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The archives of London\u2019s famous Foundling Hospital are now free to search online.<\/p>
Almost 100,000<\/a> pages of records, containing details of over 20,000 children, have been made available.<\/p> The Hospital was founded in 1739 by sea captain Thomas Coram to provide a home for the capital\u2019s many unwanted children, particularly children born to unmarried mothers.<\/p> At the time, the name \u2018hospital\u2019 meant any place that provided \u2018hospitality\u2019, or shelter. Rather than being a hospital in the modern sense, it was a children\u2019s home<\/a>, where children received care and education before leaving to enter into an apprenticeship at about the age of fourteen. The education was progressive by the standards of the day \u2013 both boys and girls were taught to read, girls were later taught to write and the children were also taught music.<\/p> The digitised records, which date from 1739 to 1899, include petition letters, from people applying to have a child admitted, and general registers, following children\u2019s lives throughout the Hospital from when they were first admitted. They can be searched by individual names, and the website also includes transcriptions of the longer records.<\/p> At the time, many more mothers sought places for their children in the Hospital than were available because of the good care provided there.<\/p> One set of records gives an example of this. They include letters written on behalf of a Fanny Sarah Sharp, who gave birth to an illegitimate<\/a> daughter in 1863 and tried to get her admitted to the Hospital the following year.<\/p> The letters state that Fanny met her child\u2019s father at the household of the Reverend Edward Austen-Leigh, the nephew and biographer of the novelist Jane Austen. She was working as a kitchen maid and he was working as a footman.<\/p> In one letter, a James Twiddy says that the \u201cevil\u201d of the child\u2019s conception occurred because she \u201cwas allowed to remain up, with the Father, after the rest of the Family had retired for the night\u201d.<\/p> He notes that Fanny is \u201cunable to maintain her child\u201d and has been offered a position as a servant. The Hospital can \u201cextend a helping hand to her\u201d by taking care of her child, allowing her to remain in her job.<\/p> The Reverend Austen-Leigh also writes on Fanny\u2019s behalf, saying: \u201cFanny Sarah Sharpe, about whom you enquire, was known to me from Childhood: she was of my parish, & in my school: & was an intelligent & promising girl. We took great interest in her, & she has received much kindness from my family.\u201d<\/p> The original records are held in the Foundling Hospital Archive, but the digitised records will now only be available online, to preserve the original documents.<\/p> The archive is the culmination of a five-year project, Voices Through Time: The Story of Care, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and run by Coram, a modern-day children\u2019s charity which has its origins in the Foundling Hospital. It included nearly 6,500 volunteers transcribing the records online, as well as creative projects involving modern-day care-experienced young people.<\/p> Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine <\/em>volunteers contributed to the project for our Transcription Tuesday<\/a> volunteer event in February 2021, transcribing 822 pages of records in a single day.<\/p>