History of care-experience uncovered in new digitisation project

Voices Through Time; The Story of Care is the culmination of a five-year programme to digitise and give free access to nearly a quarter of the records in the charity’s archive.

The project was funded by a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. For four years, nearly 6,500 volunteers from all over the world transcribed over 100,000 pages which are now online.

Coram was established as the Foundling Hospital in 1739 and took in its first children in 1741. The online documents include petitions from mothers asking the Foundling Hospital to take in their babies, billet books with details of the children’s admissions, tokens and textiles left by their mothers, records of the children’s time with their foster mothers, the Foundling’s health and care, and their apprenticeships and move into adult life.

The full list of digitised records is:
- Petitions from mothers and others: 115 volumes, 1762-1881
- Billet Books containing tokens: 203 volumes, 1741-1814
- Admission and baptism registers: 8 volumes, 1741-1885
- Apprenticeship registers: 4 volumes, 1751-1898
- Registers of country nurses and inspectors: 6 volumes, 1749-1812
- Branch Hospital registers: 5 volumes, 1757-1772
- Records claiming children: 21 volumes, 1758-1796
- Committee Minutes: 43 volumes, 1739-1895

The Foundling Hospital was established by Royal Charter in 1739, the result of a 17-year campaign by the charity’s founder, Thomas Coram. At that time, the stigma of being a child born to an unmarried mother was catastrophic for both mother and child. It was believed that an unmarried mother had ‘fallen into Wickedness’ and her lack of virtue would infect other women and be passed on to her child. As a result, pregnant and single women would be unable to find work or lodgings so many gave birth in secret.

Over the next 200 years, over 20,000 women gave up their babies to the care of the Foundling Hospital, where their anonymity would be preserved and their children would be fed, clothed, educated and apprenticed.

The babies were sent to wet nurses in the countryside, initially to be breastfed and then fostered within the family until they were aged five. At that point the Foundlings returned to the Foundling Hospital to live and be educated until they were apprenticed.

Speaking after the launch at Coram’s headquarters in London, Chris Jones, programme manager said, ‘The online Foundling Hospital Archive is a rich resource for investigating the history of care and the lives of these individual children and their parents. It is also a significant source for social history, women’s history, and local English history, as well as the history of education, employment and trades, medicine, disability, textiles, the economy, and more.’

Those documents which are available online are now closed to the public but other documents and records in the physical archive can be seen at London Metropolitan Archives. Personal records from the last 110 years are closed but can be seen on application to Coram, where access is managed by social workers.

Alongside the digitisation work, Coram has developed a programme of creative projects for care-experienced young people aged 16-24 which explore the history of care, looking at how the past impacts on the present. Projects have included films, creative writing, textiles, and other spoken word events. A play, Echoes Through Time centres on a group of young people navigating the modern care system and the historic Foundling Hospital. It explores the similarities and differences between life in care today and the lives of real children who grew up at the Hospital in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The latest project launched at the same time as the digitisation event is an artwork using audio-visual and light installations, as well as other media, to place the Foundling Hospital side by side with the modern-day care system.

Brigid Robinson MBE, managing director of Coram Voice and Group Young people's programmes said: 'The creative projects co-produced with young people provided an opportunity for them to explore the history of care. Uncovering the experiences children and young people through time provided opportunity for reflection on the lives of children who had been in care before them, the resonance with their lives today. It provides a vital opportunity of feeling they are not alone and opportunity to work collaboratively with other young people levering creative approaches to tell often difficult stories. Creative outlets provide young people with the opportunity to take control of their narrative and tell their stories in an empowering and safe way.'