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The Fate of Foundlings in the Regency

Updated: Nov 13

By Jessie Lewis, co-author of The Foundling , Rags to Richmonds Book 3

A foundling was a term used to define a child who had been abandoned by its parents and subsequently ‘found’ and cared for by others, often in a foundling hospital. At the time, the word ‘hospital’ did not have the same meaning as it does today—its inhabitants were not necessarily ill or wounded. Rather, it was considered a place of hospitality, where children could be guaranteed food and shelter.


Not all foundlings were orphans. Often, it was the parents themselves who gave their children into the care of a foundling hospital, driven by destitution or the stigma for a woman of having a child out of wedlock. Abusive family situations or absent parents might also qualify a child for admission.


Of course, children who had lost both parents regularly found their way into these institutions as well, but there were systems in place that meant a foundling hospital might not be their first landing spot after being orphaned. In the Regency Era, it was considered the responsibility of the parish where the family had lived to support any orphaned children. They might be apprenticed by a local tradesman or given work in the kitchen of the local clergyman. Families without children of their own might take them in. In all cases, welfare payments could be applied for from the parish towards the upkeep of that child. Some orphans were able to appeal to distant relatives for support, since, at the time, the large landowners who had benefited from primogeniture laws also inherited the duty of care for any unmarried female relations or dependent minors.


Occasionally, however, none of this was possible—increasingly so as the industrial revolution took hold, and more families were displaced from their hometowns. In such cases, children could end up in all sorts of situations, from the workhouse to the streets. Workhouses were a last resort, with foundling hospitals considered to be a lesser evil. The two differed in that foundling hospitals were intended to be a replacement home—somewhere a child would be cared for by someone other than their biological family. Workhouses, on the other hand, received people of all ages who had fallen into poverty. It was not uncommon for whole families, but particularly single mothers, to end up there, and rather than receiving an education, they were put to work to earn their bed and board.


Famously, Charles Dickens’ character Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, where he then grew up after his mother died in childbirth. Had she survived, she might well have preferred to hand him over to a foundling hospital, at least temporarily. At many institutions, family members who left their children would provide them with some manner of token by which they might be identified, if and when they were ever collected. Records at the Foundling Hospital in London show tokens including playing cards, jewellery, coins, pieces of fabric, and medals. Records also show that few mothers ever returned for their children.

Dining Hall at The Foundling Hospital of Dublin

Most foundling hospitals in the British Isles were established during the 18th century. Two of the earliest were The Foundling Hospital of Dublin, opened in Ireland in 1704, and The Edinburgh Orphan Hospital, opened in Scotland in 1733. Both were funded by their respective governments. In England, The Foundling Hospital in London, established in 1739 after a long campaign by Captain Thomas Coram, was the country’s earliest children’s charity. This was in keeping with a heightened focus on children’s charities across Europe at the time, with child welfare quickly becoming a vastly fashionable cause. Many eminent members of society, as well as newly-enriched merchants and tradesmen, turned their philanthropic eye towards the care and protection of underprivileged children, stumping up huge sums of money to support the building and running of these establishments.

Thomas Coram

Both the Asylum for Female Orphans and The Orphan Working School were established in 1758 in London—one by a philanthropic magistrate, Sir John Fielding, and one by a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Edward Pickard. Josiah Mason made his fortune from manufacturing pen nibs in the 1860s and donated most of it to building and running an eponymous orphanage in North Birmingham. In 1847, a man named Müller purchased seven acres of land in Bristol and opened a house that could accommodate 300 children. By 1870, four more buildings had been added, and admissions numbered more than 2,050. In 1868, Doctor Samuel Chadwick gave £17,000 specifically for building of an orphanage in Bolton, in the north of England. And in 1850, John Lees, a Victorian merchant, opened an orphanage in Wolverhampton town centre to care for children who had become orphaned by recent cholera epidemics. 


The larger institutions had some significantly more famous benefactors on their books. The London Foundling Hospital’s list of founders included 17 dukes, 29 earls, six viscounts, 20 barons, 20 baronets, seven privy counsellors, the lord mayor, and eight aldermen of the City of London, amongst others. George Frederic Handel donated an organ and conducted annual benefit concerts of Messiah in the hospital's chapel, as well as bequeathing a copy of the original manuscript to the hospital. Queen Charlotte was the patroness of the Asylum for Female Orphans in London, and as of 1850, the Orphan Working School in London boasted Queen Victoria as its patroness.

The London Foundling Hospital

Of course, these men and women had reasons other than fashion for supporting children’s charities. The London Foundling Hospital’s original name says much of its founding principles: the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children. Specifically, they aimed to ‘prevent the frequent murders committed on poor miserable infants by their parents to hide their shame, and the inhuman custom of exposing new-born children to perish in the streets’.


The Edinburgh Orphan Hospital’s founders were concerned about the number of orphan children whose want of familial support left them ‘exposed to all the evils inseparable from a state of idleness and ignorance’. Some institutions were set up to help orphans of men and women in specific occupations, for example, the Actors' Orphanage in Croydon, founded in 1896 by Kittie Carson, who also founded the Theatrical Guild. The Royal Liverpool Seamen’s Orphanage was set up in 1876 with voluntary contributions from ship owners and merchants to help the children of men lost at sea. In the Victorian era, there were a host of orphanages established to look after children whose fathers had been killed in railroad accidents.

Admission rules varied between institutions. The greatest restriction was often capacity, which rarely met demand. The Edinburgh Orphan Hospital could only house 200 children at its peak, and whilst it was, in theory, open to any child who could prove they had no other care providers, in reality, governors were forced to place stringent limits on numbers. Children had to be between the ages of seven and 11, their parish minister had to attest to their moral character, and they could not be illegitimate. If they passed all these criteria, they had to be interviewed by the governors and pass a medical examination. In the records still held in the archive, the words ‘a proper object of pity’ are written on the papers of successful applicants.


The Foundling Hospital in London initially only accepted applicants under a year, but in 1756, the government insisted that they take all children who applied for a place. These children were not housed on site, but sent out to wet nurses, but still, the indiscriminate admissions soon overwhelmed the system, and a stricter set of admission policies was implemented. In contrast to the Edinburgh Hospital, children brought to the London Hospital from 1801 onwards were required to be illegitimate.


Upon admission, the age of the foundlings dictated what happened to them. Babies were usually sent to wet nurses or families in the country—equivalent to modern foster families—where they stayed until they were approximately five years old. They were then returned to the orphanage to receive an education, unless they were lucky enough to be found permanent placements before that. 

Older children could expect a fairly typical offering of religious, moral, and practical education. Girls were taught reading, writing, needlework, knitting, and the basic arithmetic required for household accounts. They were often required to make their own clothes—sometimes their own shoes. In some establishments they were expected to help in the kitchen, thereby learning to cook, wash, and launder. Boys were similarly taught to read and write, with the addition, in some places, of weaving and making nets.


The food was notoriously bad, but likely better than was to be found at the workhouses. Boys and girls were usually housed separately, in different wings, for example, or at least in separate dormitories. Personal hygiene was generally poor in the regency era, so we cannot expect that these children were receiving daily baths—but there was a focus on disease prevention in many of the hospitals, as they tried to protect the children from the ravages of smallpox, diphtheria, polio, and other contemporary epidemics. Little was known about the management of such illnesses at the time, but the vetting of admissions for infectious ailments was a regular practice.


Diet and cleanliness were, sadly, the least of the foundlings’ problems. Corporal punishment was the norm, and severe beatings were commonplace. Combined with malnourishment, this often led to serious injury and infection, sometimes even death. Mortality rates were sky high and, tragically, abuse was rife. In the 18th century, Elizabeth Brownrigg was convicted of murder and sentenced to hanging after her maltreatment of the young girls in her care resulted in the death of one. She was not alone in her brutality. Often, the abuse began before the children even reached the hospital. In London, an abhorrent trade evolved whereby men—sometimes known as ‘Coram Men’ after the founder of the Foundling Hospital—offered to transport children from the country to town, for a fee. These children regularly went missing or were abused on the way.

Those who survived their tenure at the foundling hospitals were sent out into the world at around the age of 14 or slightly older in some cases. Girls were typically found places in service, whilst the boys were apprenticed out. It was common for these children to be provided with a small amount of money to help set them up, and some institutions also awarded monies upon completion of apprenticeships or certification of good conduct from employers.


The life of a foundling was far from easy, but whilst the system was not perfect, there were decent people with good intentions working for or in most of these institutions. In the third book of the Rags to Richmonds series, we meet Miss Frederica Richmond, who is one such kind-hearted soul. A foundling herself, she understands what it means to grow up alone, and she has made it her life’s work to care for the children at the Taverstock Orphanage who don’t have a family of their own. When she is forced to choose between them and her birth family, her world is turned upside down.


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Images



Public Domain:

Foundling Girls at Prayer in the Chapel, Sophie Gengembre Anderson

The Foundling Hospital, Holborn, London: a bird's-eye view of the courtyard. Coloured engraving by T. Bowles after L. P. Boitard, 1753

Poor People Coming for Relief

The Foundlings, Headpiece designed for a Power of Attorney authorizing collectors of donations to the Foundling Hospital; Thomas Coram receiving a baby from a weeping mother, beside whom a dagger lies on the ground, and, on the left, uniformed children emerging from the Hospital carrying the tools of various useful trades; proof before the inscription on Coram's book, or the document. 1739

Etching and engraving after William Hogarth; Print made by: François Morellon de la Cave


Shutterstock: Tracey Emin, sculpture of a pink mitten on a railing outside the London Foundling Hospital


References and Resources:






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