What that sentence omits is a description of the conditions of deserted children left to die on the dung heaps in the city. Coram Boy describes what happens to two orphans saved by the Foundling Hospital on Bloomsbury's Coram Fields. But what happened to the hospital - or children's care home, as it would be known today - in the succeeding centuries?
A splendid history of England's oldest children's charity is published next week, written by Gillian Pugh, the distinguished child specialist and former chief executive of the Coram Family charity. The three key players in a fascinating story - Thomas Coram, William Hogarth and George Frideric Handel - were all childless. Moreover, it was a secular, not a religious foundation. Coram was a committed Anglican, but the church was reluctant to be seen to be encouraging promiscuous sex. His charity was the world's first secular-philanthropic corporation.
Fourteen years after its launch, the charity turned to parliament, seeking additional funding in 1742. It was given £10,000 on condition it accepted all babies brought to its gate. The hospital was overwhelmed. Even five new branch hospitals that were opened could not handle the case load, leading to the deaths of a large number of babies. The grant was terminated after four years. Pugh notes that it was the first time a charity had taken a grant from government, but with it came "the lack of control over the quality of the work that so often comes with external funding".
The story contains lessons for modern politicians and charities. The lesson for Labour is the damage that can be caused when governments impose too many conditions on successful charitable services that they agree to help to subsidise.
The lesson for the Tories is to stop believing a successful charity in one town can be replicated across the country. A succession of shadow ministers has been making such assertions. At different points over the last 265 years, the Coram charity's governors debated expanding their services across the country. Each time they said no, preferring to run high-quality "beacon" services that can influence policy and support practitioners elsewhere through training and dissemination.
The lesson for a new generation of charity entrepreneurs is not to worry about upsetting current moral values, and to stick with a good new idea. It took Thomas Coram 17 years of campaigning before he collected 375 "names" on the petition that persuaded the king to grant a royal charter. It ran against current moral values, but then they were based on double standards: illegitimate births among the aristocracy were seen as unfortunate but acceptable, while support for the poor working classes was seen as encouraging promiscuous sex.
To her credit, Pugh notes the mistakes made by the charity, not least the delay in recognising that children were better off with families or in small group homes. The residential institution is no more, but all manner of imaginative programmes supporting families, foster and adoptive parents are now in place.
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