Coram’s Foundling Hospital Archive is a unique and rich historical resource. To make it widely available, Coram has digitised and transcribed 405 volumes dating from 1739 to 1899. Nearly 100,000 pages, or 23% of the entire physical archive, can now be viewed online – for free: https://archives.coram.org.uk/.
The online archive contains:
· Petitions from mothers and others
· Billet Books containing tokens
· Admission and baptism registers
· Apprenticeship registers
· Registers of country nurses, inspectors, and regional branch hospitals
· Records about claimed children
· Minutes from Committee meetings
The digital archive was created during Coram’s Voices Through Time: The Story of Care programme, made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The London Archives house the entire physical Foundling Hospital Archive: https://www.thelondonarchives.org/.
Our Most Unusual Item
A photograph is a rare and unusual find in the digitised Foundling Hospital Archive! This is a photo of Foundling John Feltham (No. 21151) with his birth mother, Emma Bennett, before his admission into the Hospital in 1866. Emma was a housemaid, and this hand-tinted photograph would have been a significant investment of her wages. John would go on to become an apprentice to a London printer/journalist.
ONLINE RESOURCES
On Coram’s history website, Coram Story, you will find stories of individual Foundlings, articles about life at the Hospital, and highlights from the archive. Explore all of Coram Story’s resources here: https://coramstory.org.uk/