The Foundling Museum

The Foundling Museum was right around the corner from our flat, and I had vowed not to leave London without seeing it. My reasons were: 1) its noble cause, 2) its being the first English charity for the welfare of children, and 3) its being England's (and possibly Europe's (?) (humanity's (?)) first art museum, as we now know the thing. Also 4) the top floor is the Handel museum. Our flat is on Handel St. 

Long story short: Thomas Coram made his fortune building ships in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1700s, and then retired back to London, where he was appalled by the condition of street children there. He resolved to do something about it, and spent a decade or more petitioning the king for a royal charter for a foundlings' hospital. He succeeded in that task, at length, and then set about securing funding from among the great artists of the day...initially Hogarth (painting and print subscriptions) and Handel (concert subscriptions), Gainsborough and Reynolds (come to the museum, pay the entrance fee, see their works), and in later generations, the likes of Dickens and James Barrie, who donated royalties from Peter Pan to the charity. The hospital moved away from London in subsequent centuries, but is succeeded locally by Coram charities, a huge youth complex, and the Foundling Museum, situated now just next to the University of London School of Pharmacy. DeTocqueville said that in the matter of great causes, the French look to their bureaucracy, and the English look to a great man...Coram.

The Foundling Museum

Statue of Coram

Inside, part of the original staircase in the boys' wing; iron spikes
were installed to prevent the boys from sliding down..

Thomas-Benjamin Kennington, The Pinch of
Poverty, 1891; Kennington mostly did portraits
for the wealthy and related social scenes; but did
an important social realism series; this beautiful
painting greets the visitor...

Upper floor and art

Thomas Wills, Little Children Brought to Christ, 1746

Hogarth, Moses Brought Before Pharaoh's Daughter, 1746

Charles Brooking, A Flagship before the wind, under Easy Sail..
apparently Turner got his ideas for titles from this guy; here to reflect
Coram's association with the sea, presumably

Hogarth, Captain Thomas Coram, 1740

Sir Josh (Reynolds), Portrait of Sir William Legge;
1757; Legge was the Earl of Dartmouth, and vice
president of the Foundling Hospital for half a century;
Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, was named 
for him

Bust of Handel by Roubiliac; now on the Handel floor

School of Thomas Hudson, George Frederic Handel, 1737

Assorted contemporaneous busts of Handel; pretty famous guy

Assorted documents relating to Handel

Ticket to Messiah

Letter from Handel concerning writing and success of Messiah;
the English were very unhappy it had its first performance in Dublin

Part of the Handel Library at the Foundling Museum

Despite what you may have heard, Handel was very
much a "life of the party" sort of guy...

John Roque's Map of London, 1746; showing
relevant Handelian sites, and the Foundling
Hospital; and, where are living

Now at the entrance to the foundlings' part of the Foundlings
Museum; click to enlarge; very, very well worth reading

Henry Nelson O'Neil, A Mother Depositing Her
Child at the Foundling Hospital in Paris, 1855

Certainly the most moving display at the museum is this, of the
items left by mothers to identify their babies, should they ever 
be able to be re-united...

Girls uniforms; once accepted, an infant was sent off to foster
parents outside of London for care; at age 4-5, they were returned
to the Foundling Hospital for bringing up and schooling

Perhaps out of place, but not, really: Hogarth's March of the Guards
to Finchley, 1750; concerning the 1745 Scottish rebellion,
totally satirical; Hogarth put the painting to sale in a lottery of 2000
tickets, the proceeds going to the Foundling Hospital; the last
unsold 167 tickets he donated to the Hospital; not surprisingly,
it won...such was Coram's marketing genius

Sophia Anderson, Foundling Girls in the Chapel, mid 19th century

A beautiful set of paintings by Emma Brownlaw, 1850s, depicting
life at the Hospital

The most poignant of which is The Foundling Restored to Its Mother, 1858