Foundling Hospitals in Britain

 If you were a young, unmarried pregnant woman in Great Britain during the 19th and early 20 century, you had few options.  You would likely find that giving your child to the Foundling Hospital was your only option.  Here your child would be given a new name and a sanitized past in the hope you would not be stigmatized for the circumstance of his birth.  It sounds archaic, and it was.  The Foundling Hospital was founded in 1741, where children endured a harsh, Dickensian-style childhood well into the 1940's.  In fact Charles Dickens lived near the Foundling Hospital and based many of his characters and themes of his books on what went on there.  He did not approve of what went on there, and we don't really know how much he knew about the treatment of the children, but was able to imagine what it was like.

When a child was given to the Foundling Hospital, everything was taken away from him.  His mother, his name, everything.  Mothers were told that the Foundling Hospital was a wealthy, benevolent organization that would raise her child in fresh country air.  Mothers never realized they would never see their child again.

Most children who were turned over to the Foundling Hospital were placed in foster care for the first 5 years of their lives, after which they were returned to institutional living and the harsh, sometimes sadistic practices they had to endure.  Throwing a child who does not know how to swim into pool, poking the child with a stick to hold him underwater, and locking a child in a dark closet for hours, were just some of the punishments used.  Other sadist punishments included caning and electrocuting the younger boys, by taking lightbulbs out of fittings and forcing the little ones to put their fingers in the socket. 

Because Foundling children were born out of wedlock, British society considered them the lowest class of person, so children were trained to become housemaids, cooks and seamstresses.  They were not well educated, not given any love or nurturing.  It wasn't until the 1940's when the Curtis Report was published, that the Foundling Hospital changed it's ways.  What a horror that so many children had to endure.  Fortunately, both in the U.K. and the U.S. attitudes have changed.  Unwed mothers are no longer forced to give up their children, or in some cases have the child stolen from them.  We are evolving.  Slowly, but we're getting there.