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

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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.