Foundlings (History)

The historiography of central and northern Italy produced several studies on the care of abandoned children, thanks to the good condition of the sources. Instead, the historiographical framework of the Sicilian cities is extremely poor. In the case of Palermo, the absence of works dedicated to the topic of the foundlings can be explained by the dispersion of the documents stored in the historical archive of the Ospedale Grande (Great Hospital). So focusing on the welfare policy of this institution is very difficult, especially for Middle Ages. The essay intends to investigate on the policies about abandoned children chosen by the city of Palermo and the Ospedale Grande at the end of the Fifteenth Century by using unpublished documents, i.e. the chapters about the care of abandoned children presented in 1480 by the rectors of the Ospedale Grande of Palermo to the city authorities for approval.

Public health and social reforms in Portugal (1780–1805) presents an innovative analysis of a unique period for social and public health policy in Portuguese history. With a firm basis in archival research, the book examines a lesser-known facet of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in the late Ancien Regime in Portugal: Diogo Inácio de Pina Manique, the Intendant-General of Police from 1780 to 1805. By combining the resources of the Intendancy with those of the Casa Pia, an institution for welfare provision and social control that he set up just a month after being appointed, Pina Manique attempted to introduce a variety of projects designed to create a prosperous, healthy, well-educated, informed, clean and hard-working country less inclined to vice and immorality, in which the people would be obedient and the upper classes more magnanimous. One of his greatest achievements was perhaps to understand the link between ill health and poverty and therefore to regard public health as a key area of governance.

Il volume ricostruisce la storia dell' assistenza all’infanzia e alla maternità nell'area milanese. Il percorso illustra quali forme assunse, nel corso di cinque secoli, il soccorso prestato dalla solidarietà ambrosiana ai più deboli fra i poveri: i bambini abbandonati e le madri sole o malate. Si parte dalla generosa, ma non cieca, beneficenza dell’Ospedale Maggiore per arrivare agli interventi razionalizzatori, ma ancora paterni, dell’ente Provincia, passando per le decisive riforme della “benefica sovrana”, l’imperatrice Maria Teresa d’Asburgo. La metamorfosi delle strutture caritative avvenne all’interno di una società cittadina e rurale, che, nel lungo periodo, oltre a mutare dimensioni ed economia, rimodellò, insieme ai valori e alle leggi, i concetti stessi di famiglia, di maternità e di infanzia. Non solo: tale metamorfosi fu anche il frutto di un continuo processo di mediazione, non sempre facile e non sempre virtuoso, fra i bisogni degli assistiti e le prospettive (e i bilanci) degli amministratori. Sotto le loro “ali” vissero – e spesso morirono – gli esposti (i colombini e le colombe), le gestanti povere e, indirettamente, le loro famiglie: un rapporto complesso che qui prende ulteriore visibilità dall’intreccio delle immagini. Vi sono quelle, “alte”, dei fondatori, dei benefattori, delle sedi assistenziali, della letteratura medica e giuridica, e quelle, “minori”, dei segnali e dei messaggi d’esposizione, che i parenti – fino al 1868, anno della chiusura del torno – lasciarono tra i panni dei bambini nell’atto di consegnarli alla Pia Casa di santa Caterina alla ruota o all’Ospizio provinciale degli esposti. I segnali d’esposizione, di cui si offre una scelta ricca – eppure minima, se paragonata alle decine di migliaia di carte da gioco, di nastri, di monete, di oggetti d’uso, di biglietti, conservati nell’Archivio storico degli Istituti provinciali assistenza infanzia di Milano – sono mostrati, analizzati e studiati. La storia dell’arte, la numismatica, la storia della cultura materiale, quella dell’onomastica valorizzano questi oggetti “poveri”, che costituiscono non solo le “parole” di chi non sapeva scrivere, ma anche la testimonianza di una vita quotidiana ormai lontana. Dunque, non solo un libro sulla storia di Milano, ma un libro sulla storia dei milanesi.

Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, the first female educational institute, founded under Catherine II, had also a branch for non-noble girls who were supposed to become teachers. By no means, this institution could solve the problems of education and formation of certain cultural skills even within the nobility. In the noble families, home upbringing and education therefore remained for a long time the prevailing form of education, especially for girls. On the contrary, the authorities considered the non-institutional forms of education to be suspicious both from the ideological and moral point of view. Nevertheless, they could not completely eliminate this type of education. The female teachers class established by the Empress Maria Fedorovna in the early 19th century in the Moscow Foundling Home emerged essentially from the desire to control this very important area. For their part, the provincial nobility considered the teachers who graduated this program as bearers of metropolitan education and the "right" knowledge and skills. The program  ensured the transfer of a certain educational model from the capital to the province, though under the strict control of the authorities. The article focuses on the class’s program, educational staff, the course of education and examinations, and the life trajectories of the girls who graduated the class and worked as teachers in the first decades of the 19th century. On the other hand, the requests of the provincial nobility bolstered by their economical ability to provide "metropolitan" education for their children at home are also analyzed here.

ENGLISH
The social discussion regarding foundlings and baby corpses regularly refers to the numerous baby hatches provided by Dutch churches and convents in the distant past. This is one of the most important arguments in the public justification of the modern foundling rooms. Based on historical and contemporary sources concerning the 1500-1900 period, the current article argues that this is in fact a double myth. Firstly, there has never been a large-scale system of baby hatches in the Netherlands
from the middle ages on; at the time of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, they were mainly situated in the area which is modern-day Belgium. And secondly, those baby hatches which did exist were not linked to said religious institutions. The most probable explanation for the origin of this myth is the fact that religious buildings and baby hatches were popular locations for mothers to abandon their new-borns in the past. In the folklore on baby hatches, these elements became falsely united. This study interprets the function of this mythologisation process to be the formation of a moral compass in the quest for a solution for women not able, willing or allowed to keep their babies, and thereby shunning the formal channels.
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DUTCH
In de maatschappelijke discussie over de vondelingen en babylijkjes wordt regelmatig gerefereerd aan de vele vroegere, aan Nederlandse kerken en kloosters verbonden vondelingenluikjes. Deze vormen een van de belangrijkste argumenten in de maatschappelijke rechtvaardiging van de hedendaagse vondelingenkamers. Dit artikel betoogt aan de hand van historische en moderne bronnen over de periode 1500-1900 dat dit een tweeledige mythe betreft. Ten eerste was er vanaf de middeleeuwen geen grootschalig aanbod van vondelingenluiken in Nederland; tijdens het Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden lagen zij vooral in het gebied dat het huidige België vormt. En ten tweede hadden de vondelingenluiken die er wél waren, geen binding met de genoemde religieuze instellingen. De meest voor de hand liggende verklaring voor deze mythevorming is het feit dat zowel religieuze gebouwen als vondelingenluiken plekken zijn waar mensen in het verleden hun jonggeborenen weggelegd hebben. In de volksverhalen over vondelingenluiken zijn deze elementen een valse eenheid gaan vormen. De functie van deze mythologisering wordt in dit onderzoek geïnterpreteerd als de vorming van een moreel kompas in het zoeken naar een oplossing voor vrouwen die hun kind niet kunnen, mogen of willen houden, en daarbij niet de formele kanalen gebruiken.

"Maintenance, marriages and dowries of Milanese female foundlings in early modern Lombardy (Italy)"
Around the middle of the Seventeenth century, the General Hospital of Milan, for economic reasons, changed its welfare policy for foundlings. Instead of being re-admitted at a certain age, children were left with their foster families, with the prospect of being permanently inserted in the rural environment in which they grew up. One of the key points of this strategy was the adoption of a dowry-giving system that was not wholly dependent on the work of the girls before marriage. The analysis of archival documents (1776-1778) reveals that this strategy was successful. Furthermore, the minority of female foundlings (Colombe) returning to the city managed to accumulate, in a variety of ways, a trousseau to add to the dowry payed by the Hospital. This property guaranteed a city-marriage and in some cases a social ascent as well.

"The «Human Material». Notes on Teaching Obstetrics and Midwifery, Vaccination and Baby Food Testing in the Foundling Hospital of Milan from the Eighteenth to the Nineteenth Century".

From the end of the Eighteenth century, pregnant women and children who were sheltered in foundling hospital were regarded, to some extent, as «human material» for the public interest, as the history of the foundling Hospital of Milan reveals. This idea, which was related to the increasingly important role played by doctors in charities, sometimes resulted in a subordination of women’s and children’s health considerations to educational or collective ones. From the foundation of the schools for obstetricians and midwives (1760; 1767), pregnant women admitted for free in the Major Hospital and then (1780) in the Pia Casa di Santa Caterina in Milan were used in teaching and training, especially in case – frequent in Milan (until 20-30%) – they had conditions that made natural childbirth difficult or impossible. Until to the introduction of antisepsis (1877), the spreading of infections, often fatal, was favoured by a low number of pregnant women submitted to a high number of visits. Furthermore, foundlings were used to perform public demonstrations of smallpox inoculation in 1778, then (1801) to test the cow-pox vaccination and finally – until 1885 – to produce humanized vaccine. Artificial feeding was also tested (unsuccessfully) on infants with the main purposes of avoiding the transmission of syphilis from babies to wet-nurses and of overcoming the lack of internal wet-nurses. In the late Nineteenth century, food testing on foundlings was carried out mainly at request of baby food manufacturers.
However, even when sterilized and humanized cow milk started to give positive results, its use was not encouraged by the medical directors of the Milan foundling hospital. They preferred to promote maternal breastfeeding, not only to protect the health of the newborns, but also to induce mothers to legally recognize them, in order to ensure future citizens a more respectable status.

In a world dominated by poverty, a central
characteristic has been the plight of orphans and
abandoned children. Over the centuries, State, Church
and individuals have all attempted to tackle the issue,
but can we trace any change over the course of time
when it comes to the welfare system intended for
these disadvantaged children and acts of
philanthropy? What kind of social policies did States
follow and what were the main differences between
countries and regions? Drawing on historical evidence
across several centuries and a range of European
countries, the contributors to this volume provide a
transnational overview.

A lo largo del siglo XIX, las altas cifras de mortalidad de expósitos pusieron en evidencia la necesidad de emprender una serie de reformas dirigidas a mejorar las condiciones sanitarias de las inclusas y la implementación de medidas de apoyo a la maternidad. Conforme a ello, los médicos es-pañoles plantearon un proyecto de medicalización de la Inclusa, cuya materialización asistencial se vio seriamente marcada por el peso del viejo prejuicio que valoraba al niño expósito como  "hijo del vicio ", privilegiando un modelo de reforma en el que el cuidado de las condiciones morales de los niños siguió teniendo un carácter prioritario con respecto a la obtención de asistencia material.

Throughout the nineteenth century the high mortality rates of foundling, highlighted the need to undertake a series of reforms aimed to improve the sanitary conditions in the foundling asylums and to implement measures for the maternity support. Accordingly, Spanish doctors raised a draft medicali-zation of the Foundling, whose implementation was seriously marked by the weight of the old prejudice that valued the foundling child as "son of vice" , privileging a reform model in which the care of the moral conditions of children continued to be a priority with respect to obtaining material assistance.

In December 1816 James Caulfield wrote to an unnamed individual regarding a painting in his possession, which he describes as ‘Hogarth’s first design on the subject of the Foundling Hospital.’ The purpose of the letter was to remind the recipient of Caulfield’s offer to bring the work ‘to the notice of the Governors of the Institution.’ Caulfield goes on to say that Hogarth’s canvas ‘represents an imprudent mother about to strangle her offspring but is prevented from the crime by the interposition of an Angel, who points to the Asylum of the Foundling, as a sanctuary, - while the nurse is retiring evidently affected by the scene’. Caulfield then observes that Hogarth ‘abandoned Allegory for Scripture’ and instead ‘painted Moses as the First Foundling on record’, a reference to the artist’s gift to the hospital Moses Brought before Pharaoh’s Daughter of 1746. Caulfield concludes, ‘the price I value it at is Eighty Guineas, which I trust will be considered a moderate charge both in respect to the merit of the Painting and the rarity of this great Artists works’.

Caulfield’s offer was clearly rejected by the hospital’s governors, as a century and a half later the painting emerged at Sotheby’s London saleroom. Still attributed to Hogarth, the murderous actions of the ‘imprudent mother’ are now glossed over with the description, ‘An Angel succouring a foundling child … Said to be a sketch for the altarpiece of the Foundling Hospital’. Six years on, at Christie’s ‘Important English Pictures’ sale, the painting is still considered to be a design by Hogarth for the Foundling Hospital altarpiece, but has now acquired a title: ‘The Angel of Mercy’.

This painting was bought at the sale by Colnaghi and soon after acquired by Paul Mellon. It remains, as part of Paul Mellon’s gift, at the Yale Center for British Art. No doubt the attribution to William Hogarth, the most famous and highly-valued British artist working in the early-Georgian period, was a crucial factor in its purchase. The attribution was accepted by the Hogarth scholar Ronald Paulson, who included it in his magisterial Hogarth, his life, his art and times (1971).

​However the suggestion put forward by Dr Brian Allen (then Director of the Paul Mellon Centre in London), that, rather than by Hogarth, the painting was by Joseph Highmore (1692-1780), Hogarth’s exact contemporary and an artist, likewise, associated with London’s Foundling Hospital, is now universally accepted and this reattribution, based predominantly on style, has been supported by additional research. The story of The Angel of Mercy’s journey from Highmore to Hogarth to Highmore is a salutary reminder of the vagaries of attribution. From the early-nineteenth century, the desire for the painting to be by Hogarth seems to have overridden key evidence suggesting the contrary, not least the painting itself, although it is understandable that the prime candidate for such a disturbing scene would be the creator of A Harlot’s Progress and Marriage A-la Mode, rather than a little-known portrait painter. Highmore’s celebrated group portrait Mr. Oldham and his Guests (Tate) has a similar history and its attribution to Hogarth, like The Angel of Mercy, had occurred within decades of Highmore’s death. The reattribution of the latter to a ‘lesser’ – that is less commercially attractive – artist, may explain why such an extraordinary painting has received so little attention until now.

​This publication and the exhibition it accompanies seek to address this by placing The Angel of Mercy within the context of Highmore’s life and art: specifically, given the painting’s problematic subject matter, family/mother and child portraiture, including examples of his own wife and children; Highmore’s close association with the novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) and his tormented heroines Pamela (published 1740-1) and Clarissa (1748); and finally Highmore’s engagement, personally and professionally, with Britain’s first children’s charity, the Foundling Hospital (founded 1739). Collectively this book and exhibition, through the art of Joseph Highmore, will address the highly contentious and emotive issues that lay behind the creation of The Angel of Mercy, such as the status and care of women and children, master/servant relations, motherhood, reputation, abuse, abandonment, infant death and new-born child murder. Inextricable from these themes are the gamut of basic human instincts or impulses, from love – whether familial, parental, fraternal – passion, compassion and humanity, to egotism, cruelty, fear and violence.

​The Angel of Mercy’s presence in the exhibition signifies the first time, since its creation, that Highmore’s painting has been displayed to the general public in the United Kingdom. Crucially it signals the arrival, at last, of The Angel of Mercy at the Foundling Hospital’s site – its place of inspiration and origin – exactly two centuries after James Caulfield first proposed it.

From 1756 through 1760, the Foundling Hospital in London, England opened its doors to every abandoned baby brought to its doorstep.  During this period known as the “General Reception” when the child was admitted, a token was sometimes left to help identify the child if the mother chose to reclaim them later.  This token, during this time, often a fabric swatch cut from the child’s clothing, was affixed to their paperwork. As a result, it is within this time frame that a large cache of printed textiles, along with others was amassed and is now preserved.

The title of this talk is taken directly from a 1759 description of a gown worn by a male infant brought to the Foundling Hospital. The textile pinned to the admission paper is printed with playing cards over a white ground.  Today, modern consumers would call this a novelty print.  We would choose it to express our interest in a cultural fad or a special interest group, or perhaps to express sentimentality or attract attention to ourselves. 

This paper seeks to explore new insights into the diversity and availability of printed textiles by drawing specifically on the Foundling collection.  The card print, along with many others in this collection, provide a unique window into the changing tastes and fashion favorites of the lower to middling class population.  This paper will examine these prints through the eyes of available technology, cultural trends and consumer drive, desire and spending power in order to explore the variety and individuality that was the consumer’s fancy.

Presented at Colonial Williamsburg Symposium "Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and Home" March 2017

Our results highlight the scant importance assigned to foundlings in Spanish society during the Ancien Régime. They also indicate that legal and regulatory factors are more relevant to explain the evolution of abandonment in the mid and long term and its dynamic than economic, moral and cultural factors. The new legislation adopted at the end of the 18th century intended to address the social problems generated during this period by the presumed increase in foundlings. In practice, it changed very quickly the social and demographic behavior that traditionally surrounded abandonment. The new laws permited a certain form of legal renounciation to motherhood by unmarried mothers, but the social disapprobation of abandonment and foundlings remained high in the Spanish society during all the Early Modern period.