The Foundling Museum opened in 2004, but over two hundred years before that, in 1739, Thomas Coram (1668-1751) had established the hospital to care for babies at risk of abandonment. Coram, a philanthropist, campaigned for seventeen years before he received a Royal Charter from King George II to found it. He was appalled by the conditions children faced in London: though the city was a global powerhouse of industry and wealth, it was also polluted and disease-ridden. Child mortality rates soared. Each year, some one thousand babies were abandoned by parents experiencing extreme poverty.
The Foundling Hospital was designed to care for and educate England’s most vulnerable citizens. The artist William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel played a big part in realising Coram’s vision.
Image credit: Hogarth and the Art of Noise Exhibition photograph credit Peter Mallet
Together, they transformed the Hospital into the UK’s first public art gallery, and one of London’s most fashionable venues.
Image credit: Karolina Heller
Hogarth encouraged leading artists to donate their work and Handel held benefit concerts of Messiah in the Hospital’s chapel. It was the place to see and be seen helping.
Image credit: Karolina Heller
During its two centuries in operation, the Foundling Hospital looked after a remarkable 25,000 children. Today, the museum building is situated in the grounds of the old hospital at 40 Brunswick Square in Bloomsbury.