Foundling Hospital: Children’s stories revealed in database

The hospital, which effectively operated as a children’s home, looked after boys until they were old enough to work on merchant ships or join the military, and girls until they were old enough to begin service jobs.

The admission bundles can now be seen as part of the database. A new exhibition, Echoes of Care, has also been created at its offices in Bloomsbury.

The documents hint at the stories of young women forced to abandon their children; those who had given birth out of wedlock, or who had to choose between leaving their child and entering the workhouse, or who had themselves been abandoned by husbands or family.

One mother wrote on her token in 1756: “As for me, I am poor and needy but the Lord careth for me.”

The tokens were not about sentimentality: they were used as identification for the tiny proportion – about 3% – of the children who were reclaimed.

Each one that remains in the archive represents a child who was never reunited with their birth family.