"Tell Your Mother Holborn's Still There!"

"Tell your mother Holborn's still there!" is the postscript to a letter sent in 1950 from London to my mother by Vic, an English friend.  He had worked with her and become acquainted with my grandmother Lily, a former Londoner, during his time living in Australia.

Holborn is adjacent to what is now Coram's Fields, which stand on what was the forecourt of the St.Pancras Foundling Hospital.  If you walk through the remains of the Hospital's gatehouse at the southern end, you enter into Lamb's Conduit Street, Holborn.  It seems my grandmother Lily ventured in this direction during her childhood at the Hospital, rather than into the adjacent Bloomsbury, before she finally left the area in 1897 to go into domestic service in another part of London. 

I imagine my grandmother and the other children of the Foundling Hospital walking in about 1890 in a crocodile through its gate and down Lambs Conduit Street into the rest of Holborn.  Perhaps they were on their way to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where they could run and play freely, or maybe they walked further south, to Victoria Embankment, from where they could see the Thames.

Many of the buildings in Holborn today were built after the end of the nineteenth century, including Holborn Tube Station, which dates from 1906.  The old Edwardian Holborn is found today near Grape Street and the more modern one near the Kingsway.  Lambs Conduit Street, at the time of my visit in 2013, was a pleasant, pedestrianised thoroughfare full of boutiques, cafes and shops and the admirable People's Supermarket.  It has been a local high street since before 1817, when 78 of its houses were occupied by retailers selling everything from cakes and medicines to toys and books. 

Plenty of wares were no doubt available for sale in the street at the end of the nineteenth century, perhaps encouraging Lily to develop her habit of acquiring china, glassware, silverware, hats and jewellery.  She set great store by having goods of quality throughout her life.

On the left, as the foundlings walk down Lambs Conduit Street from the gatehouse, they pass The Lamb, now a Grade II listed Victorian pub, at number 94.  Another Victorian pub, The Perseverance, is at number 63.  Twenty-two inns or taverns were recorded in Holborn in the 1860s, so it seems unavoidable that the foundlings would see these establishments and hear sounds of carousing and merriment from within as they passed by.
Lambs Conduit Street runs into Red Lion Street from which Lambs Conduit Passage will take the foundlings into Red Lion Square, after they walk past two more pubs: The Enterprise at 38 Red Lion Street and The Dolphin, dating from the 18th century, on the north eastern corner of the Passage and Red Lion Street.  The foundlings, as they pass through the square, will notice numbers 14 - 17, still in existence today, which date from 1684 when they were built by speculative builder Nicholas Barbon, as well as other dilapidated houses dating from the 17th century.  Number 17 was briefly the residence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter and he recommended the premises, despite their dampness and decrepitude, to William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in the 1850s.  Later, in 1861, Morris set up the first headquarters of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co at 8 Red Lion Square to produce designs of furniture and furnishings using traditional craft methods, leading to the movement which became the Arts and Crafts Movement.  The company moved to Queen Square, situated in Bloomsbury to the north, in 1881.

From Red Lion Square, the foundlings walk down Gloucester Street, across High Holborn and into Little Turnstile which connects with Gate Street before they reach Lincoln's Inn Fields.  Just before Little Turnstile, the foundlings will see the Royal Music Hall on High Holborn, also known as the Holborn Music Hall and originally a Noncomformist chapel.  Walter Besant says in Holborn & Bloomsbury, published 1903, that: "After 1840 it became a hall with lectures being given by free thinkers before being adapted to its present purpose in 1857."

At number 4 Gate Street the foundlings glance at the buildings known as Newton's Buildings, reputedly built in about 1658.  They may also stray into Little Queen Street, which was cleared to make way for the construction of Kingsway in 1900.  Larger streets, such as Great Queen Street, survived.  It housed the Novelty Theatre which hosted the London premiere of A Doll's House in 1889, finally closing in 1941.  At number 12 Gate Street, the Ship Tavern, established 1549, could be seen in an incarnation closer to its original from than the one on view today.  I'm sure some curious foundlings succeeded in straying from the eyes of their masters and mistresses to get a closer look at the commercial establishments in Holborn while they were on rare excursions from the Hospital.

Slightly further west, if the foundlings cross what is now Kingsway and continue down High Holborn, they will come to a shop on the corner of Newton Street, otherwise known as 207 High Holborn.  It's currently a Cards Galore shop, but during its history has been a pawnbroker, jewellery or antique shop after starting life in about 1834 as a tobacconist.  By the 1880s, a jeweller by the name of Charles Shapland had taken over and ran it with a partner named Cloud as a clockmaking and pawnbroking business specialising in old jewels. Today, the shop still has its wooden frontage with wrought iron cresting, popular during the late nineteenth century.  The foundlings would have been wide-eyed had they been able to view the contents of its windows, their experience of the luxuries within so limited as to be non-existent.

If the foundlings are walking directly to Victoria Embankment, after passing Lincoln's Inn Fields, they will come upon 13-14 Portsmouth Street, the home of the Old Curiosity Shop, a building which has existed as a shop since it was built in the 16th century.  A dairy during the 17th century, it is reputedly the oldest surviving shop in Britain and immortalised by Charles Dickens in his novel of the same name, although the shop on which his book is based was actually nearer to Leicester Square. 

Strangely enough, there is an Australian connection to the Old Curiosity Shop, through the Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn's four-times-great grandfather Andrew Tempany, a theatrical entrepreneur and actor.  He leased the premises in 1859 as well those next door at 15-16 Portsmouth Street, where he set up house.  By 1862, when he is recorded as being of 3 Little Wild Street in the Drury Lane area of Holborn, he was bankrupt and had been sent to a debtor's prison.  Upon release, he worked as a clerk before being admitted to the Holborn Union Workhouse where he died in 1876.  His daughter Elizabeth emigrated to Australia in 1863 aged 21 and gave birth there to Ben's great great grandmother.  Andrew's son William had previously been transported to the colony for horse stealing - an act most likely precipitated by his mother Honor's death in 1849 during London's cholera epidemic.  She left four young children and their father struggled to keep them fed and clothed; his theatrical and thespian endeavours failed, leading him to describe himself as an 'accountant' in the 1861 census, though his original occupation was that of "paint-stainer."  Charles Dickens himself could not have imagined a more Dickensian character.

The foundlings, if they look to their right as they pass through Lincoln's Inn Fields, could not help but notice the area known as Clare Market which spread through a maze of narrow interconnecting streets.  The market sold mostly meat, as well as fish and vegetables.  Not affected by the Great Fire of London, decrepit Elizabethan buildings survived until 1900, when the area, by then a slum, was demolished to create Kingsway.  By 1878 though, Walter Besant reports "a mission chapel had been established at its centre, together with schools and other benevolent and charitable institutions, such as a soup kitchen, a home for needlewomen and a workingmen's club had also gradually grouped."

This area had always been a busy, bustling thoroughfare, even in 1720 when Little Queen Street was described by the map maker Strype as being "a place pestered with coaches."  By the time of Walter Besant's investigations, it had "the heavy traffic of the King's Cross omnibus passing through it."

Besant describes the Holborn Restaurant which formed part of one side of Little Queen Street as "a very gorgeous place and within is a very palace of modern luxury.  It stands on the site formerly occupied by the Holborn Casino or Dancing Saloon."  The foundlings must have gazed in wonder at such a luxurious temple of the upper class, or palace of racy entertainment as it was in its earlier incarnation.

If the foundlings continue walking down Little Queen Street, through Clare Market and onto Great Queen Street, past Great Wild Street, past the "Artizans Dwellings" indicated on Walter Besant's 1903 map and then go beyond Drury Lane, they will reach Covent Garden.  Bounded on the east by Drury Lane and Long Acre to the north, the Royal Opera House is just south of Long Acre.  The neo-classical market building designed by Charles Fowler in 1830 is the one still in existence today as Covent Garden Market, so if any of the foundlings manage to sneak away from their crocodile, they will gasp in awe at this magnificent glass roofed building and the abundance of goods and wares available for sale therein.

If, instead of going down Lambs Conduit Passage to Red Lion Square, the foundlings continue walking down Red Lion Street and then turn left on Theobalds Road, they will come to Gray's Inn Gardens, another open space where they can run freely and admire the cherry, birch and elm trees and 19th century buildings which still surround this garden square.  The square was the place in the early 19th century where the poet Shelley, severely in debt, used to meet his future wife Mary Godwin on Sundays, the only day of the week when debtors could not be arrested.

Should the foundlings venture down Gray's Inn Lane (now Gray's Inn Road) and into Little Gray's Inn Lane (now Mount Pleasant) they will be confronted by the Holborn Union Workhouse.  Foundling Hospital officials could well have pointed out the grim façade of this building to the foundlings as a place where they would end up should they not apply themselves diligently in the apprenticeships they will enter upon leaving the Hospital.  Some buildings of the Holborn Union Workhouse remain today behind the gates of a plumbing company on Gray's Inn Road and in the back streets behind Mount Pleasant, there is an L-shaped building several storeys high with large Victorian warehouse style windows which housed the Casual Wards of the workhouse.

A little further along from Gray's Inn Lane, if the foundlings turn into High Holborn and continue to Holborn Circus, they will come upon the quiet, mysterious cul de sac known as Ely Place, the former residence of the Bishops of Ely and which houses the magnificent St Etheldreda Chapel, the oldest Roman Catholic church in Britain. 

The gardens of St Etheldreda were said to produce the finest strawberries in London and a Strawberry Fayre was held there every June.  By Charles Dickens's time, the fields of saffron which had surrounded Ely Place had given way to slum areas and it was to the street called Saffron Hill that Dickens had the Artful Dodger take Oliver Twist.  The infamous Fagin's den and Thieves' Kitchen were nearby.  I wonder if any plucky foundlings managed to attend a strawberry fair in Ely Place, as it's not certain the Hospital would have allowed them such frivolous activity.

More likely than not, though, the foundlings would have marched in their crocodile towards Victoria Embankment and its gardens, created in 1874.  In summer, these gardens are open until 9.30 pm, Victoria Embankment having been lit by either electricity or gaslight since 1878.

It is here the foundlings are able to run, play games, cartwheel and be free of their daily routine for at least a few hours.  So many sights and sounds have they seen on their path to this destination, they have had a truly memorable journey through the diverse and fascinating place that was Holborn in the 1880s and 1890s.

References:
Holborn & Bloomsbury (1903) Walter Besant.  Available from Project Gutenberg
awalkinhistory.blogspot.com
londonhistoricshops.blogspot.com
Who Do You Think You Are? SBS Australia, Episode 3, Season 2, 17 January 2012
ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project
londonsstreets.blogspot.com
british-history.ac.uk
londongardenstrust.org
londonist.com
Neighbourhood Watch: Article by Josh Sims, Evening Standard, 18 October 2013

Pictured: The front door of The Lamb: 94 Lambs Conduit Street, Holborn

Lily and The Foundling Hospital

In December 1882, Charlotte Boyt, of  The Herne, Beddington Lane, Mitcham petitioned The Foundling Hospital at Corams's Fields for the admission of her infant daughter Lily.

Charlotte's was an unfortunate tale; she was aged 26 and had been a servant in more than one middle class household in the parish of Wallington, Surrey in recent years after leaving her birthplace of Christchurch, Hampshire.  She became engaged to George Robertson, a bricklayer she met when they both lived at East Dulwich. George eventually had to take employment as a gardener in a different location, due to lack of work in his usual occupation.  Their engagement continued for three and a half years, during which Charlotte was a regular visitor to the home of George and his mother, a widowed charwoman who lived at 3 Church Lane, Beddington.  All was well, it appeared, apart from the fact of no wedding date being set, possibly due to George's lack of money and employment prospects. 

Charlotte left her situation as a servant at Dr Hardy's, The Grove, East Dulwich to obtain one closer to where George now lived, on his suggestion.  She was well-liked by George's mother who said in an interview with a Foundling Hospital official that she was most happy to have Charlotte as a future daughter-in-law.

One night when Charlotte and George were out walking, as they did to have time alone together, he "violently seduced" her. She found herself pregnant soon afterwards. She told no-one of the incident and it was not repeated.  She and George, who initially acknowledged paternity, remained in contact.  Towards the end of Charlotte's pregnancy however, he started to deny the fact the child was his, and disappeared from his mother's home shortly after the birth.  Neighbours reported him as "going to Yorkshire to find work."  George's mother stated she was not in a position to help Charlotte as due to George's actions, their relationship was now "at variance".

And so Charlotte entered the Croydon Workhouse for her confinement.  She was delivered of a baby daughter on 27 September 1881 and named her "Lily Maud Boyt".  No father's name was indicated on the baby's birth certificate.  It is not known if Charlotte informed her family of the birth.  What is certain is that she did not go back to live with them, as she was offered a position as a wet nurse on the recommendation of the midwife who delivered her baby, which she went to on 12 October 1881.

After 12 months as wet nurse for Mrs Rickett of Benleigh House, Park Hill Road, Croydon, Charlotte had to find another dwelling place for both herself and her daughter.  Her options were limited; she could not take her baby with her to a live-in situation as a servant for a household and it appears she was able to resist the options of either prostitution, where she could possibly have kept Lily, or the workhouse, where they would have been separated in any event.  She managed to find a situation as servant for Mrs Webber in her household at Mitcham, but her baby had to be relinquished, if she was to stay there.

She thus found herself journeying in December 1882 from the lavender fields of Mitcham to Bloomsbury for the purpose of petitioning the St. Pancras Foundling Hospital.  If her petition was successful, she could be sure Lily would live in a safe place where she would be educated and looked after until she reached the age of 21.  She would be released into domestic service at the age of sixteen, but the position would be one where the employer was found and approved by the Hospital.

Charlotte was eligible to petition for Lily to be accepted as a foundling as she was not married, not widowed and Lily was her first child.  Lily was older at the time of the petition than the requisite twelve months stipulated by the Hospital, but this appears not to have been an issue.  Charlotte wrote on her petition that George Robertson "is gone right away" and this fact was verified by interviews with George's mother and neighbours.  Her petition was accepted on 5 January 1883.

Lily Maud was then received by The Foundling Hospital on 16 January 1883. On that same day she was baptised in the Hospital's chapel with the new name chosen for her by the Hospital. And so Lily became "Edith Irwin," the name by which she was to be known for the rest of her life.

Sophie Anderson, Foundling Girls in the Chapel  Copyright Coram in the care of the Foundling Museum

Thanks to the staff of the London Metropolitan Archives who assisted in locating the actual Petition lodged by Charlotte Boyt for the admission of Lily to the Foundling Hospital.

The Foundling Hospital

The extraordinary history of the Foundling Hospital starts with Captain Thomas Coram, who had no children of his own, but who lobbied for the establishment of a home for the many abandoned children he saw inhabiting the streets on his daily walk from Rotherhithe to the City of London.  He had spent many years living in Nova Scotia, where he made a moderate fortune as a shipbuilder before returning in 1719 to his native London with his American wife, and was incensed at the waste of life, having experienced American labour shortages.  It took nearly 19 years for his efforts to finally bear fruit, but what a legacy and what a history.  The building which housed the children in the nineteenth century is now demolished, but the 1937 building from which the orphanage was administered still exists today as a museum.  The institution in its early days attracted the patronage of two of the most famous artistic names of the eighteenth century - the artist William Hogarth and Georg Frideric Handel, the composer, who performed his Messiah within its walls in order to raise funds.

An estate of 56 acres was purchased in Lamb's Conduit fields in 1739 and a building erected at which, it was announced, that at 8 o'clock on a designated evening in 1741, twenty children would be received who were not suffering from any contagious disease. The persons bringing them would not be asked any questions and each infant should bear a distinguishing token, so the child could be identified in the future.  On this first night of reception, a group of young women approached the Hospital, weeping and carrying bundles which they placed in the appointed place, observed by the governors and the curious in dimmed light.

The hospital later developed a policy of accepting only illegitimate children on the personal application of the mother, for whom the child was a firstborn child and under the age of twelve months.  The only legitimate children admitted were those of soldiers or sailors killed whilst in the service of the country.  The mother could not be a widow and also had to satisfy the Hospital committee of her previous good character. 

Once a child was admitted to the Hospital, a mother could have no further communication with her infant.  The child was immediately baptised in the Hospital's chapel with a new name but the mother was never informed of this name.  All she was given was a certificate containing the registered number of her infant which she could use to make inquiries. She could visit the Hospital and see all the children together, as could any member of the public, but even if she thought she recognised her own child, she was not permitted to speak to them apart from any of the other children or those in charge.  No Thoroughfare (Charles Dickens & Wilkie Collins, 1867) illustrates this situation through its "veiled lady" whose desperation to identify the child she left at the Hospital is poignantly portrayed as her sorrow leads her to accost and bribe a Hospital nurse into telling her the name given to her son and to return twelve years later to observe the children at dinner and persuade an attendant to identify the named child.*

By 1870, Hospital boys were being apprenticed to a trade at age 14 and girls went to work as domestic servants once they turned 15.  The Hospital was responsible for the children until they turned 21 and invited those apprenticed to visit the Hospital once a year at Easter when, if their employer's reports were favourable, they were awarded a sum of money.  Some of the old 'foundlings' still visited their old home in Lamb's Conduit fields even after forty or fifty years of work and consulted the secretary in relation to the best investment for their savings.

The Hospital is also notable historically as a meeting place of painters, due to Hogarth having the enlightened idea of persuading artists to donate paintings as a fundraising measure.  Meetings were then held which attracted wealthy, polite society who made donations for the upkeep of the children.  As there were no art galleries or museums in London at the time, British artists were able to exhibit their work in public for the first time and gain exposure.  These meetings led directly to the foundation of the Royal Academy of Artists by Sir Joshua Reynolds (who also exhibited at the Hospital) in 1768.

Handel, who in 1749 offered a performance of vocal instrumental music to raise funds for the completion of the Hospital chapel, was also instrumental in expanding and maintaining it as a building and institution.  He conducted the first of many performances of his Messiah in the chapel in 1750 and later became a governor.  He also gave annual benefit concerts until his death in 1759.  A strong musical tradition was thus begun at the Hospital where the boys were taught to play musical instruments so they could participate in the Hospital's orchestral performances.  These skills then led to interest in recruitment by the Royal Navy.

Fortunate were the children accepted as 'foundlings.'  The Hospital, from its founding years, was progressive in its medical care for its children, often engaging the services of prestigious physicians and medical professionals who gave their services free of charge.  Smallpox inoculation was mandatory for all children admitted after 1743 and contributed to the survival of its infants from the smallpox scourges which prevailed in London throughout the nineteenth century.  My grandmother was indeed lucky to have come to live in such a place of care and innovation rather than a workhouse where disease and contagion were rife.  At the time, it was the most her unmarried mother could have done for her, but definitely the best choice, although it must have been a heartbreaking one.  By 1891, it was a self-contained subculture of society which had, according to the census records of that year, Thomas Bassett as school steward, a head schoolmaster, an assistant schoolmaster, a drill master, a housekeeper, four school mistresses, two sewing mistresses, a trained nurse, a needlewoman and twelve domestic servants, three of whom doubled as kitchen maids and a housemaid and one of whom was a cook.  The domestic servants were also described as "nurses for children," reflecting the fact that a large proportion of the female working population aged from 16 upwards in the United Kingdom at this time were employed to look after young children.

Despite its dining room being used by Dickens as the model for the "Please sir, I want some more" scene in Oliver Twist, the Hospital was an innovation, particularly as it accommodated the babies of "fallen women"; those who had given birth to illegitimate babies and for whom there was no thought of keeping their child unless they had family to whom they could turn.  As many of these women were from poor backgrounds, their families did not have the capacity to take them in and these children usually ended up living on the streets and turning to crime to support themselves.  The Foundling Hospital was a tremendously important contribution to social change.

Pictured is the staircase formerly in the Boys' quarters of the Hospital, removed to the building which now houses the Foundling Museum.

Source: The Terrible Sights of London & Labours of Love in the midst of them by Thomas Archer    (Author of Strange Work and The Pauper, the Thief & the Convict) London, Stanley Rivers & Co.  1870, reproduced at www.victorianlondon.org

*A link to this story is here: http://www.victorianlondon.org/health/foundlinghospital.htm

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