London's Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital

London's Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital - Dame Gillian Pugh

Рет қаралды 16,051

12 жыл бұрын

In 1739, Captain Thomas Coram was dismayed at the sight of children dying on the dung heaps of London. These children, mostly foundlings and orphans, were products of a poverty-stricken society where the attitude towards babies born outside of wedlock meant a life of rejection and inferiority. After 17 years of campaigning, Coram managed to persuade sufficient 'persons of quality and distinction' to support his petition to the King to grant a Royal Charter for the building of the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury.
Over the next two hundred years, thousands of children were brought to the Foundling Hospital by mothers who were unable to look after their illegitimate children. There they were provided with excellent health care and education fit for their station in life before apprenticing the boys to learn a trade and the girls to domestic service.
In this lecture Dame Gillian Pugh, former chief executive of Coram, offers a fascinating history of the first children's charity and charts the rise of this incredible institution. It examines the attitude towards foundlings as illegitimate children over the years and brings us up to date on the innovative work of the charity today, now known simply as Coram.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
www.gresham.ac.uk

Пікірлер: 11

@julievanberkel3058 4 жыл бұрын

I did go to the foundling hospital some years back. Reading all those pitiful notes left by mothers who couldn't afford to keep their babies but hoped in time to reclaim them, was very moving - I cried my eyes out and couldn't stop crying. I am glad I went, though.

@zippgunz 11 жыл бұрын

Captain Coram - a truly great man.

@Oldgittom 11 жыл бұрын

Wonderful story; God bless the memory of Thos. Coram, Handel & Hogarth.

@evelynwattson9996 5 жыл бұрын

My father was put in there by his mother and her father .. he was never wanted by her we tried to meet her later in life..it was heart breaking he was never adopted so he never had a home life untill he married my mum and had us..my father was a good man successful very quiet let my mum boss him at home... wasnt really given the tools for family life..I think due to being in a school since birth and having no parents himself to guide him...his own mother never came back for him..to her he was garbage.

@GRIMSBONIAN13 4 жыл бұрын

My Great Grandmother as well. She was placed in the Foundling hospital then worked as a servant she had two children with a gentle man who left her to marry another. This must have crushed her and think it affected my grandmother as well. I never remember ever seeing her smile and being mean. I do not think she gave him a lot of love as he was a very brutal person.

@msbo5171 11 жыл бұрын

"I haven't had the time to find out"?? - You're giving the speech!!

@GRIMSBONIAN13 4 жыл бұрын

The paintings from the 1870s were they actually were the children?

@Nomad1960ish 5 жыл бұрын

" doing useful and meaningful tasks" Mmm,, you like that phrase dont you, i think what you meant to say was doing slavery tasks for thre upcoming slavery future!

@GRIMSBONIAN13 4 жыл бұрын

Cheap Labour for the wealthy of Mayfair.

@Isaias-zu5op 4 жыл бұрын

There were no slaves in England during the XVIIth Century. There were slaves in the colonies, but not in England. Leftist you have to be...

@bogtrotter3068 5 жыл бұрын

I sense a lapse of actual time is lost or misplaced in between the years somewhere. The actual 1900's were re-written to be the 1800's . Something is very out of place and your blunder relating to years are quite obvious.