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The Foundling Museum

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The Foundling Museum

We are a museum where art, care and compassion meet. Discover timeless, human stories that speak across generations. Visit us Tuesday-Sunday.

We’re free for 21 & under. We present the story of the Foundling Hospital, the UK’s first children’s charity and public art gallery. Founded in 1739 by the campaigner Thomas Coram, it was an innovative home for children whose mothers couldn’t care for them, supported by some of the leading artists of the day including William Hogarth, George Frideric Handel and Charles Dickens. Their compassion and generosity show that art transforms lives. Inspired by our 300-year history of social change, today we work with outstanding contemporary artists, writers and musicians to deliver ambitious projects for young people and marginalised groups. With a focus on local communities, early years and care-experienced young people, our pioneering work delivers positive and lasting outcomes. Across the four floors of the Museum we present this relevant historic story through our art and objects. Discover objects and records from the original Foundling Hospital, extraordinary works of art and furnishings, thought-provoking exhibitions plus a programme of concerts, talks and children’s workshops. You can visit us Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm, and Sunday 11am-5pm. Plus, we’re free for age 21 and under.

08/10/2026

'In fiction - and in life - we measure heroism in a protagonist by the depth of difficulties they have to rise above’.

While we prepare for our next exhibition we’re looking back at an old favourite. ‘Superheroes, Orphans & Origins – 125 years in comics' explored the representation of foundlings, orphans, adoptees, and foster children in comics, graphic novels and sequential art from around the globe.

This print by Woodrow Phoenix is ‘Up in Flames’, and was commissioned for the exhibition. ‘Almost all child heroes have backstories that begin with trauma; disastrous circumstances that end up with both parents dying and a child left all alone... ‘Up in Flames’ is a look at all those inciting incidents, distilled into one long disaster poem.’

How many characters can you identify?

Limited edition prints of ‘Up in Flames’ are available in our shop.

🔍 Woodrow Phoenix, ‘Up in Flames’ (2021)

06/10/2026

We believe that this small padlock was brought to the Foundling Hospital with a baby girl in 1756 🔒

The baby's name was Elizabeth Revers, and she was born in the parish of St Giles in the Fields, London. This padlock is a ‘token’, a unique object which parents who wanted to reclaim their child from the Hospital could use to identify them.

This token has been carefully inscribed with the initials ‘E. R.’. Baby Elizabeth’s admission record lists a ‘purple ribbon with a padlock’, so we are confident that she is the ‘E.R.’ in question.

When a baby was brought to the Hospital, they were almost immediately sent to the countryside to be nursed. Most babies were wet nursed (breastfed), but for a variety of reasons some were dry nursed with a mixture called ‘pap’.

Elizabeth was renamed Anne Bridgeman by the Hospital and sent to Hampshire to be dry nursed. It’s notable that she wasn’t wet nursed, especially as her admission record notes that she had already been wet nursed, presumably by her mother. This could be because she was struggling to latch, because the Hospital thought she needed extra nutrition, or due to a lack of available wet nurses.

Elizabeth, or Anne, was one of very, very few foundling children who were ever reclaimed by their parents. Her birth mother, Ann Lombard, returned for her in 1764 when she was 7 years old.

Ann was married to Daniel Lombard, a watchmaker of Tottenham Court Road. We do not know if Daniel was the child's father, or whether he took Elizabeth into his own family at his wife's request. When Elizabeth rejoined her mother, she passed out of Hospital records, so we don't know what her ultimate fate was.

🎤 To discover more about how wet nurses were selected, monitored and supported, and the effect they had on foundling children’s lives, join us on Friday 9 October for a talk with Dr Deb Albon. Join us in person or online. Tickets available on our website.

02/10/2026

At ev’ry shadow now am seiz’d with fear, �Not for myself, but for the charge I bear.

We’re not sure how this work came to be in the Foundling Hospital’s Collection, or when, though it’s likely that it was donated or acquired sometime in the 19th century. Most of the works in the Hospital’s Collection were judged to have some relevance to the institution’s work. In this case, perhaps, the Hospital Governors saw a mother suffering, hoping for a better life for her child, willing them to forget her and strike forth on a ‘happy shore’.

🔍 Attr. John Bacon (1740–1799), ‘The Flight of Aeneas from Troy’, c. 1769, painted plaster

📖 Translations of Virgil’s Aeneid by John Dryden

30/09/2026

Pearl Martley's mother placed her in the care of the Foundling Hospital in 1938, when Pearl was a few months old. Pregnant out of wedlock, Pearl's mother's story is one that many people who grew up in the Hospital would be familiar with.

'My mother was 15 on the day I was born. She was 16 the following day, Christmas day. Her father was a prison officer at Pentonville. Her mother was dead.

'I think when I look back, I probably had a better life than I might have had with a 16-year-old girl having to bring up a baby. I know they do it now but [there were] no social services... in those days. Only sort of hardship. But on the other hand, I still would like to see her, but I mean she could have died by now...

'Although she’s only 16 years older than me, she’d be in her eighties. But I know with Alice, [Pearl's friend and fellow former Hospital pupil] you see, it didn’t work with her mother at all.’

While she never met her birth family, Pearl made lifelong friends at the Hospital, including Alice Hatter who was 'almost like a sister'.

After leaving school, Pearl worked as a secretary in Cambridge. She met and married her husband Gordon in the 1960s, and they stayed in Cambridge. Pearl died in March of this year, at the age of 88.

Hear Pearl in her own voice as part of our oral history project. Simply search 'Foundling Voices' on our website.

📷 Pearl, left, and Alice in a pram. The two girls were sent to the same foster mother as babies.
Pearl outside Pi offices in Cambridge, her first place of work.
Pearl aged 72.

28/09/2026

She was an artist, her family’s main breadwinner, and the daughter of a foundling. On this day 194 years ago, Emma Brownlow was born 🖌️🎂

In the 1850s, Brownlow began a series of paintings depicting life at the Foundling Hospital. Colourful and full of character, they are typical of a Victorian trend towards idealised, rather romanticised social scenes.

The foremost example, which she also exhibited at the Royal Academy, is ‘The Foundling Restored to its Mother’ (1858), which depicts a scene that very, very rarely happened. Brownlow's father, John, presides over the reunion. Raised in the Hospital, he rose through the ranks to become its Secretary in an ideal rags-to-riches story.

But there's another side to these works. It's no accident that Brownlow also featured in these paintings some of the most significant artworks in the Hospital's collection, including two by William Hogarth.

For over a century, the Hospital had faced accusations that it encouraged having children out of wedlock, so wasn't an institution worth supporting. By bringing together these artworks and the domestic life of the Hospital, Brownlow presented its work as an honourable endeavour and a legitimate force for social good.

Visitors to the Hospital and its art collection – who were potential donors – would see in Brownlow’s paintings the relationship between art and charity that Thomas Coram and William Hogarth had envisioned a hundred years before.

Brownlow's paintings give us a vital insight into life at the Foundling Hospital, and show an energetic, socially conscious artist. She remains the most-represented female artist in the Foundling Museum’s collection today.

📖 With thanks to Catherine Roach, ‘The Foundling Restored: Emma Brownlow King, William Hogarth, and the Public Image of the Foundling Hospital in the 19th Century’, The British Art Journal Volume IX (2008)

27/09/2026

A certain beloved baking show is back on our screens, so to get into the mood we’ve gone into the archives 🍰

This photo is from a series of posed pictures of Foundling Hospital pupils from the early 1930s. While the girls would have learned some baking basics as part of their curriculum, they’re not really making anything here – hence the conspicuously empty tins.

These shots were likely taken for publicity reasons, but we’re not sure where they would have ended up.

🔍 Archive photo of Foundling Hospital pupils baking, c. 1930/31, courtesy Coram

25/09/2026

A ‘prima donna’ floats down the Thames on a cello. To the delight of operagoers, the celebrated Italian soprano Faustina Bordoni has come to London at last.

But, there’s already a prima donna in town: Francesca Cuzzoni. Who will come out on top?

Audiences waited to see who would get the most coveted roles, and dubbed Bordoni and Cuzzoni the ‘Rival Queens’.

This engraving satirises Bordoni’s arrival, and is accompanied by a verse that compares her ‘migraine-inducing’ arpeggios to the howling wind, making sounds ‘unknown to harmony’.

In actual fact, the rivalry was exaggerated by fans and the publicity around the two women. Bordoni and Cuzzoni worked together well, particularly on two new operas by the composer Handel which he had carefully composed with balanced leading roles for both stars to shine.

You have one month left to see this and more in our Handel Gallery display, ‘300 Years of the Rival Queens: Handel’s 1726 Opera Season’. Free with the price of admission. Book your ticket now at the link in our bio.

🔍 Venarys after an unknown artist, ‘Le triomphe du goût moderne, dédie alla Signora Faustina Bordoni’, c. 1727

Image: An engraving showing a woman floating down a river on a cello. Beside her is a small boat carrying two gondolier-like sailors with enlarged cello bows as oars and a man in a wig and red wrap. The river runs through London, with St Paul's on the left bank and Southwark on the right. Clouds roll over them.

22/09/2026

What do James Bond, Estella Havisham and Han Solo have in common? 🕸️

‘Superman was a Foundling’ (2014) is a mural by poet and playwright Lemn Sissay, which explores the striking roles of orphaned, fostered and adopted children in our culture.

Sissay himself grew up in care, and describes the project as addressing the disparity between our admiration or appreciation for fictional characters and a widespread disregard for their real-life counterparts. Created as part of his Foundling Fellowship, Sissay says, ‘their adventures have enriched our lives, but we do not recognise the connection between the fictional characters and the fostered, adopted and orphaned children in our midst.’

🔍 Lemn Sissay, ‘Superman was a Foundling’, 2014. Sissay was aided by artist Charlotte Jonsmyr in the realisation of this mural.

20/09/2026

Ever feel like someone in a painting is staring right at you? 👀

The young girl's gaze in 'The Pinch of Poverty' by Thomas Benjamin Kennington was meant to evoke that feeling in contemporary onlookers, urging them to consider the 'social evil' of poverty. Kennington was best known for his scenes of upper-class women and their children, but this piece was the last in a series that marked a stark turn to social realism. This mother (likely widowed or unmarried) and her three children have turned to selling flowers on a damp street corner to support themselves.

In 19th-century Britain, unmarried mothers were in an extremely precarious position. Single mothers unable to support themselves and their families faced the workhouse and the threat of separation from their children. This is one of many reasons why so many women turned to the Foundling Hospital for help.

You can see this painting at the Foundling Museum, where it hangs on our main staircase.

🔍 Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856–1916) ‘The Pinch of Poverty’, 1891

17/09/2026

Since John Caldicott was brought to the Foundling Hospital as a tiny baby in 1936, a lot has changed about the way we care for children in this country.

Join us at the Foundling Museum on September 28 to hear John’s extraordinary life story, from growing up in institutional care to reconnecting with his birth mother as an adult. John will also be joined by Isabelle Kirkham, a care-experienced storyteller and theatre-maker, to reflect on what has changed in children’s social care—and what has stayed the same—from John’s experiences in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s to the care system today. ⁠

🎟️ Tickets are available at the link in the comments. People with experience of children’s social care go free.

Address

40 Brunswick Square
London
WC1N1AZ

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 5pm
Thursday	10am - 5pm
Friday	10am - 5pm
Saturday	10am - 5pm
Sunday	11am - 5pm

Telephone

+442078413600

Website

https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/

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