London's Foundling Hospital asked parents no questions, only for a token
When sea captain Thomas Coram opened London's Foundling Hospital in 1741 for deserted children, nobody asked who the child or parent was. Instead, each parent left a distinguishing token with the baby. The first children went to a temporary house in Hatton Garden, then out to wet nurses in the countryside.
Foundlings stayed with country nurses until about four or five. Girls were typically apprenticed as servants at sixteen for four years, and boys went into trades at fourteen, usually for seven. In 1756 the House of Commons ordered that every child offered be accepted, with public funds guaranteed. A basket was hung outside, the admission age rose from two months to twelve, and children flooded in from rural workhouses.
Care for orphans is ancient. Jewish law required support for widows and orphans, and Athens maintained the orphans of fallen soldiers until eighteen. Plato urged guardians to love an orphan as their own and manage the child's property even more carefully than their own. The Romans opened their first orphanages around 400 AD, bishops and later monasteries took on the task, and in medieval Europe it rested largely with the Church until England's Elizabethan Poor Laws made parishes responsible for the destitute.
Eighteenth-century sentimental philanthropy produced the first dedicated charitable institutions, such as the Orphan Working Home of 1758 and the Bristol Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls of 1795. The harsh workhouse system of 1834 housed orphans alongside other paupers, and outrage at conditions fuelled a mid-century orphanage movement. John Pounds and Lord Shaftesbury backed ragged schools for poor children. Thomas Barnardo opened his first home in 1870 and had set up 112 district homes by his death in 1905. In America, orphanages grew popular between 1830 and 1860 amid immigration, urban poverty and cholera.
The verdict has since turned. Most developed countries phased out state orphanages in the later twentieth century, as evidence showed institutions harm children's emotional wellbeing, and support now goes to families instead. Many surviving orphanages are run by small charities and religious groups, and in developing countries some recruit children from struggling families to keep funds flowing. Romania's orphanages swelled after Nicolae Ceaușescu banned abortion and contraception to enlarge the workforce.
Source: Orphanage
