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

育婴堂是英国第一家儿童慈善机构和第一家公共艺术画廊，成立于1739年，旨在照顾有被遗弃风险的婴儿。本研究项目的时间顺序将集中在19世纪中期的几十年，当时婴儿入院的标准发生了非常重大的变化；要符合资格，母亲必须未婚，这必须是她的第一个孩子，并且她必须证明在怀孕之前她以前具有良好的道德品质。该基金资助的博士研究跨越社会史和艺术史，对妇女和育婴堂工作人员的生活有双重兴趣，如档案所示，以及通过博物馆19世纪艺术收藏对这些妇女和该机构的视觉表现。项目的具体重点将由学生与导师协商后设计。育婴堂的档案确实非同寻常，包含了19世纪以来广泛的材料，包括：申请人的名字；填妥的申请表格（称为“呈请书”）；对妇女的采访记录；雇主的推荐信；以及《医院问询报》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。除了对档案的详细工作外，CDA论文的第二部分将是博物馆19世纪绘画和雕塑的收藏。该医院是英国第一家公共艺术画廊，在19世纪，收藏家和捐助者继续捐赠作品，这些作品与母亲和童年，遗弃和慈善事业的主题产生共鸣。19世纪的藏品研究非常不足，该项目将是对这一时期艺术知识的重要和原创性贡献。通过同时研究19世纪的档案和艺术收藏，学生将能够考虑母亲申请表和相关文件中所代表的图像和叙述与同一时期医院艺术和雕塑中所描绘的图像和叙述之间的关系。

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.