The Foundling Hospital in Holburn, London – a charitable organisation for vulnerable children - was established in 1739. The building you see in this image is of the hospital which opened for children in 1741 and remained open into the early 20th century. Young babies were surrendered to the Hospital by their mothers, usually because they were too poor to care for their infants themselves. The babies were initially sent out to be nursed by a foster mother (living with their family), then they returned to the institution at about 5 years of age. The hospital housed hundreds of children at a time.
Mealtimes were taken very seriously at the Foundling Hospital, as was the general physical care of the children. Famous doctors of their day - such as Richard Meade and William Cadogan (1749) - were involved in devising how the children should be cared for. Part of their recommendations involved what the children should eat. Whereas in much earlier times children had not been seen as of particular interest for physicians, their health and welfare began to be a topic worthy of scientific study.
The children had breakfast early in the day – perhaps rising as early as 5am. At midday they ate dinner, then their supper was at 5pm. Breakfast may have been something stodgy and filling such as porridge, a milk pottage (hot or cold depending on the time of year), gruel or bread. Dinner may have been boiled mutton and potatoes, or beef. They may also have had broths made with root vegetables or stews with dumplings. Puddings were also on the menu; boiled or baked puddings were generally the fare. Dinners were also designed to fill the children up. Supper was a somewhat lighter affair consisting of bread and cheese, bread and milk, or oatmeal flummery with milk and treacle.
The children had a garden in which to grow things (such activity offered a possible route into employment for boys), and some fresh vegetables were included on the menu. However, far fewer vegetables (and indeed fruit) were on the menu than would be recommended today; after all, the idea of eating at least ‘5 a day’ is a very recent recommendation. With some meat, beans, milk and cheese the children’s diet would certainly have included protein. Heavy in carbohydrates, the food would have been filling and warming in the winter. And whilst, for sure, the diet was monotonous, it would have been far better than that of impoverished children living outside of the institution. We should also remember that even wealthy children in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries ate a rather bland, repetitive diet compared to their adult counterparts. School dinners early in the 20th century would have mirrored this ‘stick to your ribs’ – carbohydrate rich - kind of diet too (Albon and Mukherji, 2008). It was a menu seen as eminently suitable for children.
Nevertheless, occasional sweet treats appeared on the menu on special occasions, such as plum pudding. No doubt the children would have looked forward to such foods as a change from the rather bland menu they received (at least to our sensibilities today).
It sometimes surprises people to see that the crockery and cutlery was of good quality too. The crockery from which the children ate was made by the Spode factory and was distinguished by the Foundling Hospital’s lamb emblem – the same emblem can be seen on the cutlery the children used too. Evidently, the institution felt it was important that the children’s mealtimes were conducted in a ‘civilised’ manner, with some of the trappings of a middle-class life. The children would have eaten on long refectory-style tables, much like we see in school dinner halls today.
What the actual mealtime was like to experience is hard to say, beyond the first-hand accounts of ‘foundlings’ (as the children were called) whose testimonies were recorded in the later 20th century. The Foundling Museum today has a matron’s mallet made from wood and string, which was used in the past to call for silence at mealtimes. Silence was a marker of obedience for children raised in the institution; it took until after World War II for this rule to be relaxed, enabling the children to talk during meals.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the governors could bring guests to watch the children eat on a Sunday, following service in chapel. It’s an idea that seems akin to observing feeding time at the zoo, so makes us feel rather uncomfortable today. Perhaps the governors hoped to impress on these visitors what a good job the Hospital was doing in feeding the children well, whilst also instilling good table manners. Given the Hospital relied on charitable donations, showing they were turning out ‘good citizens’ may have encouraged some visitors to dig deep into their pockets (see Berry, 2019) .
It is possible to see many of the objects referred to in this short article in the Foundling Museum today; it is well worth a visit! See https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/
References
Albon, Deborah and Penny Mukherji, Food and Health in Early Childhood, (London: Sage, 2008).
Berry, Helen, Orphans of Empire: The Fate of London’s Foundlings, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). This is an excellent source of information on the Foundling Hospital.
Cadogan, William, Essay Upon Nursing and the Management of Children from their Birth to Three Years of Age (3rd edition), (London: J. Roberts, 1749).
Image credits
Foundling Hospital image from Wikimedia Commons: Engraving by B. Cole in Survey of London, 1754, p.266. Original painting by P. Fourdrinier in 1752. Scanned by Wellcome Trust. https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0013456.html
Other images taken by Deborah Albon.
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