The novelist, TV Exec and journalist, Daisy Goodwin, published a provoking poem in her Sunday Times column a fortnight ago that bears reproduction here, after some reflections, for it set me on a quest to find out more.
Its background lay back in 1720s London, where children were dying with an alarming frequency, especially the offspring of the poor. A staggering 74 per cent of all children born in the capital were dead before they were five years old.
A successful merchant, who had spent years in the colonies, returned to London and was appalled to find a host of abandoned children lying dead and dying in the street and determined that he would do something about it. He met a lot of opposition, for many of these ‘foundlings’ were presumed to be the result of immorality and it was thought that intervention would only encourage wantonness, illegitimacy and prostitution.
Yet Thomas Coram was a determined man and in 1741 the first children were admitted to ‘The Foundling Hospital’ (Hospital in a wider ‘hospitality’ sense of the word, not a place for the ill), taken there by their mothers as an alternative to being abandoned in the street. It was the custom of the Foundling that a mother would leave a unique ‘token’ with the child for identification purposes, in case she should ever have the means to return and collect the child, even years later, and take responsibility for it again.
The poem in question was written by such a mother, faced with the heart wrenching necessity to leave her child and is a key exhibit in The Foundling Museum today:
Hard is my Lot in deep Distress
To have no help where Most should find.
Sure Nature meant her sacred Laws
Should men as strong as Women bind.
Regardless he, unable I,
To keep this image of my Heart.
Tis vile to Murder! hard to Starve
And Death almost to me to part.
If Fortune should her favours give
That I in Better plight may Live,
I’d try to have my boy again
And train him up the best of Men.
The Foundling Hospital was a strictly not for profit operation and it had major support from big players, not least William Hogarth and George Frederic Handel. Its legacy lives on today, not just through the museum. The Thomas Coram Foundation for Children turned over £8.3M in charity funds last year and reflecting that the plight and blighted lives of some children remains a priority in our society and can be as poignant and tear jerking as the story above. Their approach has changed radically over the years but an emphasis has remained on pioneering change for the benefit of children.
A willingness to change and adapt and improve, and a recognition that the interests of the client group are paramount, may well be the secret to the longevity of this charity. Not many organisations have clocked up almost three hundred years of making a huge difference to a host of lives. They have faced tough times, made it through and gone on stronger. An encouraging thought in the challenging times we all face today. What it takes is the grit and determination trailblazed by Thomas Coram.
How many people face the same hopelessness as that mother. How many are dependent upon having a charity or community group to turn to, run by people who will not accept the status quo and are determined to change things for the better.
As we face a challenging New Year, we could do worse than recall the grit, determination and trailblazing spirit of Thomas Coram, and the willingness to get stuck in, to improve and to adapt for survival and growth, that have left his Foundation the strong force it is still today, almost 300 years on.
Our sector is built on such spirit, taking hope into desperation (even if times are no longer as desperate as they were in Thomas Coram’s time). Long may it be so. A prosperous 2012 to all.
Dave Pinwell, CEO
