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Foundling

A foundling is an infant or young child discovered after being abandoned or deserted by its parents, often due to poverty, illegitimacy, or inability to provide care.^[1]^[2] The term originates from Middle English foundlynge, combining "found" (past participle of find) with the diminutive suffix -ling, reflecting the notion of a "little found one" left in public places such as doorsteps, churches, or roadsides.^[3]^[4] Historically, foundlings faced high risks of infanticide or exposure, prompting the establishment of dedicated institutions across Europe starting in the late Middle Ages to mitigate child mortality and facilitate anonymous surrender.^[5] Foundling care evolved through mechanisms like revolving wheels (ruote) installed in monastery walls from the 12th century onward, allowing mothers to deposit infants without detection, particularly in Italy where the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence—founded in 1419—served as a pioneering model for state-supported orphanages aimed at preserving life amid widespread abandonment.^[6] In England, the London Foundling Hospital, chartered in 1739 by philanthropist Thomas Coram after years of advocacy, admitted exposed children to provide maintenance and education, though overcrowding and disease led to mortality rates exceeding 50% in early decades, underscoring the challenges of institutional rearing over familial alternatives.^[7]^[8] Similar facilities, such as New York's Catholic Foundling Hospital established in 1869 by the Sisters of Charity, addressed urban abandonment during industrialization, resettling children via movements like the Orphan Trains while grappling with epidemics and resource strains.^[9]^[10] These efforts, rooted in charitable and ecclesiastical initiatives, highlighted tensions between saving lives and the systemic failures of pre-modern welfare, with empirical records revealing that while foundling homes reduced outright infanticide, they often perpetuated cycles of neglect through wet-nursing practices and inadequate oversight.^[11]^[12]

Definition and Etymology

Definition

A foundling refers to an infant or young child deliberately abandoned by parents or guardians, who is then discovered and cared for by strangers or institutions, with parentage unknown to the finders.^[13]^[14] This abandonment typically involves leaving the child in locations where discovery is anticipated, such as public spaces, to enable survival through third-party intervention rather than outright infanticide.^[11] Foundlings differ from orphans, who have lost parents to death, and from runaways, who leave voluntarily; the term emphasizes intentional relinquishment by living caregivers, often motivated by poverty, illegitimacy stigma, or inability to provide sustenance, with the causal aim of preserving the child's life via communal or institutional assumption of responsibility.^[15]^[16] In practice, such children were "found" through direct discovery or mechanisms designed for anonymous deposit, underscoring a historical pattern of exposure tied to familial or economic pressures rather than malice.^[11]

Etymology

The term "foundling" derives from Middle English fundelyng or foundlynge, attested as early as before 1300 in the Early English Psalter, formed by combining the past participle funden (or founden) of the verb finden ("to find," from Old English findan) with the suffix -ling, which denotes a diminutive form or a person/thing resulting from the base action.^[3]^[1] The verb finden stems from Proto-Germanic *finþanō ("to come upon, discover"), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pent- ("to tread, go"), reflecting a native Germanic root without direct borrowing from Latin terms for exposure (expositio or similar), despite ancient Roman practices of infant abandonment.^[17] The suffix -ling originates in Old English as a diminutive or agentive ending, seen in compounds like dǣpling ("little dear") or hǣþling ("heathen"), evolving to characterize entities defined by an event, such as a "found" child. This formation parallels Dutch vondeling ("foundling," from vinden, "to find"), suggesting possible cross-linguistic influence in the pattern but confirming English innovation within its Germanic lineage.^[18] Semantically, early uses denoted an abandoned or illegitimate child discovered by others, shifting from a literal "found one" (potentially any discovered item) to a specialized reference for forsaken infants by the late medieval period, as evidenced in Middle English texts equating it with fondling or fyndling in contexts of parental desertion.^[19]^[3] This evolution underscores the word's conceptual tie to discovery amid neglect, without implying broader object applications in surviving records.^[17]

Historical Practices

Ancient and Pre-Modern Abandonment

In ancient Rome, expositio referred to the paterfamilias's legal right to abandon newborns—frequently females, those with deformities, or illegitimate offspring—by placing them in public locations such as refuse heaps, marketplaces, or temple columns, where they faced death from exposure unless retrieved.^[20]^[21] This practice stemmed from economic pressures in urban households, where limited resources favored male heirs for inheritance and labor, with families often unable to sustain additional children amid high living costs and frequent famines.^[22] Estimates indicate that 20-40% of urban infants in Rome underwent abandonment, either via exposure or sale into servitude, though not all perished, as some were adopted by slaves, wet nurses, or childless couples who raised them as alumni or fosterlings.^[23]^[24] Following the empire's Christianization by the 4th century CE, the Church explicitly prohibited direct infanticide, classifying it as homicide akin to murder and subjecting perpetrators to excommunication or penance, yet exposure endured as a less overt method amid persistent poverty and agrarian hardships.^[25] In medieval Europe, abandoned infants were often left at church doorsteps or crossroads, with retrieval rates varying by region; monasteries and charitable households occasionally fostered survivors, but exposure to cold, predators, or neglect resulted in high mortality, estimated at over 50% for unprotected neonates based on skeletal evidence of hypothermia and malnutrition.^[26] Archaeological analyses of infant deposits, such as those in Roman Britain extending into early medieval contexts, reveal a potential skew toward female remains, aligning with parental preferences for sons in patrilocal societies strained by dowry costs and labor demands.^[27]^[28] By the 12th century, Italian city-states like those in Tuscany introduced rudimentary anonymous deposit systems—precursors to formal wheels—such as slots or baskets at convent walls, enabling discreet relinquishment driven by illegitimacy rates exceeding 20% in urban poor populations and famine-induced scarcity.^[29] These mechanisms increased survival odds through prompt transfer to wet nurses, though pre-retrieval deaths from initial exposure persisted, particularly in winter months when rural families prioritized surviving offspring amid harvest failures documented in contemporaneous chronicles.^[23] Overall, abandonment reflected causal realities of demographic pressures, with female infants overrepresented due to lower perceived economic utility in resource-limited households.^[22]

Establishment of Foundling Hospitals

The earliest dedicated foundling hospital in Europe was the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, Italy, established in 1419 by the Arte della Seta, the guild of silk merchants, to shelter and nurture abandoned infants in response to increasing rates of child exposure driven by urban poverty and births out of wedlock. Commissioned from architect Filippo Brunelleschi and funded in part by a bequest from merchant Francesco Datini, the institution marked a shift from informal abandonment practices to organized charitable care, setting a precedent for institutional responses to infant vulnerability.^[30]^[31] This Italian model proliferated across the peninsula during the 13th to 15th centuries, incorporating mechanisms like the ruota dei trovatelli (foundling wheel), a revolving cylinder installed in convent or hospital walls for anonymous infant deposit, as decreed by Pope Innocent III in 1198 to curb infanticide while preserving parental secrecy. By the 18th century, such wheels operated in major cities including Venice and Milan, where foundling homes received hundreds to thousands of surrenders yearly, reflecting scaled-up charitable efforts by religious and civic authorities to manage surges in illegitimate births.^[32]^[33] The concept extended to France in the 16th and 17th centuries, with hospitals like Paris's Hôtel-Dieu expanding provisions for enfants trouvés (foundlings) amid similar urban demographic pressures, and dedicated facilities such as the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés formalized in 1670 under royal auspices to centralize intake and care. In England, the London Foundling Hospital was chartered in 1739 by philanthropist Thomas Coram after a 17-year campaign, aiming to rescue "exposed and deserted young children" through nonsectarian institutional upbringing, with initial admissions limited by lottery to cope with overwhelming applications from impoverished mothers.^[33]^[34]

Operations and Mortality Rates

Foundling hospitals operated through anonymous admission processes, where infants were typically deposited without identification to protect parental privacy. In England, the London Foundling Hospital initially allowed general admissions from 1741 to 1756, leading to a surge of nearly 15,000 children received during the peak in the 1750s, after which a ballot or lottery system was introduced to manage overcrowding and select candidates based on perceived legitimacy of need.^[35]^[36] Upon admission, healthy infants under two months were promptly outsourced to wet nurses in rural parishes, such as those in Hertfordshire, where local women were registered to provide breastfeeding and care until the child reached four or five years old, after which they returned to institutional care or apprenticeship.^[37]^[38] This outsourcing aimed to mitigate urban disease risks but often exacerbated issues due to inadequate supervision, multiple assignments per nurse, and inconsistent nutrition. Mortality rates in these institutions were extraordinarily high, driven by causal factors including overcrowding, deficient hygiene, inadequate nutrition, and rampant infectious diseases. At the London Foundling Hospital, overall mortality reached 61% from 1741 to 1760, escalating to 81% during the general admission period amid unchecked influxes that overwhelmed resources.^[39] In rural wet-nursing placements, rates hovered around 53%, reflecting poor sanitation and exposure to gastrointestinal pathogens, while hospital infirmaries saw even higher losses from conditions like dysentery and fevers.^[40] Continental European facilities, such as Italian foundling hospices, exhibited comparable or worse outcomes, with mortality frequently exceeding 80-90% in the 18th century, attributable to similar institutional strains and disease transmission in wet-nursing networks. Late 18th-century reforms yielded partial improvements, though institutional care remained inferior to family environments. In London, mortality declined to approximately 17% by 1799, linked to enhanced nutritional protocols—such as better maternal milk quality and supplemental feeding—and the introduction of isolation wards to curb contagion spread.^[40] These changes, alongside stricter nurse oversight, addressed some overcrowding and hygiene deficits but could not fully offset the foundational vulnerabilities of separating infants from biological kin, where survival rates in intact poor families typically surpassed those in foundling systems.^[41] Persistent flaws, including delayed placements and hand-feeding in infirmaries, continued to elevate risks compared to non-institutional alternatives.^[33]

Primary Reasons for Abandonment

The primary reasons for the abandonment of infants as foundlings historically centered on illegitimacy driven by social stigma and the consequences of premarital sexual relations without marital commitment, rather than isolated economic factors. In institutions like London's Foundling Hospital, established in 1741, records indicate that the vast majority of admissions—estimated at over 90% in the initial decades—consisted of illegitimate children surrendered by unmarried mothers seeking to evade familial and communal disgrace.^[42] This pattern reflects individual choices amid cultural norms that penalized unwed motherhood, where women, often servants or from lower classes, concealed pregnancies to preserve marriage prospects or social standing, linking abandonment directly to breakdowns in personal restraint and relational accountability.^[43] Economic pressures among urban poor contributed but were insufficient as sole explanations, as abandonment rates frequently escalated following the availability of institutional care, indicating a moral hazard where perceived safety nets encouraged relinquishment over retention. Historical data from European foundling systems show increases in surrenders coinciding with hospital expansions; for instance, Italian records reveal higher abandonment volumes during periods of active foundling wheels, with rates declining after their removal in the 19th and 20th centuries, suggesting that welfare provisions sometimes supplanted family responsibility.^[44] In London, surges in admissions during the 1740s and 1750s, amid rising urban overpopulation, correlated not just with poverty but with the hospital's lottery-based intake system, which drew disproportionate submissions from areas with acute illegitimacy but viable alternatives for legitimate offspring.^[23] A marked gender imbalance further underscores selective agency in abandonment, with female infants outnumbering males at ratios approaching 2:1 in many foundling records, attributable to patrilineal inheritance preferences and the economic burdens of dowries for daughters in agrarian and early industrial societies. This skew, evident in 18th-century European data, arose from families prioritizing male heirs for labor and property transmission while viewing females as liabilities requiring marriage provisions, prompting disproportionate exposure or surrender of girls to mitigate long-term costs.^[28] Such patterns persisted despite broader child mortality, highlighting causal decisions rooted in familial utility calculations over uniform destitution.^[45]

Demographic Patterns and Economic Pressures

Abandonment rates for foundlings peaked across Europe in the eighteenth century, particularly in urban centers undergoing early industrialization and rural-to-urban migration. In Italy, where foundling hospitals were most prevalent, annual abandonments surged amid rural exodus driven by agricultural pressures and urban opportunities, with institutions in cities like Naples receiving thousands of infants yearly relative to local birth cohorts. For instance, in late-eighteenth-century Naples, abandonment approached one in five births in some estimates, reflecting the strain of population influx and limited familial resources in burgeoning urban environments.^[46]^[47] This pattern aligned with broader demographic shifts, as fertility remained high but economic dislocation from rural depopulation exacerbated poverty, prompting mass abandonment as families prioritized surviving legitimate offspring.^[48] Social class distributions among abandoners were overwhelmingly from lower strata, including day laborers, rural migrants, and urban servants, with artisanal families contributing sporadically due to workshop instability. Unmarried female servants, often displaced by rural exodus and facing job loss upon pregnancy, accounted for a significant portion, as their employment precluded child-rearing without institutional support. Elite involvement remained negligible, as higher classes resorted to discreet private adoptions or wet-nursing rather than public hospitals, underscoring abandonment as a mechanism tied to proletarian vulnerabilities rather than universal practice.^[49]^[50]^[48] Over the long term, foundling hospitals served as an institutional alternative to direct infanticide, channeling unwanted infants into state or charitable care amid high pre-modern child mortality. However, by facilitating anonymous abandonment via mechanisms like foundling wheels, these institutions inadvertently amplified illegitimacy rates; the reduced personal and social costs of extramarital births encouraged behaviors previously deterred by full parental responsibility or lethal alternatives. Historical evidence from European homes indicates spikes in admissions post-establishment, correlating with elevated illegitimacy as welfare provisions diluted causal incentives for restraint in fertility decisions outside marriage.^[48]^[51]^[33]

Legal and Ethical Dimensions

Historical Legal Frameworks

In ancient Roman law, exposed infants were treated as akin to res nullius, unowned property that finders could claim and raise, often as slaves, though parents retained the right to reclaim them if identified prior to alienation.^[52] Emperor Constantine I's legislation in 315 CE, preserved in the Theodosian Code, formalized this by permitting finders to retain exposed children but subordinating their status to potential parental retrieval, with finders gaining tutelage rights only if no reclamation occurred.^[52] This framework emphasized paternal authority and property-like disposal, without state-imposed care obligations. Christian adaptations in the late Roman Empire integrated baptism as a mechanism to legitimize foundlings spiritually, equating finder adoption with sacramental incorporation into the faith community and overriding prior civil nullity.^[53] By the 4th century, imperial edicts under Valentinian I in 374 CE extended protections, mandating baptism for exposed children and prohibiting their sale into slavery if reclaimed, thus blending Roman property concepts with ecclesiastical duties on finders or institutions.^[54] Under English common law, foundlings were classified as bastards, barring them from inheriting real property or succeeding to titles unless reclaimed and legitimized by subsequent parental marriage, a status rooted in canon and civil precedents denying filiation without proof of wedlock.^[55] The Poor Relief Act of 1601 assigned parishes mandatory responsibility for foundlings as part of the impotent poor, requiring overseers to levy local rates for their maintenance, apprenticeship, or binding out, with no centralized state role but enforceable local obligations.^[56] In Catholic continental codes, such as those in 17th-century France, anonymous surrender was legalized via tours d'abandon (foundling wheels) at institutions like the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés, shielding depositors from prosecution while vesting custody in church or state entities, though retrieval remained possible via identifying markers if parents petitioned.^[57] Protestant jurisdictions, exemplified by England's Foundling Hospital practices from 1741, permitted tracing through submitted tokens and parental petitions, allowing reclamation within limits and prioritizing evidentiary claims over anonymity to affirm potential legitimacy.^[58]

Key Controversies and Institutional Failures

Critics of foundling hospitals characterized them as institutional "death traps," where empirical data revealed mortality rates far exceeding those in informal home care or even ancient exposure practices, primarily due to overcrowding, inadequate wet-nursing, and neglect rather than inherent abandonment risks. In France during the 18th century, adverse transport conditions to urban hospices contributed to extremely high infant death rates, often surpassing 50-70% within the first year from systemic care failures.^[59] Similarly, at the London Foundling Hospital from 1741 to 1760, overall mortality stood at 61%, dropping to 53% for rural-nursed children, rates that outpaced general urban infant mortality and underscored the perils of centralized institutionalization over decentralized family or community alternatives.^[39] These outcomes stemmed from causal factors like infectious disease propagation in dormitories and profit-driven wet-nursing contracts, which prioritized volume over quality, rendering hospitals counterproductive to child survival goals. The proliferation of foundling systems engendered moral hazards by subsidizing abandonment, distorting incentives toward serial relinquishments and exacerbating illegitimacy without addressing root familial breakdowns. In England, the 1741 opening of the London hospital correlated with heightened abandonment volumes—over 14,000 applications in the first 15 years—enabling some mothers to deposit multiple illegitimate offspring, as the institution absorbed the costs previously borne by kin or conscience.^[39] Historians have linked this to broader rises in bastardy ratios, from around 3-4% pre-hospital to higher mid-century levels, arguing that easy access incentivized premarital conceptions over self-reliant parenting or marriage.^[60] Such dynamics contravened first-principles family-centric approaches, as evidenced by policy reversals favoring restricted admissions to curb abuse, revealing how state-backed charity inadvertently amplified social pathologies like repeated illegitimacy cycles. Admission scandals further exposed institutional biases and corruption, particularly through selection mechanisms that privileged social connections over need. At the London Foundling Hospital, initial open policies led to unsustainable influxes by the 1750s, prompting a lottery system marred by favoritism—reports indicated bribes and influence-peddling allowed affluent or networked mothers to secure spots for their children, sidelining the truly destitute.^[36] This selective inequity, coupled with exposés of overcrowding and graft, fueled public outcry and contributed to the 1760 halt on general admissions, shifting focus to apprenticeships and underscoring failures in equitable, merit-based operations.^[40] These episodes highlighted deeper credibility issues in philanthropic governance, where elite oversight often masked self-interested distortions rather than delivering impartial relief.

Decline and Modern Developments

Factors Contributing to Decline

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 in England restructured relief for the destitute, emphasizing workhouses over specialized institutions and imposing financial liability on mothers for illegitimate children, which curtailed anonymous abandonments to foundling hospitals by eliminating incentives like unrestricted parish payments.^[61] Admissions to the London Foundling Hospital, for instance, plummeted from peaks of over 1,000 annually in the 1750s to fewer than 100 by the mid-19th century, as policies favored maternal retention or workhouse integration.^[39] Comparable shifts occurred in Ireland under the 1838 Poor Relief Act, which devolved foundling responsibilities to Poor Law unions, leading to the closure of the Dublin Foundling Hospital by effectively redirecting resources to general poor relief systems.^[62] Emerging alternatives further eroded traditional foundling practices, including child emigration programs that relocated tens of thousands of pauper children to British colonies between 1870 and 1914, organized by groups like Barnardo's to bypass overcrowded institutions.^[63] Informal adoption arrangements proliferated in the late 19th century, with statutory recognition in places like New York via the 1873 adoption law, providing families viable outlets for child placement without reliance on anonymous wheels or exposure.^[64] Sanitary reforms, spearheaded by Edwin Chadwick's 1842 report and subsequent public health acts, introduced clean water, sewage systems, and milk pasteurization, slashing institutional infant mortality by up to 48% in urban settings from 1880 to 1920 and transforming foundling homes into survivable orphanages rather than de facto mortuaries.^[65] ^[66] Victorian-era evangelical movements reinforced maternal obligations through moral campaigns against illegitimacy, framing abandonment as a dereliction of divine family duties amid heightened social stigma that discouraged exposure in favor of private charity or endurance.^[67] The Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act 1889, known as the first "Children's Charter," criminalized willful neglect and exposure while authorizing state intervention, thereby institutionalizing protections that supplanted ad hoc foundling mechanisms and further diminished abandonment rates post-1900.^[68]

Contemporary Abandonment Statistics and Interventions

In the United States, estimates of anonymous infant abandonments range from several hundred illegal cases annually to around 150-200 legal safe surrenders under state safe haven laws, which have facilitated approximately 4,100 such relinquishments nationwide since 1999. Illegal abandonments remain perilous, with 31 documented cases in 2021 involving dumpsters or similar hazards, of which 22 resulted in fatalities due to exposure or injury. Globally, child abandonment contributes to a subset of the estimated 140 million orphans and vulnerable children, with UNICEF data indicating heightened prevalence in poverty-stricken regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where economic stressors and conflict exacerbate family separations. These figures underscore abandonment's persistence despite legal frameworks, often linked to maternal desperation rather than broad institutional failures. Safe haven laws, enacted starting in Texas in 1999 and now universal across U.S. states, permit anonymous surrender of newborns—typically within 72 hours to 30 days of birth—at designated sites like hospitals or fire stations, aiming to avert infanticide without prosecution. Empirical data link these laws to a 66.7% decline in U.S. infanticide rates from 2008 to 2017, as monitored by the CDC, by channeling potential abandonments toward medical evaluation and adoption pathways. Baby boxes, ventilated drop-off devices installed at fire stations and hospitals since the 2010s, represent a technological revival of historical foundling wheels; while usage remains low (e.g., fewer than 100 U.S. installations by 2024), they enable immediate alerting of responders, yielding near-zero direct mortality in documented surrenders compared to traditional illegal dumpsites. Critiques of state-led interventions highlight their tendency to foster long-term dependency, as institutional care for relinquished children correlates with poorer developmental outcomes, including elevated risks of cognitive delays, attachment disorders, and adult psychopathology, per meta-analyses of early childhood studies. In contrast, empirical evidence favors family preservation programs, which demonstrate superior long-term adjustment—such as reduced recidivism in maltreatment and better educational attainment—over foster or institutional placements, with Swedish cohort data showing foster-entered youth over four times more likely to die by age 20 than comparably at-risk peers remaining with kin. Private alternatives, including crisis pregnancy centers and rapid adoption networks, exhibit successes in averting abandonment altogether by providing tangible support like housing and counseling, though scalability remains limited without broader policy shifts prioritizing causal interventions like economic aid over reactive custody systems.

Cultural Representations

Literature and Folklore

Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) exemplifies the 18th-century literary archetype of the foundling as a figure of innate moral virtue enabling social ascent despite humble origins. The protagonist, discovered as an infant on Squire Allworthy's bed and raised as his ward, navigates misadventures driven by his benevolent yet impulsive nature, ultimately revealing his true parentage and achieving legitimacy through personal merit rather than birthright alone.^[69] This narrative critiques class pretensions and hypocrisy while affirming providential justice, where the foundling's resilience underscores causal links between character and fortune over deterministic lineage.^[70] In folklore, foundlings recurrently embody motifs of divine providence intertwined with parental inadequacy, as seen in biblical accounts and European tales. The story of Moses, abandoned in a reed basket on the Nile to evade Pharaoh's decree against Hebrew males (Exodus 2:1-10), parallels ancient Near Eastern legends like Sargon of Akkad's exposure, positioning the foundling as a heroic survivor whose rise critiques tyrannical authority and highlights abandonment's roots in fear or vice.^[71] The Brothers Grimm's "Fundevogel" (Bird-Foundling, collected 1812) features a forester discovering an infant transported by a bird, raised alongside his daughter amid threats from a cannibalistic cook; the tale resolves through cunning and loyalty, symbolizing foundlings' destined protection yet exposing caregivers' moral failings in exposure narratives.^[72] Such motifs, recurrent across Indo-European traditions, often reveal abandonment as a consequence of socioeconomic desperation or ethical lapses, with the child's survival affirming resilience over romantic fate.^[73] Nineteenth-century literature, particularly Charles Dickens's works, adapted the foundling trope to indict institutional neglect and urban poverty, portraying orphans as emblems of societal critique. In Oliver Twist (1838), the titular character, born to a dying mother in a workhouse and left parentless, endures exploitation in London's underclass, his innate goodness clashing with corrupt systems like the poor law apparatus; this arc exposes causal failures in welfare structures, where abandonment stems from illegitimacy and economic precarity rather than inherent destiny.^[74] Dickens drew from contemporary realities, including high infant mortality and workhouse abuses, to underscore orphans' vulnerability without idealizing their plight.^[75] Extending into the 20th century, Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie comic strip (debut 1924) depicts a plucky girl orphaned young, navigating adversity through grit and alliances, critiquing dependency on flawed guardians while emphasizing self-reliance amid economic upheaval like the Great Depression.^[76] These representations collectively highlight foundlings' narrative utility in probing virtue's portability across strata, institutional shortcomings, and the unromantic origins of abandonment in human frailty.

Music, Art, and Theater

George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah became closely associated with London's Foundling Hospital through annual benefit performances starting on May 27, 1749, which raised approximately £7,000 (equivalent to nearly £1 million in modern terms) by the time of Handel's death in 1759.^[77] ^[78] Handel personally funded an organ for the hospital's chapel and, in his 1759 will, bequeathed a fair copy of the Messiah score to its governors, enabling ongoing performances to support the institution's care for abandoned children.^[79] ^[80] William Hogarth, a founding governor of the Foundling Hospital, donated key artworks that depicted themes of child rescue and institutional benevolence, including his 1740 full-length portrait of founder Thomas Coram holding the royal charter and a painting of Moses Brought to Pharaoh's Daughter (c. 1740s), evoking the biblical foundling narrative as an ideal for the hospital's mission.^[81] ^[82] Hogarth collaborated with other artists to create a sequence of Court Room paintings symbolizing charity and protection against abandonment, reinforcing the hospital's public image through visual allegory.^[83] In Renaissance Florence, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, established in 1419 as Europe's first foundling hospital, featured ten glazed terracotta medallions of swaddled infants by Andrea della Robbia, installed between 1498 and 1525 on the facade to symbolize the sheltered innocents admitted via the hospital's rota wheel for anonymous abandonment.^[84] ^[85] These sculptures contrasted the vulnerability of exposed newborns with institutional safeguarding, a motif echoed in broader Italian Renaissance art addressing infanticide and child exposure amid high illegitimacy rates.^[86] Victorian theater frequently portrayed the dire fates of foundlings in workhouses through melodramas and adaptations critiquing systemic neglect, such as stage versions of Charles Dickens' narratives where orphans endured grueling labor and malnutrition before potential redemption.^[87] These productions, performed in London's theaters from the 1830s onward, highlighted contrasts between innocent vulnerability and institutional vice, urging reforms in poor law administration that often funneled abandoned children into exploitative conditions.^[88]

Film, Television, and Modern Media

Early cinema often portrayed foundlings through sentimental adaptations of Charles Dickens' novels, emphasizing themes of resilience and eventual redemption amid hardship. Silent films such as the 1909 Oliver Twist, directed by J. Stuart Blackton, depicted the titular character's orphan origins in a workhouse, drawing from Dickens' critique of institutional neglect while highlighting heroic survival narratives.^[89] These adaptations, numbering around one hundred in the silent era, romanticized the foundling's journey from abandonment to moral triumph, influencing public perceptions of child welfare.^[89] In the 1930s, musical and dramatic films shifted toward optimistic orphan tropes, exemplified by Little Orphan Annie (1932), a RKO production starring Mitzi Green as the plucky comic-strip character who escapes institutional drudgery for adoption by a wealthy benefactor.^[90] This adaptation, based on Harold Gray's strip originating in 1924, reinforced the foundling-as-underdog archetype, portraying orphanages as temporary waystations rather than sites of systemic failure, and grossed modestly while spawning radio serials.^[90] Documentaries in the late 20th and 21st centuries have countered these heroic depictions by exposing the harsh realities of foundling institutions, including overcrowding, disease, and high mortality rates. The 2023 film No Place Like Home: The Story of the Foundling Hospital, produced by Northern Town for London's Coram (formerly the Foundling Hospital), chronicles the experiences of 27,000 children admitted between 1741 and 1954, using archival records to illustrate regimented daily routines, limited education, and emotional isolation rather than fairy-tale resolutions.^[91] Similarly, a 2021 YouTube documentary on the Dublin Foundling Hospital details its 18th- and 19th-century operations, where infant mortality exceeded 90% in some years due to malnutrition and epidemics, framing the institution as a site of institutional tragedy rather than benevolence.^[92] Modern television has increasingly focused on foundlings' quests for identity and critiques of state care, blending detection with emotional reunions. The BBC's 2006 five-part series Found examines the psychological toll of abandonment, profiling adults grappling with unknown origins and inadequate foster systems through interviews and case studies.^[93] ITV's Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace (premiering 2020), hosted by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell, aids foundlings in tracing biological parents via DNA and records, highlighting failures in historical anonymity policies while achieving reunions in episodes aired through 2025.^[94] Procedural dramas, such as The Donna Reed Show's 1958 episode "The Foundling," depict immediate abandonment scenarios resolved through private family intervention, underscoring tensions between institutional options and personal ethics.^[95] These narratives often critique bureaucratic opacity in adoption processes, prioritizing empirical tracing over romanticized foundling myths.

Institutions and Named Places

Major Historical Institutions

The Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, Italy, opened on February 5, 1445, as one of Europe's earliest dedicated institutions for abandoned infants, receiving the first child just ten days after inauguration.^[30] Funded by the Arte della Seta silk guild, it provided wet-nursing, weaning, and basic education, processing thousands of foundlings over centuries through a system of external bassinets for anonymous deposits.^[30] While intended to curb infanticide amid Renaissance Florence's demographic pressures, its accessibility has been critiqued by historians for potentially facilitating abandonment by offering parents a guilt-free disposal mechanism, with records indicating surges tied to economic incentives like wet-nursing employment for mothers.^[96] The London Foundling Hospital, chartered in 1739 by philanthropist Thomas Coram, admitted its first cohort of 30 infants on March 25, 1741, under strict health inspections and an initial age limit of 12 months.^[35] Over its operational span until 1953, it cared for more than 27,000 children via a vast archive of half a million records, emphasizing moral reform, vocational training, and apprenticeships amid high urban poverty.^[97] Post-World War II, amid shifting welfare policies, the institution phased out residential care by 1954, evolving into Coram Voice to prioritize family support and prevention over institutionalization.^[98] In the United States, the New York Foundling, established on October 11, 1869, by the Sisters of Charity, targeted abandoned infants in a post-Civil War era of mass immigration and street orphans numbering around 30,000 in New York City alone.^[10] As a Catholic-run facility, it focused on immigrant communities, providing shelter, medical care, and adoption placements, later expanding foster programs to Puerto Rico for child emigration and family reunification starting in the mid-20th century.^[10] By addressing gaps in public systems, it admitted thousands annually in its early decades, though high mortality rates from infectious diseases reflected era-wide institutional challenges before modern antibiotics.^[9]

Geographic and Contemporary Sites

The Foundling Museum, situated at 40 Brunswick Square in Bloomsbury, London, serves as a preserved site dedicated to the legacy of the original Foundling Hospital, featuring artifacts such as identifying tokens deposited by parents with their abandoned infants during the 18th century. The museum's structure, built in the 1930s on the grounds of the former hospital, opened to the public in 2004 to exhibit these historical items and related exhibits.^[34]^[99] In San Francisco, the site of the former Foundling Asylum, established in 1868 by local philanthropists, is linked to documented high mortality rates among infants in the late 19th century, with records indicating neglect and disease contributed to numerous deaths, though no physical remnants of the building persist today.^[100] The New York Foundling operates contemporary facilities and residential programs across all five boroughs—Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island—serving children at risk of abandonment or family separation, with services including crisis nurseries and supportive housing rooted in its origins as a 1869 asylum for foundlings.^[101]^[10]

References

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FOUNDLING Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of FOUNDLING is an infant found after its unknown parents have abandoned it ... Word History. Etymology. Middle English fundelyng, foundlynge, from ...
[2]
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/foundling
[3]
foundling, n. meanings, etymology and more
The earliest known use of the noun foundling is in the Middle English period (1150—1500). OED's earliest evidence for foundling is from before 1300, in Early ...
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foundling - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Etymology. edit. From Middle English foundlyng, fondeyng, variants of Middle ... 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling : 1776, Adam ...
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Foundlings | Encyclopedia.com
Aimed at preventing loss of life–especially when it occurred prior to baptism–a system of foundling homes emerged in Italy and then spread throughout much of ...Missing: definition | Show results with:definition
[6]
[PDF] The Ospedale degli Innocenti, the hospital for abandoned
This foundling hospital is named in memory of “the Innocents,” the children of Bethlehem massacred by King Herod when he had been tricked by the wise men ...
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Ideological Foundations of the London Foundling Hospital
The London Foundling Hospital received its charter in 1739 after seventeen years of diligent work on the part of its founder, Thomas Coram.
[8]
Foundling Hospital Established - Bringing the Past to Virtual Life
Jan 22, 2018 · In 1739, Thomas Coram, a sea captain turned philanthropist, received a royal charter to establish London's Foundling Hospital addressing the ...
[9]
New York Foundling Hospital records - Archival Collections - NYU
The Foundling opened in 1869, under the auspices of the Sisters of Charity, as a Catholic haven for abandoned babies. It was one of the principal institutions ...
[10]
History - The New York Foundling
The Foundling – understanding that children thrive with loving families – participated in the Orphan Train Movement, which resettled hundreds of orphans with ...Missing: definition | Show results with:definition
[11]
Medieval Foundlings and their Care in Northern France, 1200-1500
In 1445, the hospital of St.-Esprit-en-Grève in Paris, under royal order, closed its doors to foundlings and accepted only orphans whose mothers had died in ...
[12]
Infanticide and Spectral Survival at the London Foundling Hospital
Focusing on the work of the London Foundling Hospital between 1741 and the mid-1860s, this article will explore the significance of infanticide, haunting, and.<|separator|>
[13]
What is a Foundling?
Foundling is an historic term applied to young children, who have been abandoned by parents then discovered and cared for by others.Missing: distinction | Show results with:distinction
[14]
Foundlings and Abandoned Children - Childhood Studies
Jan 13, 2014 · “Abandoned children” is the general term, whereas “foundling” is more specific, denoting infants left at institutions or “found” on the streets ...Missing: definition | Show results with:definition<|separator|>
[15]
FOUNDLING definition in American English - Collins Dictionary
A foundling is a baby that has been abandoned by its parents, often in a public place, and that has then been found by someone. [old-fashioned].Missing: distinction | Show results with:distinction
[16]
The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An ...
An abandoned child, a foundling, is not to be confused with a runaway or an orphan. The prevalence of child abandonment in literature does not necessarily ...
[17]
Foundling - Etymology, Origin & Meaning
"Foundling" originates from Middle English "founden," past of "finden," meaning a deserted infant; reflects its origin and meaning as a forsaken child.
[18]
foundling noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes
Word OriginMiddle English: from found (past participle of find) + -ling, perhaps on the pattern of Dutch vondeling. Take your English to the next level. The ...
[19]
findling - Middle English Compendium - University of Michigan
fondling, foundling. 1. (a) A child abandoned by the parents, a foundling; (b) an illegitimate child.
[20]
12 Hidden in Plain Sight: Expositi in the Community - Oxford Academic
This chapter explores the dynamics of infant exposure in the Roman Empire, especially the Roman legal attitude toward those who abandoned newborn infants ...
[21]
Roman Family and the Exposure of Infants - ThoughtCo
Feb 2, 2019 · The practice of abandoning their infants. This is generally known as exposure because the infants were exposed to the elements. Not all infants so exposed died.
[22]
Why were new born children left to die in ancient Rome?
Jun 15, 2016 · Reasons for exposing newborns included economic hardship, birth defects, illegitimacy, evil omens, and gender (more girls exposed).
[23]
[PDF] abandonment and infanticide. Throughout his-
Studies of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the. 19th century reveal a substantial history of infanticide and of abandonment to foundling homes, ...
[24]
Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire* | The Journal of Roman Studies
Sep 24, 2012 · The exposure of infants, very often but by no means always resulting in death, was widespread in many parts of the Roman Empire.
[25]
From Sin to Crime: Laws on Infanticide in the Middle Ages
Nov 20, 2015 · ' After Christianization, infanticide was regarded as a sin rather than a crime and was threatened with church penalties similar to those for ...
[26]
Exposure and Infanticide in Ancient Rome
Most exposed infants were apparently clothed, and in some cases families left them with tokens or amulets that might allow them to be recognized or reclaimed ...
[27]
Ancient Roman Infanticide Didn't Spare Either Sex, DNA Suggests
Jan 24, 2014 · Infant girls were apparently not killed more often than baby boys, researchers report in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
[28]
Full article: 'Missing girls' in historical Europe: reopening the debate
Nov 5, 2022 · Recent research argues that discriminatory practices unduly inflated female excess mortality during infancy and childhood in historical Europe.
[29]
The bell that saved abandoned babies in the Middle Ages
May 29, 2019 · This way, mothers could visit and nurse their own children, with the church alleviating the financial burden of the baby's other needs.
[30]
History | Istituto degli Innocenti
Apr 23, 2024 · The Istituto degli Innocenti was founded in the 15 th century to care for abandoned children. Thanks to a bequest by Francesco Datini, a merchant from Prato.
[31]
The “Ospedale degli Innocenti” and the “Bambino” of the American ...
Jul 1, 2002 · In 1419, they requested and obtained the right to a bequest of 1000 florins to build a facility entirely for children. “Arte della Seta” planned ...
[32]
Genealogy - Surname - Foundlings and Orphans - Istria on the Internet
From 1198 the first foundling wheels (ruota dei trovatelli) were used in Italy; Pope Innocent III decreed that these should be installed in homes for foundlings ...<|separator|>
[33]
Exposed and Abandoned. Origins of the Foundling Hospital
Dec 13, 2022 · Abstract. Abandoning undesired newborn infants was a Roman form of family limitation. They were exposed or given to foster mothers.Missing: definition | Show results with:definition
[34]
History - Foundling Museum
Over two hundred years before that, in 1739, Thomas Coram (1668-1751) had established the Foundling Hospital to care for babies at risk of abandonment. Coram ...
[35]
Admissions to the Foundling Hospital - Coram Story
Death rates soared as infections spread. Of nearly 15,000 children admitted in this period, over 10,000 died from infections. The Foundling Hospital built ...Missing: mortality | Show results with:mortality
[36]
The Foundling Hospital in Regency London
Jun 14, 2024 · The founding of the Foundling Hospital. The Foundling Hospital was set up by Thomas Coram (1668–1751), the master of a trading vessel to the ...
[37]
Foundling Hospital wet nurses of North Mymms
In the mid 1700s a register was kept of local nursing mothers who were prepared to feed and nourish unwanted babies from the Foundling Hospital in London.
[38]
Nurses and Inspectors at the Foundling Hospital - Coram Story
May 2, 2024 · Nursing mothers were called 'wet nurses' because they could breast-fed the youngest babies, whilst 'dry nurses' cared for infants who had been ...
[39]
Illegitimacy, mortality and the Foundling Hospital - Coram Story
The Foundling Hospital was for exposed children, mostly illegitimate, who had high mortality rates. Early mortality was 61%, and 81% during the General ...Missing: process ballot
[40]
The estimation of mortality at the London Foundling Hospital, 1741-99
This study investigates mortality rates at the London Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century in a way that addresses the issue.Missing: admission process ballot
[41]
The effect of nutritional status on historical infectious disease morbidity
This paper uses a historical cohort study based on records from the London Foundling Hospital to determine the causal effect of nutritional status of children.
[42]
The origins of the children of the London Foundling Hospital, 1741 ...
Wilson estimated that the majority of those received were illegitimate and that they constituted a ratio of 10-12 percent of London births (50 percent by women ...
[43]
Illegitimacy and the Foundling Hospital - Coram Story
Illegitimacy and the Foundling Hospital. Moses ... Many of the major children's voluntary societies refused to accept illegitimate children for this reason ...
[44]
'Pregnant, homeless, what now?' The search for a safe place to ...
Aug 21, 2025 · The Danish finding echoes recent historical research conducted in Italy, showing that abandonment rates fell after the foundling wheels were ...
[45]
Death, sex, and fertility: female infanticide in rural Spain, 1750–1950
Nov 8, 2021 · However, the number of children admitted at nearby foundling hospitals is relatively balanced which suggests that these girls never reached ...
[46]
The wheel of life? The effect of the abolition of the foundling wheel in ...
The ruota was a turning wheel placed on a wall outside foundling homes across Catholic Europe, which offered a means for anonymous infant abandonment. As infant ...
[47]
Childhood Mortality and Quality of Care among Abandoned ... - jstor
At this time, if these figures can be believed, the mortality risks of Bologna's foundlings were only moderately above those found among the poorer rural ...Missing: dysentery | Show results with:dysentery
[48]
Foundling Homes - Renaissance and Reformation
Jun 26, 2012 · Institutional foundling homes first emerged in late-14th-century Italy as distinct charitable initiatives of civic governments, confraternities, and guilds.Missing: definition | Show results with:definition
[49]
[PDF] Child Abandonment in 19th Century Lisbon - NOVA Research Portal
We always remain among the popular and working classes not only whenever referring to the social provenance of foundlings but also the wet nurses raising them ...
[50]
'Working Mothers' in Eighteenth-Century London | Oxford Academic
Aug 18, 2023 · In 18th-century London, mothers worked for income, home production, and care, often delegating childcare. They combined care with retail, and ...
[51]
The Foundling Hospital - Ulster Historical Foundation
The hospital's open-entry policy combined with social attitudes towards illegitimacy to encourage the development of a professional class of foundling carriers.
[52]
Source: Late Roman Law on Foundling Children
The Theodosian Code preserved a law on the legal status of exposed children, issued by Constantine I in the early fourth century.Missing: res nullius
[53]
The Exposed Child: Transplanting Roman Law into Late Antique ...
A closer look, however, reveals that they replaced the question of civil status with one of religious status, describing the adoption of a foundling as baptism ...
[54]
Exposed and Abandoned. Origins of the Foundling Hospital - PubMed
Dec 13, 2022 · The Milan Foundling Hospital was established in 787 CE. When the Carolingian Empire fell apart during the 10th century, monastic networks (the ...Missing: rates dysentery
[55]
[PDF] Illegitimacy and illegitimates in English history - Alan Macfarlane
On the one hand, by canon law and common law, bastards received no automatic inheritance in land. In manorial law generally, in theory 'a bastard can never ...
[56]
English Poor Laws - Social Welfare History Project
The poor laws gave the local government the power to raise taxes as needed and use the funds to build and maintain almshouses; to provide indoor relief.
[57]
Red children and foundling wheels | Parisian Fields
Oct 10, 2021 · The name refers to foundling and orphaned children who were dressed in red to show that they were the beneficiaries of royal charity.
[58]
Highlights of the Foundling Hospital Archive: a father's plea
Feb 23, 2023 · In 1763, the Foundling Hospital amended the admission conditions to require a petition letter from the child's parent, explaining their ...Missing: Protestant | Show results with:Protestant
[59]
reception and restitution of foundlings during the eighteenth century
The institution's vocation to widespread acceptance of illegitimate children is even confirmed by the practice of providing assistance to legitimate couples, ...
[60]
Illegitimacy and its implications in mid-eighteenth-century London
Jan 29, 2009 · As Laslett has shown, the region 'East', which included Middlesex and Essex, had an overall illegitimacy ratio of 1.2–1.4 per cent in the period ...
[61]
1834 Poor Law - The National Archives
The new Poor Law ensured that the poor were housed in workhouses, clothed and fed. Children who entered the workhouse would receive some schooling.Missing: foundling hospitals
[62]
Dean Swift and the Dublin Foundling Hospital - jstor
The fate of the Dublin Foundling Hospital was sealed by the Irish Poor Relief Act 1838 which ascribed responsibility for destitute children to the Poor Law ...
[63]
The history of British child migration schemes - Child Migrants Trust
Britain's child migration has a long history. In 1618, a hundred children were sent from London to Virginia, now one of the United States of America.
[64]
Nineteenth Century America and the Passage of the First Adoption ...
Aug 6, 2018 · Summary: The New York legislature passed its first statute legalizing adoption in 1873 with surprisingly little controversy or debate.Missing: schemes decline
[65]
[PDF] The Role of Effective Water and Sewerage Infrastructure, 1880–1920
Feb 13, 2019 · The treatments lowered infant mortality by 22.8 log points (out of a. 47.7 log point decline), or by 48 percent. Each intervention in isolation.
[66]
Learning From History About Reducing Infant Mortality
Improvements in sanitation, civil registration, milk purification, and institutional structures to monitor and reduce infant mortality played a crucial role in ...
[67]
Illegitimacy, Family and Stigma in England, 1660-1834 - Notches
Sep 22, 2022 · Early in the period illegitimacy was strongly linked to sin, with stigma justified as a punishment from God. This stigma was applied to all ...Missing: evangelical maternal duty
[68]
A history of child protection - The Open University
In 1889 the act known as the 'Children's Charter' was passed, permitting the law to intervene between parents and children for the first time in history.
[69]
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (Book Review) - HistoryNet
Jun 12, 2006 · Tom Jones is told in 18 books, each with a narrator who lends cheeky commentary throughout. The narration is so cleverly done it almost seems ...
[70]
Analysis of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones - Literary Theory and Criticism
May 21, 2025 · Much of the novel's enduring success is due not only to Tom's likability as a flawed hero but to the shaping of the heroine, Sophia Western, free of stereotype.
[71]
The Birth of Moses: Between Bible and Midrash - TheTorah.com
Dec 19, 2013 · This is the common myth of “the hero as foundling.” We encounter it in the Neo-Assyrian Sargon birth legend as well as in many other times and ...
[72]
Fundevogel (Bird-foundling) - Grimm
Fairy tale: Fundevogel (Bird-foundling) - A fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. There was once a forester who went into the forest to hunt, and as he entered ...
[73]
Bastards and Foundlings in Folklore and Fairy Tale - ResearchGate
This chapter offers analysis of the sociolegal and cultural significances that seem to underpin the need for knowable and authentic ancestral identity.
[74]
Foundlings, orphans and unmarried mothers | The British Library
All children taken in as foundlings – even those whose names were known – were given entirely new identities at the outset. The Hospital provided shelter, food, ...
[75]
[PDF] The Role of the Orphan Child in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist
The foundling orphan is a mysterious character, and the narratives usually contain unknown parentage, threatened inheritance and the final revelation of the ...
[76]
'Little Orphan Annie' comic strip is first published - History.com
Jul 28, 2025 · On August 5, 1924, the “Little Orphan Annie” comic strip makes its debut in the funny pages of the New York Daily News.Missing: foundling | Show results with:foundling
[77]
Music at the Foundling Hospital - Coram Story
Handel paid for a new organ and continued to hold annual performances of Messiah in the chapel until his death in 1759. Foundling Hospital, The Chapel: Designed ...
[78]
Messiah by the Numbers - Tafelmusik
Dec 19, 2022 · ... Foundling Hospital in London between 1749 and 1759: £7,000 ... Our 2022 performances of Handel Messiah sold out—but you can still join us!<|separator|>
[79]
Handel's Will - Foundling Museum
Handel supported the Hospital with benefit performances, the first of which occurred in 1749. His Foundling Hospital Anthem and his oratorio Messiah were ...
[80]
How Handel's Messiah helped London's orphans – and vice versa
Mar 13, 2014 · As a final act of generosity, Handel left in his will a fair copy of the Messiah score to the governors of the Foundling Hospital, thus enabling ...
[81]
Captain Thomas Coram (1668–1751) | Art UK
29–31 day deliveryThis full-length portrait of Captain Thomas Coram was painted and presented to the Foundling Hospital by Hogarth in 1740. Hogarth donated his portrait of ...
[82]
Moses Brought to Pharaoh's Daughter | Works of Art | RA Collection
The subject was appropriate for the Foundling Hospital, which raised abandoned children, and provided a depiction of the ideal to which it aspired. This print ...
[83]
Hogarth & Company - Foundling Museum
British artist William Hogarth worked with a group of fellow artists to create an inspiring sequence of paintings for the Hospital's Court Room.
[84]
Andrea della Robbia's bambini at the Ospedale degli Innocenti ...
Created by Andrea della Robbia, this toddler is one of ten similar sculptures adorning the façade of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a Florentine foundling ...
[85]
Swaddled Children Terra Cotta Bas-Reliefs [Architecture]
These images of swaddled infants come from a series of 10 glazed terra cotta bas-reliefs known as the "bambini." Andrea della Robbia sculpted them between 1463 ...
[86]
Dead Infants, Cruel Mothers, and Heroic Popes: The Visual Rhetoric ...
Nov 20, 2018 · The legend, which tells how Innocent established Santo Spirito as a foundling hospital in response to the discovery of victims of infanticide in ...
[87]
Theatres in Victorian London
Mar 20, 2022 · Here appeared the first Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, Thespis; or, the Gods Grown Old (December 1871). Dion Boucicault had two plays ...<|separator|>
[88]
[PDF] PLAY GUIDE - Off Square Theatre Company
Oliver Twist - The main character of the story. An orphan who grew up in a workhouse and runs away to London, where he joins other orphans in picking pockets ...
[89]
Charles Dickens and Silent Cinema - YouTube
Feb 17, 2012 · Even before the coming of sound there were around a hundred adaptations of Dickens' works on film - not only made in this country but around ...
[90]
Little Orphan Annie (1932) - IMDb
Rating 6.4/10 (121) Daddy Warbucks leaves Annie alone, who then finds Mickey. Mickey chooses to go with Annie to her shack. It is a Comedy, Drama, Family movie.
[91]
No Place Like Home: The Story of the Foundling Hospital (Film)
It reveals fascinating details of the lives of some of the 27,000 children who grew up at the Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1954, exploring their ...
[92]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMB7YLfBdEk
[93]
Found (TV Series 2006– ) - IMDb
A five-part BBC TV documentary series about foundlings, which examines the unique problems faced by these people as they grow up without a sense of identity.
[94]
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace - Watch Episode - ITVX
Deeply moving documentary series where Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell help foundlings track down the people who abandoned them as babies.
[95]
The Donna Reed Show S01:E06 - The Foundling - Tubi
Watch The Donna Reed Show Season 1 Episode 6 The Foundling Free Online. A woman abandons her child at the Stones' place.
[96]
Ospedale degli Innocenti: a social history - ArtTrav
Aug 10, 2008 · Often, children were abandoned at the Innocenti because women wanted to take on a (well-paying) wetnurse job, so that the institution actually ...
[97]
Foundling Hospital Archive - Coram Story
The archive spans 1739-1954, with half-million records of 27,000 children. 405 volumes (1739-1899) are digitized, with 100,000 pages online. The physical ...Missing: numbers 1739-1953
[98]
Exhibition: Coram's Online Foundling Hospital Archive
The first Foundlings were admitted on 25 March 1741, and the Hospital ran until 1954. Its work now continues as Coram, a group of specialist organisations ...Missing: 1739-1953 | Show results with:1739-1953
[99]
Tokens of History - Foundling Museum
The tokens are identifying objects parents left with their children at the Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century. They hold myriad personal stories.
[100]
The forgotten horrors of San Francisco's deadly foundling asylum
Feb 20, 2020 · The San Francisco Foundling Asylum began in 1868 with good intentions. The city's richest families saw it as a charitable opportunity.
[101]
Residential Services - The New York Foundling
LOCATIONS SERVED: All 5 NYC Boroughs (Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island) and Rockland, Westchester, and Orange Counties · AGES SERVED: Adults ...