample only covered a small part of the Bills of Mortality area, however, and may not
have been representative of the whole built-up area. The other difficulty is that the last
period covered by Adair’s figures is 1741-54, i.e. just before the General Reception. We do
not have enough evidence at present to make confident statements about the extent of
illegitimacy in London. One cannot help thinking, however, that there must have been far
more illegitimate births in London than Adair’s figures indicate.
14
Peter Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge, 1980), Chapter 3, pp. 103160.
15
Richard Adair, op. cit., Table 21, p. 50.
408
APPENDIX C:
MOTIVES FOR SUPPORTING CHARITIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Some writers have argued that donors to charities were largely motivated by self-interest,
rather compassion or a concern for the public good.
That witty but rather sour misanthropist, Bernard Mandeville, anxious as always to discover
unattractive motives for apparently praiseworthy behaviour, argued that people often
became governors of charities because it made them feel important (‘There is a melodious
Sound to the Word Governor that is charming to mean people’). Mandeville, however, was
really attacking governors of charity schools, institutions which he believed did more harm
than good. His attack was first published in 1714 before the major new London charities in
the eighteenth century were established.1
These major new charities, such as the four new subscription hospitals (the Westminster, St.
George’s, the London and the Middlesex), the lying-in hospitals, the Magdalen Hospital, the
Marine Society and the Foundling Hospital itself, had hundreds of governors (by the eve of
the General Reception 941 men had served as governors of the Foundling Hospital) and it is
difficult to believe that membership of such large bodies would have conferred prestige.
Most people probably did not even know whether or not a particular person was a governor
of one of the major charities. In any case, it is difficult to believe that the governors were as
childish as Mandeville suggests.
A few of those who gave lump sums to the Foundling Hospital did so anonymously. Others
gave small annual subscriptions which they must have known would not result in their being
asked to become governors. There were also donations and subscriptions from women who
1
Bernard Mandeville, op.cit., p.284.
409
were not permitted to become governors. These men and women were ready to support the
charity, even though they knew they would not become governors.2
Mandeville also declared that ‘Pride and Vanity have built more Hospitals than all the Virtues
together. 3 ‘Pride and Vanity’ may certainly have been behind the founding of some of the
grammar schools and almshouses funded by legacies left by wealthy London merchants in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially as they were often built in the
merchants’ home towns. These institutions served as memorials to the benefactors’ success
and generosity. In the eighteenth century, Thomas Guy may perhaps have wished to
perpetuate his name, but it is hard to see how ‘Pride and Vanity’ can have been the motives
that led most governors to back the Foundling Hospital.
It has been suggested, though, that ‘Pride and Vanity’ may have led Jonas Hanway, the
best known of the mid-eighteenth century London philanthropist, to get involved in running
the Foundling Hospital and other charities.4 He was not one of London’s leading merchants
when he was appointed a governor of the Hospital just before the General Reception began,
although has An Historical Account of the British Trade with the Caspian Sea published in
1753 had aroused considerable interest and brought him to the attention of the public. He
may have become a governor of the Foundling Hospital because he wanted to make his
mark and influence the way the charity was run, though there is no doubt about the
genuineness of his wish to tackle London’s social problems. But some of the most active
governors, such as Charles Child and George Whatley, seem to have been content to work
for the charity without drawing attention to themselves. Some of the leading governors, like
the Russia Company merchant Robert Nettleton, were, in any case, men of wealth and
2
See the Annual Subscription Book – A/FH/B8/2/1. Lump sum donations were listed in the General Court
minutes – A/FH/K01/001-003. Microfilm X041/010.
3
Ibid., p.261. This was apparently an oblique attack on Dr. John Radcliffe, who had left large sums to
Oxford University.
4
See James Stephen Taylor, Jonas Hanway, Founder of the Marine Society (London and Berkeley,
Scolar Press, 1985), pp.58-64.
410
assured position and did not need to become involved in charities in order to raise their
status.
Some modern ‘Mandevillians’ have argued that governors supported hospitals partly out of
self-interest, since they could get their servants taken in when they were ill. [It would,
however, surely have been cheaper in most cases for a governor just to help a sick
employee directly rather than to pay a hospital subscription.] It has also been argued that
governors secured valuable powers of patronage, since a potential patient usually had to
produce a governor’s letter of recommendation before he or she could be accepted.5 The
governors of the Foundling Hospital, however, had no way of influencing which children
should be accepted. It is hard to see what personal advantage they could have gained from
supporting the charity. Even those governors who attended the General Committee and the
Sub-Committee regularly gave their services without payment. In fact, they had no privileges
whatever. The only governor to receive any benefit was the Treasurer, who had the heaviest
responsibilities. He was allowed to occupy comfortable rooms in the new hospital in Lamb’s
Conduit Fields. This was no doubt partly in recognition of his services, though the governors
must also have thought it desirable to have one of their number resident at the London
headquarters to keep an eye on things.
The Foundling Hospital tried to make sure that governors did not profit from their association
with the charity. Under a bye-law, for example, ‘No Committee shall Contract for or
Purchase any thing whatsoever for the use of the Hospital, in which any Governor or
Guardian has any Property Interest or Concern (Land or House only excepted). Nor shall
the General Court or Committee elect any Governor and Guardian of the Hospital into any
5
W.H. McMenemy, The Hospital Movement in the Eighteenth Century, in F.N.L. Poynter, ed., The
Evolution of Hospitals in Britain (London, Pitman Medical Publishing Vo., 1964) pp.57-58. A.E.
Kennedy-Clark, The London – A Study in the Voluntary System (London, Pitman Medical Publishing
Ltd.) vol.1, chapter 2, pp.31-32 and pp.80-82. See also Dorothy Marshall, Dr. Johnson’s London (John
Wiley & Sons, New York, London and Sydney, 1968), p.264. The whole chapter is well worth reading.
411
Place or Office of this corporation to which any Salary is annexed.’6 Even the annual
Foundling Hospital banquet was paid for out of the governors ‘own pockets, whereas the
parish feasts were notoriously paid for out of the Poor Law rates.
It has been suggested, though, that some governors may have joined the Foundling
Hospital in order to further their own interests in a less obvious way by making contacts with
influential people. 7 If, for example, as seems likely, the second Treasurer, Robert Hucks
(1741-1745) was the same Robert Hucks who was an active governor of the Georgia
colony, he may have benefited from having known Thomas Coram before the Foundling
Hospital was established, since Coram was also a trustee. Similarly, the third Treasurer,
Taylor White (1746-1772) was one of the counsel for the Georgia colony in 1737 in a
dispute over a petition sent to the King from South Carolina. There were clearly links
between the two charities. Both James Vernon and George Heathcote were trustees of the
Georgia colony and governors of the Foundling Hospital. James Oglethorpe, who played the
biggest part in getting the Georgia venture under way, became a governor of the Foundling
Hospital on 9 May, 1744.8 We do not know, though, whether these links benefited these
men, let alone whether they had any selfish motives in supporting the Foundling Hospital.
James Stephen Taylor, after noting that a number of governors of the Russia Company
supported several of London’s major charities, asserted that ‘Service in a charity
organization was a form of apprenticeship to responsibility within the Company, for it was a
means whereby merchants could assess each other’s character’ and that ‘for an aspiring
merchant in the Russia Company philanthropy was good business.’ It would surely be more
plausible to argue that some of the Russia Company merchants merely persuaded others
6
Gen.Ct., Vol.1 p.39 (A/FH/K01/001 – microfilm X041/010).
7
See, for example, Sandra Cavallo’s article, The Motivation of Benefactors, in J. Barry and C. Jones,
eds., Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State (London and New York, Routledge, 1991).
8
For Vernon, Heathcote and Oglethorpe see Nichols and Wray, op.cit., p.354 and p.357.
412
that these charities were worth supporting.9 If we are going to apply a Namierite approach to
the history of philanthropy we will need much more evidence. In any case, no one
presumably is going to be so silly as to suggest that the Foundling Hospital came into
existence to make it easier for the propertied classes to indulge in ‘networking’.
Some critics in the early nineteenth century also argued that the governors must be
motivated by self-interest. John Brownlow, an ex-foundling from 1849 to 1872, wrote that
‘There is a class of men with so little charity in their hearts, as to make it an
incomprehensible matter to them how any individual can be found, in this mercenary world
to contribute either his time or money to benevolent purposes, without some commensurate
benefit to himself.’ Brownlow must have had frequent contact with all the most active
governors so that his verdict should carry weight with us.10 It is certainly easy to find
evidence in the eighteenth century of conscientious governors devoting a great deal of time
to the service of the charity.
A few years ago it became fashionable to argue that the major eighteenth century charities
were not primarily set up to help the poor, but to control them. The propertied classes, it is
alleged, were content to maintain a harsh Poor Law and a brutal penal system because
these could be used to repress the poorer classes and keep them in their places. The rich, it
is claimed, did little to tackle the injustices and inequalities in society. The new charities
helped only a tiny minority of the poor, but they served to disguise the brutality of the social
system and made it possible for the propertied classes to pose as benefactors who were
concerned about the plight of the poor. The poor would in return, it was hoped, be more
likely to show deference and gratitude to the propertied classes who had thrown a ‘cloak of
9
James Stephen Taylor, op.cit., p.59.
10
Brownlow, op.cit., p.206.
413
charity’ over their own selfish class interest.11 It must be admitted that The Foundling
Hospital Anthem, composed by Handel, begins with the words ‘Blest are they that consider
the poor’. But these words were surely designed to open the purse strings of the propertied
classes rather then improve the image of the charity amongst the labouring poor. The
foundlings were certainly expected to acknowledge the debt they owed to the charity. The
printed instructions given to children when they were apprenticed urged them to ‘be thankful
to those worthy Benefactors who have contributed towards your Maintenance and Support,’
but this was not over-emphasized.12
It is true that, as far as we know, most eighteenth century philanthropists accepted the world
as it was and did not advocate any radical re-ordering of society. It is certainly clear that the
governors of the Foundling Hospital assumed that the boys and girls would normally be
apprenticed to quite humble trades. The governors hoped the children would ‘learn to
undergo with Contentment the most servile and laborious Offices and the staff were
instructed to remind the children of the lowness of their condition and of their duty to be
humble and grateful to their benefactors.’13 One hopes that the officers and servants of the
London hospital were too busy to keep reminding the children of their lowly status. These
attitudes are bound to grate on us today, but we should remember that the governors were
trying to prepare the children for life in the eighteenth century, not the twenty first century.
There is abundant evidence in the correspondence with the inspectors and the branch
hospitals of concern for the welfare of the children.
11
Roy Porter, The gift relation: philanthropy and provincial hospitals in eighteenth century England, in
L.Grimshaw and R. Porter, eds. The Hospital in History (London, 1989). These arguments could surely
be applied to London charities as well as provincial hospitals. As early as 1949 Betsy Rogers entitled
her book on English Philanthropy, The Cloak of Charity (London, Methuen & Co.).
12
Gen.Cttee, Wednesday, 17 April, 1754 – A/FH/K02/004 – microfilm X041/014.
13
Sub-Cttee, vol.1, p.29 (A/FH/A3/5/1).
414
It is hard to accept that the governors connived in the maintenance of a harsh Poor Law in
order that they could make a conspicuous display of benevolence. The reason why the
Foundling Hospital was established was surely that several attempts to reform the way the
Poor Law dealt with infants and young children in London had failed. Joanna Innes has
pointed out that some of the money for the London Corporation of the Poor had come from
charitable donations. In this case, at least, the notion of a contrast between a harsh Poor
Law and a delusively benevolent system of private charity does not make sense.14
Parishes could certainly be unwilling to help those that had no legal settlement, but it is hard
to imagine that most overseers of the poor in London saw their task as that of imposing a
harsh system of social control. Their main concern was probably to get through their year of
office with the minimum of trouble. Tim Hitchcock has shown that the overseers of the poor
of St. Luke’s, Chelsea (only just outside London’s continuously built-up area) were prepared
to offer relief to feckless characters who had been at least partly to blame for their situation.
The real case against the London Poor Law authorities was not that they were trying to
dragoon the poor into behaving as they wished, but that they were unsuccessful in keeping
pauper infants alive. 15
Some writers have argued that eighteenth century charities served the needs of the
propertied classes in other ways. It has been suggested, for example, that they provided
non-contentious meeting places, where Whigs and Tories, or Anglicans and Dissenters,
could sink their differences in following a common purpose, thus reducing the bitterness of
faction and helping to unite the governing elite. 16 There may be some sense in this argument
14
Joanna Innes, loc.cit.
15
Tim Hitchcock, ‘Unlawfully begotten on her body’: Illegitimacy and the Parish Poor in St. Luke’s
Chelsea’ in T. Hitchcock et al., Chronicling Poverty. The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor,
1640-1840 (London, 1997).
16
Sandra Cavallo, op.cit.
415
when applied to provincial cities where most of the governors knew each other and where
many of them would meet each other at governors’ meetings, but it is hard to see how it
could apply to the Foundling Hospital in London or indeed to any of the major London
charities, where there were very large governing bodies and where only a small minority
attended meetings regularly.*
These various theories that have been developed in the last few years are certainly
interesting, but, at least as far as the Foundling Hospital is concerned, the Scottish verdict of
‘Not Proven’ seems appropriate.
*
Some of the leading governors of the Shrewsbury and Chester branch hospitals had already been cooperating in running other charities, so this suggestion is not very convincing when applied to these
institutions.
416
APPENDIX D:
DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
1739/41 - 1773
Year
To 25 March 1741
1741-1742 *
1742-1743 *
1743-1744 *
1744-1745 *
1745-1746 *
1746-1747 *
1747-1748 *
1748-1749 *
1749-1750 *
1750-1751 *
1751
**
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
General
Donations
–
500
706
330
809
1,002
2,984
2,599
1,649
3,646
1,890
1,956
1,191
2,442
3,303
2,494
2,161
737
810
541
306
395
201
277
568
181
431
446
495
315
245
423
223
855
*
In pounds to the nearest pound..
*
**
Financial year beginning on 25 March.
25 March – 31 December.
Annual
Subscriptions
Number of Annual
Subscribers
281
460
430
341
395
354
564
580
690
701
644
459
544
569
550
505
323
508
153
296
178
101
84
71
64
47
47
46
135
65
38
45
65
108
From 1752 onwards the financial year coincides with the calendar year.
1
Ibid. for the amounts given for the number of subscribers. A/FH/B8/2/1.
22
52
50
45
52
50
71
92
104
107
100
89
80
91
83
76
44
56
20
34
15
9
6
4
4
4
4
3
3
5
3
5
7
n.a.
1
417
APPENDIX E:
GOVERNORS ATTENDING MEETINGS OF THE BRANCH HOSPITALS 1
No. of
Governors
ACKWORTH
Peers
1 archbishop 2 bishops
Baronets & knights
Clergy
Untitled laymen
SHREWSBURY
Peers
Bishops
Baronets & knights
Clergy
Untitled laymen *
WESTERHAM
Peers
Bishops
Baronets & knights
Clergy
Untitled laymen
CHESTER
Peers
Bishops
Baronets & knights
Clergy
Untitled laymen
TOTALS
20 or
more
meetings
6 – 19
Meetings
1–5
Meetings
No
Meetings
12
3
22
12
131
180
–
–
1
1
7
9
–
–
2
–
18
20
1
–
4
2
16
23
11
3
15
9
_90
128
2
4
7
7
43
63
–
–
2
7
15
24
–
–
1
–
11
12
2
–
–
–
8
10
–
4
4
–
9
7
7
–
7
–
67
81
–
–
–
–
7
7
–
–
–
–
5
5
1
–
–
–
_9
10
6
–
7
–
46
59
10
1
12
16
109
148
–
–
–
1
4
5
–
–
–
–
8
8
–
–
–
–
18
18
10
1
12
15
_79
117
472
45
45
61
321
* Includes Taylor White who attended twelve meetings as an ex-officio member.
1
Based on an analysis of the following minute books:
Ackworth – A/FH/Q/8 and A/FH/Q/3.
Shrewsbury – A/FH/D2/1/1.
Westerham – A/FH/D3/1/1.
Chester – A/FH/D4/1/1.
Aylesbury has been omitted because no minute book has survived, though we do have the
attendance record for some meetings. Barnet has been omitted because there was no
governing body.
418
APPENDIX F
Sick Children in the Ackworth Infirmary Selected Months,
March 1760 to February 1773 1
March 1760
Jaundice
Itch
Intermittent
Sore head & feet
Sore throat
March 1762
Smallpox
Sore eyes
Whooping cough
Ague (Malaria)
Weak constitution
Scurvey
March 1764
Intermittent
Tumours
Sore eyes
Sore mouth
Diarrhoea
Sore fingers
A strain
Swelling
Fever
Hysteric fits
Sore throat
1
Ibid.
1
5
3
1
1
11
3
2
3
3
4
1
16
2
4
2
1
1
3
1
1
1
1
1
18
September 1761
Smallpox
Chickenpox
Fractured arm
Itch
Sore mouth
Rheumatic
Bad habit
December 1963
Ague
In a convalescent state
Itch
Sore eyes
Measles
Sore mouth
Sore head
September 1765
Smallpox
Fever
Sore eyes
Dysentery
Diarrhoea
Sore mouth
Itch
Tumours
Intermittent
1
2
1
5
3
1
3
16
1
2
27
6
1
2
1
40
11
5
2
10
2
1
10
3
2
46
419
June 1766
Smallpox
Measles
Fever
Opthalmia
Intermittent
Wound on the head
Bad habit
Dysentery
Haemorrhage of the nose
Jaundice
Prolapsis Ani
Diarrhoea
Convalescent state
Sore mouth
Tumour
Scalded breast
Inflammation of the lung
March 1768
Intermittent
Feverish Complaint
Swelled glands
Sore eyes
Itch
March 1770
Intermittent
Tumours
Sore eyes
Sore mouth
Diarrhoea
Sore fingers
A strain
Swelling
Fever
Hysteric fits
Sore throat
March 1772
Opthalmia
Slow fever
Intermittent
Scrophulous swellings
Pleurising fever
Consumption
Itch
Sore feet
2
11
162
2
3
1
1
1
12
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
201
5
4
2
2
15
28
2
4
2
1
1
3
1
1
1
1
1
18
2
3
1
4
1
1
6
10
28
September 1767
Itch
Tumours
Sore mouth
Sore head
Dysentery
Sore eyes
Intermittent
Swelled glands
September 1769
Sore throats
Swelling in the neck
Sore eyes
Tumour
Itch
September 1771
Scrophulous swellings
Slow Fevers
Boils
Sore heads
Opthalmia
Sore feet
Haemorrhage of the nose
Consumption
February 1773
Colic
Scrophulous tumours
A sore leg
Itch
Slow Fevers
Sore heads
30
10
3
5
3
4
5
1
46
6
8
10
2
10
40
11
5
2
10
2
1
10
3
46
1
3
1
1
1
6
13
2
Monthly Statistics of the Sick at Ackworth, 29 Sept. 1759 - May 1770 (A/FH/Q/70) and June
1770 – February 1773 (a/FH/Q/711).
420
APPENDIX G
WORK DONE BY THE CHILDREN IN THE WESTERHAM HOSPITAL IN 1769.
From the 27 March to the 22 April the following work was done.
‘By the Girls
25
3
3
7
24
113
138
40
26lbs
13
13
34
4
1721
Worsted Stockings made
Thread
“
“
Mittens
“
Shirts
Aprons
Girls day caps
Shifts
Children’s stockings made and Run at the Heels
of Linen Yarn Spun by the Girls
Girls coats made
“
“ Covered and mended
Night caps made
Pillow cases “
Letters marked in the Children’s Linen.
By the Boys
16
2
26
28
12
Children’s stockings made and runned
Suits of Cloths made
Coats mended
Pair of Breaches
“
Pair of
“
made.’1
A report for the period 26 April to 20 May 1769 gives a similar picture:
1
Sub-Cttee, 29 April 1769 – A/FH/A03/005/008.
for sale
421
‘By the Girls,
24
8
3
4
6
2
58
87
73
108
64
17
7
22
Worsted Stockings
Thread
“
Mittens
Garters
Pairs of Silk Stockings runned at heels
Shirts
Shifts
Aprons
Night Caps
Borders benamed
Stockings knit and runn’d
lbs of Flax Spun
“ “ “ Spun & Twisted
Coats Covered
28
1
7
30
29
2
1
Stockings made and runn’d at the Heels
Suit made
Pair breeches “
Coats mended
Pair Breaches “
Days planting Potatoes
Day Brewing’.2
1
By the Boys,
2
Ibid.
for sale
422
APPENDIX H
Occupations to which the Boys were Apprenticed from Shrewsbury
HUSBANDRY
Husbandry
Gardner
13
_3
16
METAL TRADES
Buckle maker
Locksmith
Chape maker
Toymaker
Locksmith
Cutler
Iron man/Ironmaster
Watch chain maker
Bolt maker
Chape forger
Chape maker
Gun lock filer
Gun lock maker
Whitesmith
Wood screw cutter
Bag & dog lock maker
Bag lock maker
Brass Founder
Brass locksmith
Brazier
Chape filer
Clock & watch maker
Corkscrew cutter
Edge tool maker
File cutter
File maker
File shovel maker
Gun & pistol maker
Hardwareman
32
12
9
9
5
4
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Ironmonger
Lathe maker
Padlock smith
Steel
Snuffer maker
Steel tobacco box maker
Tin plate worker
1
1
1
1
1
1
__1
111
WOOD TRADES
Wheelwright
Carpenter
Coach maker
Joiner & cabinet maker
Timber merchant
2
1
1
1
1
6
FOOD TRADES
CLOTHING TRADES
Taylor
Glover
Linen draper
Mercer
5
2
2
_1
10
LEATHER GOODS
Shoemaker
Cordwainer
Heel maker
Shoe & clog maker
Tanner
28
1
1
1
_1
32
Peruke maker
6
BUILDING TRADES
Plasterer
Thatcher
Bricklayer
Slater
20
1
1 MISCELLANEOUS
1
_1 Bridge master
24 Druggist
Paper Maker
HOUSEHOLD BUSINESS
Household business
3
1
1
1
1
7
BARBERS
CLOTH MANUFACTURE
Weaver
Dyer & cloth dresser
Feltmaker
Thread Maker
Woolen dyer
Grocer
Common brewer
Cyder merchant
Malster
Wine merchant
24 Total boys
2
2
1
1
6
1
1
1
3
245
423
APPENDIX I
TRADES OF BOYS APPRENTICED FROM ACKWORTH HOSPITAL, 1758-1773
HUSBANDRY
Husbandry
Gardner
Husbandry &
household business
Husbandry & mason
Farmer & butcher
Farmer & blacksmith
Husbandry & collier
Husbandry & coopery
CLOTH MANUFACTURE (Ctd.)
542
14
8
3
2
1
1
__1
572
METAL TRADES
Cutler
Blacksmith
Nailer
File smith
Scissor smith
Cutler & husbandry
Blacksmith & nailer
Brazier
Bazier & pewterer
Cutler & grinder
Farrier & blacksmith
File cutter
Locksmith
Millwright
Nailer & husbandry
Shear smith
Sickle smith
Silversmith
Whitesmith
62
32
31
16
8
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
__1
164
CLOTHING TRADES
Taylor
Staymaker
Button maker
Horn button maker
Taylor & staymaker
Breeches maker
Breeches maker & glover
Glover
Linen draper
Patten maker
88
6
4
4
4
2
1
1
1
__1
112
CLOTH MANUFACTURE
Linen weaver
Clothier
Weaver
Flax dresser
Dyers
Stuff weaver
Stuff maker
Flax dresser & weaver
Feltmaker
Serge weaver
Woolcomber & weaver
Bleacher & weaver
Cloth dresser
Dyer & presser
Fuller & clothier
Linen dresser
Silk weaver
Stocking weaver
Weaver &barber
Woolcomber
FOOD TRADES
3
3
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
_1
77
LEATHER GOODS
Cordwainer
Tanner
Shoemaker
Sadler
Fellmonger & breeches maker
Shagreen case maker
Skinner
Skinner & glover
Thong maker
59
7
5
2
1
1
1
1
_1
78
HOUSEHOLD BUSINESS
Household business
Household business & husbandry
34
_6
40
WOOD TRADES
Carpenter
Wheelwright
Cartwright
Carpenter & Joiner
Cooper
Cooper & husbandry
Joiner
Wine cooper
16
3
2
1
7
1
1
_1
32
SEA SERVICE
20
14
12
4
APPENDIX J
Rope maker
Sea service
17
13
30
Miller
Butcher
Baker
Bread baker
Malster
Brewer
Brewer & tanner
Fishmonger/leather dresser
Miller & farmer
Miller & husbandry
10
7
4
2
2
1
1
1
1
_1
30
BARBERS
Peruke maker
Barber & peruke maker
Barber
Hair merchant
9
7
4
_1
21
BUILDING TRADES
Mason
Bricklayer
Brickmaker
Mason & stone cutter
Painter & stainer
Paviour
Plumber & glazier
Slater
Tiler
9
3
2
1
1
1
1
1
_1
20
MISCELLANEOUS
Paper maker
Comb maker
Collier
Basket maker
Book binder
Oil maker
Surgeon & apothecary
Tallow chandler
Wood collier (?)
Carrier
Chandler
Cork cutter
Druggist
Dry salter
Pipe maker
Potter
Warrener
Unspecified
GRAND TOTAL
8
5
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
_1
37
____
1213
424
Trades of Girls Apprenticed from Ackworth Hospital 1758-1773
Household business
Woollen manufacturer
Mantua maker
Silk Throwster
Glover
Staymaker
Baker
Fellmonger & breeches maker
Husbandry
Breeches & glove maker
Butcher & farmer
Clothier
Filesmith
Hair Sieve Maker
Household business & husbandry
Innkeeper
Lace Tagger
Pin maker
Ribband weaver
Staymaker & household business
Taylor & mantua maker
Taylor & staymaker
Upholsterer
Wheelwright
Worsted winder & weaver
Unspecified
Grand Total
992
98
22
10
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
____
1151
425
APPENDIX K
MORTALITY IN LONDON, 1730/39-1794/1800
Baptisms
1730-39
1740-55
1756-59
1760-73
1774-83
1784-93
1794-1800
170,200
235,479
57,354
228,505
172,128
183,379
130,594
Burials
Burials under
10 years
% of all Burials
134,419
181,040
38,842
151,081
98,528
102,346
62,730
51.5
46.5
48.9
46.5
48.6
49.3
46.1
260,875
389,730
79,366
326,726
202,772
195,756
136,079
Bills of Mortality
There is a copy in the Guildhall Library. In 1797 and 1799 the Bills of Mortality recorded for
the first time that baptisms exceeded burials.
See supra, pp. 38-40 and footnote 26, p.39.
AGE SPECIFIC MORTALITY RATES OF LONDON QUAKERS IN THE
PEEL AND SOUTHWARK MEETINGS, 1721-49-1775/99
Percentage of Deaths of Children and a % of all Quaker Deaths
1725-49
1750-74
1775-99
Under 2
Years
2-4 Years
5-9 Years
Under 10 Years
48.7
47.7
33.2
17.7
15.9
14.1
8.9
9.1
3.2
75.3
72.7
50.5
J. R. Landers, Death in the Metropolis (Cambridge, C.U.P., 1993)
These figures are believed to give a more accurate record of the proportion of
children that died than the Bills of Mortality figures.
426
APPENDIX L
NUMBER OF FOUNDLINGS AT SHREWSBURY
Three registers were compiled:
(i)
A register kept in the London headquarters – A/FH/A10/7. This lists 1092
foundlings (one or two children were counted twice, so that the number of
entries is slightly higher than this).
(ii)
A register kept at Shrewsbury – A/FH/D2/7/1 – which lists 936 children.
(iii)
A second register kept at Shrewsbury – A/FH/D2/8/2 – which lists 1184
children.
An examination of the Foundling Hospital’s four General
Registers for this period – A/FH/2/1-4 - reveals that this register includes
all children sent to Shrewsbury, including some at nurse, who did not,
unlike the majority at nurse, enter the Shrewsbury Hospital.
As we saw in Chapter Five, the first Secretary at Shrewsbury, Thomas Morgan, was
dismissed in February 1765 partly for failing to keep accurate records of the number
of children there.
In that year a clerk was sent down from London to compile
accurate lists of all the children at nurse in the Shrewsbury area and all the children
in the Shrewsbury Hospital – A/FH/A15/4/6/1. This list has been used to correct the
dates of entry in the Shropshire registers. From then on the Shrewsbury registers
are believed to be fairly accurate.
427
APPENDIX M
THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN PASSING THROUGH THE LONDON
HOSPITAL AND THE BRANCH HOSPITALS, 2 JUNE 1756 - 31 JULY 1773
Table I
Period of Reception
A
Before the General Reception
B
General Reception
C
After General Reception
I London
Hospital
Only
II Branch
Hospitals
Only
III Both London
and Branch
Hospitals
257
90
202
1303
1935
1439
144
___2
42
1704
2027
1683
Grand Total of Grown Children 5414
Table II
Total Passing Through
the London Hospital [I + III]
Total Passing Through
the Branch Hospitals [II + III]
A
459
292
B
2742
3374
C
_186
__44
3387
3710
* For sources see supra, p. 233, footnote 6.
Many children were moved from one branch hospital to another (some
attended two or even three hospitals) and therefore appear on more than one
register. There are also many cases where children appear more than once
on the London register. A child sent from London to Ackworth and then sent
428
back to London would appear twice on the London register, for example. In
Table I, however, each child has been counted only once. The grand total of
the number of grown children passing through the hospitals is therefore 5,414.
It will be seen from Table II that more children passed through the branch
hospitals (3710) than the London hospital (3387), even though not one of the
branch hospitals was in existence for the entire period 2 June 1756 to 31 July
1773.
Many of the 1683 children listed here as having lived in both the
London hospital and the branch hospitals only stayed in London for a matter
of weeks or months before being despatched to one of the branch hospitals,
so that the relative importance of the branch hospitals is probably even
greater than these figures suggest.
429
APPENDIX N
THOMAS DAY AND THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL
We have already suggested that there is little evidence that the Enlightenment had
much influence on the Founding Hospital. There is, however, the curious case of
Thomas Day (1748-1789). Day, later famous as the author of Sandford and Merton,
was a member of the Lunar Society, which included such able men as James Watt,
Matthew Boulton and Erasmus Darwin. Like another member of the group, Richard
Lovell Edgeworth (the father of the novelist Maria Edgeworth) Day was an
enthusiastic disciple of Rousseau. [Incidentally, it is doubtful if Day would have been
quite so ready to follow Rousseau’s guidance on how children should be brought up
if he had known that he had sent the five children he had with his mistress to a
foundling hospital.] He despised the self-indulgent way the rich lived and hankered
after a simple life of honest toil. Children were brought up in the wrong way. Girls,
for example, were too concerned with fine clothes and dancing and had little interest
in science or serous reading. Having despaired (at the age of twenty-one!) of finding
a girl who had the qualities he admired and would be ready to abandon a life of
frivolous idleness, he decided to take two girls from the Foundling Hospital and
educate them himself. He would then decide which of them should have the privilege
of becoming his wife.
Day, accompanied by his friend John Bicknell, therefore selected a girl from
Shrewsbury Hospital in 1769, whom he named Sabrina Sidney, for this experiment.
He then picked a girl from the London hospital, whom he named Lucretia. He agreed
that within a year he would apprentice one of the girls to a trade and give her £400
when she married. If he then decided the other girl was not suitable to be his wife,
he would find a place for her and give her £500. It is hard to understand why the
Foundling Hospital agreed to this arrangement.
430
At first the girls were lodged in London but then he took them to Avignon, believing
that, since they knew no French, he would be able to educate them without their
being too distracted. Later they moved to Lyons. At first all went well, but then the
girls became quarrelsome and discontented. In the spring of 1770, therefore, Day
brought them back to England. Having decided that Lucretia was unsuitable to be
his wife, he apprenticed her to a milliner in Ludgate Hill. Sabrina he kept. For a
while they lived in Lichfield. Since he wanted his children to be brave and hardy, he
was anxious their mother should also display these qualities, but he found that she
screamed when he dropped hot wax on her neck and shoulder and shrieked when he
fired blanks at her petticoat (she had been told that they were blanks). She also had
little interest in serous matters.
Day decided she would not do and sent her to a boarding school. When she left
school she often visited Lichfield.
By her early twenties she was a likeable and
attractive young lady. When John Bicknell met her for the first time in many years he
fell for her and they were married. Day gave her a dowry of £500. Bicknell died a
few years later, leaving her with two young sons to bring up.
Day gave her an
allowance of £30 a year and Bicknell’s fellow barristers gave her a lump sum. She
eventually became a housekeeper to Charles Burrey, the son of Dr Charles Burrey,
the historian of music. She died in 1843.
This is surely a case of truth being stranger than fiction.
Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men [Faber and Faber, London, 1988], pp. 185-187.
Peter Rowland, The Life and Times of Thomas Day, 1748-1789 [Edwin Mellon Press, Lampeter, 1996]
pp. 27-28 and 61-62.
On Rousseau, see J. H. Huizinga, The making of a saint: the Tragedy–Comedy of Jean Jacques
Rousseau.
431
APPENDIX O
TAYLOR WHITE, 1701-1772
Taylor White was the second son of Thomas White, M.P., of Tuxford in
Nottinghamshire.
He married twice, firstly Ann Errington in 1729, who died in the following year,
and secondly, in 1739 Frances, daughter of Major General John Armstrong,
Lieutenant Governor of the Tower of London. On his brother’s death in 1760
he inherited the family estates.
Taylor White was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1720 and called to the Bar in 1727. He
practised on the Northern Circuit, which covered Yorkshire, Northumberland,
Cumberland and Westmoreland. In 1737 he was one of four counsel retained by
Georgia in a dispute with South Carolina.*
In 1746 he became a Bencher of
Lincoln’s Inn and in 1764 Treasurer. From 1750 he was a Judge on the North Wales
Circuit (Anglesea, Carnarvonshire and Merconethshire) and in 1760 until his death
he served as a judge on the Chester Circuit (Denbighshire, Montgomeryshire and
Flintshire). He was also a Judge on the County Palatine Court at Chester. He held a
number of other official appointments, including that of Deputy Recorder of
Nottingham.1
Taylor White was one of the original governors of the Foundling Hospital named in
the charter of 1739. In November 1741 he reported the findings of a committee set
*
See Appendix C, p. 411.
1
W. R. Williams, The History of the Great Sessions in Wales, 1542-1830, p. 61. Nicholas and
Wray, op. cit., p. 312 and Leslie F. Church, Oglethorpe: A Study of Philanthropy in England and
Georgia. (Epworth Press, London), pp. 131-132.
432
up to examine allegations of misconduct on the part of the chief nurse, Sarah Wood,
in which two leading governors were said to be involved in some way.
The
committee found ‘the Aspersions on Martin Folkes and Theodore Jacobsen… are
Unjust, Fake, Groundless and Malicious’ and condemned Thomas Coram for
spreading them. No doubt in consequence of this finding he was not re-elected to
the General Committee in 1742.2
As we have seen Taylor White held the post of Treasurer of the Foundling Hospital
from 1742 - 1772.
The last meeting he attended was that of the General Court on
1 January 1772 when he took the chair. He died in the spring of 1772.3
Taylor White could rely on a group of capable and conscientious governors on the
General Committee to run the charity when his legal work called him away from
London (though there were one or two occasions when they decided to wait until they
could consult him before making a decision). His legal work in the North of England
may actually have benefited the Hospital when it became necessary to set up branch
hospitals. Ackworth is only a couple of miles from Pontefract, which was an assize
town. He would have known some of the local gentry, since some of them would
have attended the balls and dinners at Pontefract, while the assizes were being held.
Similarly, his role as a Judge of the Chester County Palatine Court would have
brought him into contact with influential men in the city. This would have enabled him
to gauge whether there would be enough local support to justify setting up branch
hospitals in those places.
2
See Gillian Wagner, op. cit, Chapter 12, and R. McClure, op. cit. pp 52-53.
3
The Gentleman’s Magazine (vol. 42, 1772), gives the date as 26 April. According to Williams,
op. cit. it was 27 March.
433
A FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
The following books should be useful for readers coming to the subject for the
first time. For other relevant studies, see the footnotes.
There are dozens of books on eighteenth century London. One of the best
general surveys is Dorothy Marshall’s Dr Johnson’s London (London, 1968). On the
London Poor see Dorothy George’s London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London
1930), a book of permanent value.
There are a number of good surveys of the Poor Law in the eighteenth
century. See Dorothy Marshall, The English Poor Law in the Eighteenth Century
(London, first published in 1926), Paul Stack, The English Poor Law, 1531 – 1782
(1990), Lynn Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Law and
the People (Cambridge, 1998) and G. W. Oxley, Poor Relief in England and Wales
(Newton Abbot, 1974).
On Thomas Coram, see chapters 10-13 of Gillian Wagner’s Thomas Coram,
Gent. (Woodbridge, 2004). Gillian Wagner’s book is based on extensive research.
Her assertion that Coram was unique in being a man of integrity in an age of
corruption is rather odd.
For English philanthropy in the eighteenth century, see the relevant chapters
of David Owen’s English Philanthropy, 1660-1960 (Cambridge Mass. Harvard
University Press). Excellent.
434
For Jonas Hanway, see John H. Hutchins, Jonas Hanway (New York, 1940)
or James Stephen Taylor, Jonas Hanway, Founder of the Marine Society (Scolar
Press, London and Berkeley, 1985).
There are two major studies of the Foundling hospital, R. H Nichols
and F. A Wray’s The History of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1935) and
Ruth M. McClure’s Coram’s Children: The Foundling Hospital of the
Eighteenth Century (New Haven and London, 1987).
Nichols and Wray’s
book at times reads like mere annals, but has the merit of providing short
chapters on the branch hospital and it makes good use of the Hospital’s
statistics.
Mrs McClure’s book is more readable and she shows a better
grasp of the eighteenth century background. The book is, however, marred
by a misinterpretation of the Hospital’s statistics. The increase in mortality
rates during the General Reception is nowhere near as dramatic as Mrs
McClure suggests. Nevertheless, this is a book that anyone who has studied
the Foundling Hospital in this period would have been proud to have written.
See also Correspondence of the Foundling Hospital Inspectors in
Berkshire, 1757-68, ed. Gillian Clark (Berkshire Record Society 1994).
Dr
Clark prints all the surviving letters from the Berkshire inspectors to the
London headquarters – a really useful book.