Narratives of Fall: The Archive and Art Collection of the Nineteenth-Century Foundling Hospital

弃婴医院是英国第一个儿童慈善机构和第一个公共艺术画廊，成立于1739年，旨在照顾有被遗弃风险的婴儿。本研究项目的时间重点将放在世纪中期，当时婴儿入院的标准发生了非常重大的变化;要符合条件，母亲必须未婚，必须是她的第一个孩子，她必须证明她在怀孕前有良好的道德品质。这资助了社会史和艺术史方面的博士论文，与妇女和弃婴医院官员的生活，在档案中显示，并通过博物馆的十九世纪的艺术收藏这些妇女和机构的视觉表示的双重利益。该项目的具体重点将由学生与导师协商后设计。育雏医院的档案确实非同寻常，包含了十九世纪的广泛材料，包括：申请人的姓名;填写好的申请表（称为“请愿书”）;与妇女面谈的记录;雇主的推荐信;以及“医院问询者”对妇女进行的检查记录。因此，它是关于性、阶级和妇女工作的社会历史知识的宝贵来源。除了档案馆的详细工作，CDA论文的第二部分将是博物馆收藏的19世纪绘画和雕塑。医院是英国第一个公共艺术画廊，在世纪，收藏家和捐助者继续捐赠与母亲和儿童，遗弃和慈善事业的主题共鸣的作品。19世纪的收藏是非常不足的研究，该项目将是一个重要的和原始的贡献，这一时期的艺术知识。通过研究19世纪的档案和艺术收藏串联，学生将能够考虑在母亲的申请表和相关文件中所代表的图像和叙述之间的关系，以及在同一时期医院的艺术和雕塑中所描绘的图像和叙述。

The Foundling Hospital was the UK's first children's charity and first public art gallery, founded in 1739 to care for babies at risk of abandonment. The chronological focus of this research project will be on the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when the criteria for an infant's admission to the Hospital changed in very significant ways; to be eligible the mother had to be unmarried, it had to be her first child and she had to prove that prior to her pregnancy she was of previously good moral character.This funded PhD works across social history and art history, with a dual interest in the lives of women and Foundling Hospital officers, as revealed in the archive, and the visual representation of those women and the institution through the Museum's nineteenth-century art collection. The specific focus of the project will be devised by the student in consultation with supervisors.The archive of the Foundling Hospital is truly extraordinary, containing a wide range of material from the nineteenth century, including: the names of applicants; the completed application forms (known as 'petitions'); notes of interviews with women; references from employers; and records of checks on women carried out by the 'Hospital Enquirer.' It is thus an invaluable source of social historical knowledge regarding sexuality, class and women's work. As well as detailed work on the archive, the second strand of the CDA thesis will be on the Museum's collection of nineteenth-century painting and sculpture. The Hospital was the UK's first public art gallery and in the nineteenth century collectors and benefactors continued to donate works that resonated with themes of motherhood and childhood, abandonment and philanthropy. The nineteenth-century collection is extremely under-researched and the project will be a significant and original contribution to knowledge of the art of this period. By studying the nineteenth-century archive and art collection in tandem, the student will be able to consider the relationships between the images and narratives represented in the mothers' application forms and related documents and those depicted in the art and sculpture of the Hospital in the same period.