Coal hole covers

I listened to lecture this morning about the Foundling Hospital which is about 10 minutes walk from our flat.

Before Henry VIII closed the monasteries and nunneries, unwanted and orphan children were looked after by nuns. After that, Parliament passed the Poor Law which required parish councils to look after their own poor and needy by raising taxes on parishioners. Parishioners tended to think that the taxes raised encouraged the poor to be lazy rather than to help themselves (some things never change), so there were never enough funds for the poor.

A rich sea captain, Thomas Coram, came home from the States and was appalled by the number of abandoned and dying children on London's streets. It took him 19 years to raise the money and permission to build the Foundling Hospital, opened 1739. There was only enough money for a small proportion of the under 2 month old babies who needed care who could be admitted. Half of the babies were left with no means of identification. Half were left with a small token, usually a scrap of material, which the mother could use to identify her baby if she ever came back for it. Only a tiny proportion of babies were reclaimed and more than half died before they were 6 months old.

I walked up there this afternoon, but the story is too heart-rending to be pictured. So here is a nice soothing typology of early Victorian cast iron coal hole covers from the square in front of the Hospital.