My First Novel's Inspirations Part 8 ~ The Orphanage and Workhouse

Hello! I'm so glad you joined me today. If you are a first time visitor or have been many times, WELCOME! If you haven't yet subscribed, I hope you'll consider subscribing today. If you're new, you may want to go back to the beginning of my series, "My First Novel's Inspirations", but it's certainly not necessary.

The inspirations I talk about in this series, all represent small or large pieces of my novel. Some may have been briefly mentioned, but were a driving force in portions of my story. While others may have been mentioned more, but didn't have as big of an impact. 

In my novel, the orphanage and workhouse were mentioned, but not explained. The mention of them was more about the difficult situation and the emotions connected with them. The subject of the orphanages, then known as Foundling Hospitals, and workhouses in 18th century England is so deep I could probably write a novel about each. Today, I want to give a small glimpse into the foundling hospitals and workhouses of the time.

The Orphanage or Foundling Hospital-

"The Foundling Hospital in London, England, was founded in 1739 by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram. It was a children's home established for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children."The word "hospital" was used in a more general sense than it is today, simply indicating the institution's "hospitality" to those less fortunate. Nevertheless, one of the top priorities of the committee at the Foundling Hospital was children's health, as they combated smallpox, fevers, consumption, dysentery and even infections from everyday activities like teething that drove up mortality rates and risked epidemics. With their energies focused on maintaining a disinfected environment, providing simple clothing and fare, the committee paid less attention to and spent less on developing children's education. As a result, financial problems would hound the institution for years to come, despite the growing "fashionableness" of charities like the hospital."

Foundling means-
"an infant or small child found abandoned; a child without a known parent or guardian." 

Orphan means-
"a child who has lost both parents through death, or, less commonly, one parent." 

"Each small piece of fabric here represents the life of a baby left at the London Foundling Hospital in the 18th century. When a baby was brought to the hospital the mother left a piece of fabric as a means of identification in case she ever wanted to reclaim the child.

Once the babies were registered, they were effectively adopted – they were given new names and hospital-issue clothes. As the mother’s name was usually not recorded, the fabric was a safeguard to ensure only a close family member could ever reclaim the child.

The scraps, cut from either the mother’s or the baby’s clothing, were pinned to the registration documents. All these pieces now form part of an exhibition at the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. 

The information that accompanies the swatches is often heartbreaking. The caption alongside a piece of fabric with a blue and burgundy flower reads: 'A girl about 1 day old, admitted 4 March 1759. Named Sarah Tucker by the Foundling Hospital. Died 9 March 1759.’

Another, a red and blue 'flowered chince’, belonged to a baby girl brought in on 27 August 1759. Named Sarah Eld by the hospital, she died of measles in July 1765. Of the 16,282 babies brought to the hospital between 1741 and 1760, only 152 were reclaimed. The exhibition contains only one piece of fabric that did end up being used to help identify the child."

"In some ways, being a foundling could perhaps be regarded as a preferable position in the world than being an illegitimate parish orphan, just as it was more fortunate for a baby to be taken in by the Foundling Hospital than the local workhouse. The 18th century novelist Henry Fielding’s famous character Tom Jones was a foundling, who turned out to be the illegitimate child of a good family. Dickens was an admirer of Fielding’s novels, and it seems the predicament of his own leading character, Oliver Twist, shows what might happen to a child in a similar predicament, in a later era. In the end he, too, turns out to have come from a comfortable family. Both discoveries make for happy endings in these books, but of course real life was not always so promising." 

The Workhouse-

"Workhouse, institution to provide employment for paupers and sustenance for the infirm, found in England from the 17th through the 19th century...

The Poor Law of 1601 in England assigned responsibility for the poor to parishes, which later built workhouses to employ paupers and the indigent at profitable work. It proved difficult to employ them on a profitable basis, however, and during the 18th century workhouses tended to degenerate into mixed receptacles where every type of pauper, whether needy or criminal, young or old, infirm, healthy, or insane, was dumped. These workhouses were difficult to distinguish from houses of correction. According to prevailing social conditions, their inmates might be let out to contractors or kept idle to prevent competition on the labour market." 

"Poor people were lodged in single sex ‘wards’ where the able-bodied were set to menial tasks: spinning thread or sewing clothes, for example, and inmates were ordered to follow strict rules of behaviour and to conform to daily routines. Jeremy Bentham described how workhouses were essentially prison-like structures, designed principally ‘to grind rogues honest’.

But life in the workhouse varied enormously from parish to parish. Some workhouses were clean and comfortable havens for the poor. Many provided education, rudimentary health care and clean clothing. Others echoed to the sound of children playing, many of whom were placed in local businesses as apprentices, and most workhouses allowed visitors to come and go as they pleased. Other parishes – particularly in small rural communities – refused to build parish workhouses altogether owing to their substantial running costs. In many parishes ‘outdoor’ relief remained the chief means of assistance, administered to the poor on an individual basis.

Other workhouses, however, were dark and foreboding places. Many were hopelessly overcrowded. Some London workhouses accommodated well over 700 people. Inmates receiving relief were made to wear special uniforms or badges that signified their demeaning status. Many people contracted diseases and died within their walls, and were later buried in unmarked mass pauper graves. In the 1750s social investigator Jonas Hanway discovered that the death rate amongst workhouse children in London was over 90%. Thus the opening of a new workhouse in some areas was occasionally the cause of serious rioting, and many of the poor preferred to starve rather than enter their gloomy confines." 

These topics are so interesting and if you want to learn more, there is definitely more to learn. I tried to capture the basics for you. For my characters that were worried for whatever reason about these institutions, you can now understand why it was such an emotional, upsetting situation. Count your blessings. Remember the poor we still have with us today. Remember the orphan, the unwanted or the children who are still in need of someone who cares. If you are in a position to help, pray about it and see what the Lord would have you to do.

"More than 250,000 children are placed into the foster care system in the United States every year."

Thanks again for coming and come again soon. May the Lord God bless you and your family with faith, hope and love.

In Christ,
Sandy

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