nations about us. I mean a provision for foundlings, or for those children who, through want of such a provision, are exposed to the barbarity of cruel and unnatural parents. One does not know how to speak on such a subject without horror; but what multitudes of infants have been made away with by those who brought them into the world, and were afterwards ashamed or unable to provide for them! There is scarce an assizes where some unhappy wretch is not executed for the murder of a child; and how many more of these monsters of inhumanity may we suppose to be wholly undiscovered, or cleared for want of legal evidence!" In consequence of this, and probably similar appeals, the matter at that time proceeded so far that various persons left by their wills sums for the support of the projected charity; but it was not until Captain Thomas Coram came upon the scene, about ten years later, that the scheme assumed a tangible shape. This gentleman, who had been bred to the sea, and was then the master of a vessel trading to the colonies, became, it is said, interested in the work to which he was about to devote the greater part of his life and energies, from the circumstance that, in passing to and fro between Rotherhithe and London in pursuance of his avocations, he frequently saw infants exposed in the streets, deserted by their parents, and left to perish through the inclemency of the seasons. Coram accordingly took the matter in hand; and, unappalled by seventeen years of difficulties, held it firmly to the last, and until he saw the complete establishment of his darling institution. Every kind of appeal had he to urge, many personal humiliations to undergo, before arriving at this result. The example of the chief countries of the continent, viewed in connexion with the child-murders and exposures which they had been said to remedy-evils which there was no denying existed also in England-furnished his strongest and most forcible argument, and which he pressed upon the attention of all persons of rank, power, or wealth, who he thought would assist him. Never was philanthropist more indefatigable than Coram; and, like other good men of his class, his perseverance did not always meet with the most courteous acknowledgment. A copy of Coram's memorial and petition to Her Royal Highness Princess Amelia is deposited among the records of the Hospital, at the bottom of which Coram has written the folJowing note:

"N.B.-On Innocents' Day, the 28th of December, 1737, I went to St. James's Palace to present this petition, having been advised first to address the lady of the bedchamber in waiting to introduce it; but the Lady Isabella Finch, who was the lady in waiting, gave me very rough words, and bade me begone with my petition, which I did, without opportunity of presenting it.

THOMAS CORAM."

It was as well perhaps the Princess and her waiting-woman did not hear the Captain's opinion of their conduct at the moment he found himself thus dismissed. History recordeth not his words, but no doubt they were sufficiently piquante; for neither Coram's habits nor ambition were of the courtier's nature. He evidently thought the rough seaman no discredit to the honest man or the warm-hearted philanthropist, and there were others enlightened enough to think the same. When he presented at last his petition for a charter, he presented with it three memorials: the first signed by twenty-one "ladies of quality and distinction," duchesses, &c.; the second by the husbands of the said ladies,

and other noblemen and gentlemen; the third by justices of the peace residing near London, and other persons of distinction." The answer was the grant of the charter by George II., on the 17th of October, 1739, which recited that "Thomas Coram, in behalf of great numbers of helpless infants daily exposed to destruction, had, by his petition, represented that many persons of quality and distinction, as well as others of both sexes, being sensible of the frequent murders committed on poor miserable infants by their parents to hide their shame, and the inhuman custom of exposing new-born children to perish in the streets, or training them up in idleness, beggary, and theft, had, by instruments in writing, declared their intentions to contribute liberally towards the erecting an Hospital, after the example of other Christian countries, and for supporting the same." The charter then appoints a body corporate of governors and guardians, including John Duke of Bedford, and three hundred and fifty other persons, among whom were several peers, the Master of the Rolls, the Chief Justices and Chief Baron, the Speaker, the Attorney and Solicitor General, and Coram-certainly a goodly assemblage to conduct the affairs of the infant charity. The preliminary measures having been taken, on the 26th of October, 1740, there appeared on the door of the house in Hatton Garden (distinguished by the shield above it, painted by Hogarth, and the first of his numerous gifts to the charity) the following notice :"To-morrow, at eight o'clock in the evening, this house will be opened for the reception of twenty children, under the following regulations:-No child exceeding the age of two months will be taken in, nor such as have the evil, leprosy, or disease of the like nature, whereby the health of the other children may be endangered; for the discovery whereof every child is to be inspected as soon as it is brought, and the person who brings it is to come in at the outward door and ring a bell at the inward door, and not to go away until the child is returned or notice given of its reception; but no questions whatever will be asked of any person who brings a child, nor shall any servant of the house presume to endeavour to discover who such person is, on pain of being discharged. All persons who bring children are requested to affix on each child some particular writing, or other distinguishing mark or token, so that the children may be known if hereafter necessary." The twenty children accordingly were taken in, and a notice affixed over the door," The house is full." We may imagine the scene Hatton Garden presented at that moment, with probably five times as many mothers with their infants rejected as had been chosen, and gazing upon that notice with all the heartburnings and rage of the unsuccessful, in a competition where the choice seems necessarily to have lain among the strongest, or those who could best elbow their way through the clamorous and excited crowd. These melancholy and disgraceful scenes were subsequently got rid of by an ingenious balloting process; all the women being admitted into the court-room to draw balls from bags, those who drew black ones were summarily dismissed, those who drew white were entitled to an admission for their children if eligible, whilst those who drew red might remain to draw once more among themselves for any vacancies left open by the ineligibility of any of the former class.

In 1745 the western wing of the present Hospital was opened and the house at Hatton Garden given up; the other two portions of the edifice soon followed, and in 1747 the chapel was begun. And here, full of years and honours, was

buried Coram, in 1751, the first person interred in the place. His had been a busy as well as a benevolent nature. He did not confine his exertions to the foundation of this Hospital, but embarked in various other useful and patriotic objects chiefly in connexion with the colonies. His colonial experience and views indeed were so much esteemed by Horace Walpole-the first Lord Walpole and uncle to the Horace-that in writing, on some subject of the kind, to his brother Sir Robert from the Hague, where he was then ambassador, he says, "Lose no time in talking with Sir Charles Wager, Mr. Bladen, and one Coram, the honestest, the most disinterested, and the most knowing person about the plantation I ever talked with."* How "disinterested" he was we may judge from the fact that at the age of eighty-two he found himself destitute. This state of things was of course not long left unremedied. Arrangements were made to raise an annuity by subscription, but, in order to be sure that they were not offending Coram by the scheme, Dr. Brocklesby waited upon him, and put the question plainly to him. The old man's reply was truly dignified. "I have not wasted," said he," the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess that in my old age I am poor." A deed, yet carefully preserved among the Hospital records, shows the result of the subscription: it is dated March 30, 1749, and binds the parties whose names are subscribed to it to pay the different sums annexed, amounting in all to a hundred and sixty-one guineas yearly. Coram lived only two years to enjoy this evidence of the respect of his fellow-men. He died on the 29th of March, and in the evening of the 1st of April following was buried in the chapel. The body was met at the gate by the Governors and the children, who then preceded it two and two together towards its last earthly home. Immediately before the coffin the charter was borne by a person on a crimson velvet cushion. The pall was supported by numerous distinguished persons. On entering the chapel, already filled to the uttermost corner by the assembled spectators, a part of the choir of St. Paul's raised the solemn and affecting strains of the burial-service composed by Dr. Boyce, who himself officiated at the organ. An anthem, by the same eminent musician, was also sung during the ceremony. The body was finally deposited under the communion-table.

During the period from the establishment of the Hospital to about five years after the death of Coram the applications for admission were so constantly beyond the number that the funds would admit, that the Governors ultimately determined to petition Parliament for assistance. The Hospital had evidently grown popular, and the general wish, concurring with that of the Governors, was, that it should be able to accommodate all the children offered who were eligible by its constitution. Among the modes proposed for the attainment of this object, prior to the request of regular grants from Parliament, were some of an amusing character: taxes on coals exported from Great Britain, an additional Sunday turnpike-tax, parish registers of all births, deaths, and marriages, with a fee for every registration, to be thus expended; and, above all, a poll-tax on bachelors, on the ground that so many of them would doubtless have a personal interest in the welfare of the Hospital;-these were some of the modes proposed for its support by kind friends or satirical enemies. Parliament received the

*Coxe's Life of Walpole.'

application of the Governors favourably, and on the 6th of April, 1756, granted the sum of 10,000l. on the condition that all children under a certain age (first two months, then six, and lastly, as at present, twelve) should be received. The Hospital was at the same time empowered to form provincial establishments: in consequence of which houses were erected at Ackworth, Shrewsbury, Westerham in Kent, Aylesbury, Barnet, and one in Cheshire; the chief of these, at Ackworth, cost above 20,000l. And now commenced the state of things that had well-nigh utterly destroyed the institution, and which for a time caused it to be looked on, and not unjustly, as the greatest curse in the shape of a blessing that well-meant charity had ever inflicted. The Governors set to work with renewed energy to meet the new demands made upon them, and to fulfil what they esteemed their high vocation. To make the act of application as agreeable as possible, a basket was hung at the gate, and all the trouble imposed on parents was the ringing of a bell, as they deposited their little burdens, to inform the officers of the act. Prostitution was never before, in England at least, made so easy. The new system began on the 2nd of June, 1756, on which day 117 children were received, and before the close of the year the vast number of 1783 were adopted by the institution. Far from being frightened at this army of infants so suddenly put under their care, the Governors appear to have been apprehensive of being neglectful of the uses and capacities of the institution; for in the following June appeared advertisements in the chief public papers, and notices at the end of every street, informing all who were concerned how very widely open were the Hospital gates. Such attention was not ill bestowed; 3727 children were admitted that year, and in all, during the three years and ten months this precious system lasted, nearly 15,000 infants were received into the Foundling Hospital! And now for some of the consequences. The first and greatest, the injury to the national morality, is so glaring, that one wonders how a public body of well-intentioned and respectable men, such as the Governors, could have ever overlooked it; but what then shall we think of the Parliament? It would have, however, taken some time to prove with tolerable precision the extent of this evil, and the system might not have been brought to such a summary conclusion as it was, but for others more directly palpable to the popular sense, and some of which outraged the very feelings on which the institution itself had been based. "There is set up in our corporation (writes a correspondent from a town three hundred miles distant, in one of the chronicles of the day) a new and uncommon trade, namely, the conveying children to the Foundling Hospital. The person employed in this trade is a woman of a notoriously bad character. She undertakes the carrying of these children at so much per head. She has, I am told, made one trip already, and is now set upon her journey with two of her daughters, each with a child on her back."* From another quarter we learn that the charge for bringing up children from Yorkshire, four in two panniers slung across a horse's back, was for some time eight guineas a trip, but competition had in that, as in other pursuits, lowered the price. It was perhaps to make up for the reduction in the profits that certain carriers, before leaving the children, actually stripped the little creatures naked

* Transcribed from Hans Sloane; a Tale illustrating the History of the Foundling Hospital in London: by John Brownlow :' a little work by one of the officers of the hospital, containing many interesting facts relative to the latter.

for the sake of the value of their clothing, and thus left them in the basket! The same authority gives us a glimpse of the effect of such modes of conveyance upon the poor little creatures subjected to them that is too painful to contemplate. He says, referring we presume to the House of Commons, "Has it not in the same great Assembly been moreover publicly averred that, of eight babes brought up out of the country for the Foundling Hospital at one time in a waggon, seven died before it reached London-the only one that lived owing its life to this circumstance, viz. that it had a mother so maternally loth to part with it, and commit it alone to the carrier, that she went up on foot along with him, purely that every now and then she might give it the breast, and watch and supply its other needs occasionally, &c.; keeping pace with the waggon all the way for that purpose? "'*

As the liberality of the system became more and more apparent, various country overseers and other parochial authorities began to show how greatly they were charmed with it, by occasionally dropping into the basket a child or two that they feared would become chargeable to their parishes, and in some instances by frightening the unhappy mothers themselves into the act, when they had no desire to part with their children. Other parents, again, residing in or near London, whose children were dying and who had no means of decently burying them or thought the Hospital had much more, brought them hither at the last stage of illness, to die not unfrequently between the act of taking them out of the basket and their delivery to the nurses in the ward. We may here add that among the incidental consequences of the system was the charge frequently made against the parents who had deposited their infants in the famous basket of having improperly disposed of them, the suspicions sometimes extending even unto murder. Such cases came before the magistrates; and the parties accused were detained in custody till certificates of the safe receipt of the child at the Foundling were obtained from the governors. To obviate this inconvenience a billet was delivered, when required, on the arrival of a child at the Hospital. Such were some of the evils let loose upon society by the parliament of the nation and the governors of the Hospital, through the adoption of the principle of indiscriminate admission. And the fate of the children admitted seems to show that the principle was as carelessly carried out in practice as it was vicious in theory. As the infant inundation poured in, the governors began to ask what was the best mode of preserving the lives and health of the foundlings committed to their care. The advice of the College of Physicians was asked and given; but unfortunately measures had been so precipitated that the essentials were impracticable. Where, for instance, could wet-nurses be obtained for such multitudes? How could the extraordinary watchfulness required under the circumstances the deprivation of the proper maternal care and the mingling of diseased and healthy children-be given when there were so many requiring care? Seeing these things, we may be prepared for the result. Of the whole 14,934 children received under the new system, only 4400 lived to be apprenticed! Of course parliament did not wait for this consummation before it interfered and stopped the ruinous course it had advised and supported. On the 8th of February, 1760, a resolution was passed declaring "That the indis*The Tendencies of the Foundling Hospital in its present extent considered: 1760.'