The Foundling Museum

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 an

d 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.

What do you see? What do you not see? 🪞 ‘Through a Glass III’ by Rachel Kneebone originally came to the Museum as part o...
24/08/2026

What do you see? What do you not see? 🪞

‘Through a Glass III’ by Rachel Kneebone originally came to the Museum as part of our 2025 exhibition ‘Self-Made: Reshaping Identities’, which explored the medium of clay as a way to reflect on the blurred and malleable boundaries of identity and self-creation. From a series of five porcelain cartouches, Kneebone’s piece reinterprets the traditional decorative frame into something more open and fragile, like a mirror. Highly intricate, its cracks, fissures and delicate layers invite viewers to reflect on imperfections, absences and possibilities.

We were delighted to acquire this work for our permanent Collection in 2025, as a generous donation from the artist. It is currently on display in the Museum.

🔍 Rachel Kneebone (b. 1973), ‘Through a Glass III’, 2023, donated by the artist, 2025

21/08/2026

Take a break from scrolling and listen in... 🐑 
 
This is ‘A Piping Shepherd Boy’, believed to be by Tommaso Salini. When it was donated to the Foundling Hospital in 1891, it had been attributed to a different artist, Pier Francesco Mola, an attribution that was only reconsidered in the 1980s.  

This painting was covered in a thick layer of yellowed varnish until 2018, when we had it cleaned and x-rayed. While questions around attribution remain, conservators found that the boy’s bent leg was painted over the dog, who seems to have been originally depicted in full. You can see where the boy’s tunic lines up perfectly with the dog’s neck. 
  
🔍 Tommaso Salini (c.1575-1625), ‘A Piping Shepherd Boy’, c.1620–25

In 1936, John Caldicott’s mother Daisy brought him to the Foundling Hospital, when he was three months old. He spent his...
19/08/2026

In 1936, John Caldicott’s mother Daisy brought him to the Foundling Hospital, when he was three months old.

He spent his early years with a foster mother in Essex and then returned to the Foundling Hospital School in Berkhamsted, where he lived until 1954 when the Hospital ended institutional care. While at the Hospital, John discovered a love of music. He met his wife Kay working in his first job in a radio and musical instrument shop, and they have been married for over 70 years.

John has been an active presence at the Foundling Museum since its opening in 2004, and we were honoured to commission this portrait of him in 2021 as part of the Foundling Portraits project. Until 2021, there were no portraits of named foundlings or former pupils on the walls of the Museum. To change that, John was one of five living former pupils who sat for five leading photographers.

John was photographed by Mahtab Hussain, a British fine art portrait photographer whose work is held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and has been exhibited at Ikon Gallery, New Art Exchange and the Hayward Gallery.

The photograph is printed on a large mirror and hangs on our main staircase. As visitors ascend the stairs, they see themselves reflected in John's portrait.

To learn more about John’s extraordinary story, join us on Monday 28 September for an in-conversation between John and care-experienced storyteller and theatre-maker Isabelle Kirkham, linking generations and narratives of children's social care from John’s experiences in the 1930s and 40s to the care system today.

🔍 Mahtab Hussain (b.1981), '‘Reflections’ - Portrait of John aka Jack Caldicott', 2021

Making hay while the sun shines ☀️📷 Archival photo of Foundling Hospital pupils on summer camp, early 20th century
16/08/2026

Making hay while the sun shines ☀️

📷 Archival photo of Foundling Hospital pupils on summer camp, early 20th century

This silver disc was left as an identifying token with a baby at the Foundling Hospital in the 18th century. We don't kn...
13/08/2026

This silver disc was left as an identifying token with a baby at the Foundling Hospital in the 18th century. We don't know which child it was brought with, but the story behind it gives us an insight into the Enlightenment ideas that shaped the 18th century in England.

This token is an admission ticket to a lecture by Dr Erasmus King.

Dr King gave lectures in 'experimental philosophy' between 1730 and 1756. Today, we’d call experimental philosophy ‘empirical science’, the study of science based on experimentation and evidence.

As a scientist-entertainer, he introduced his audiences to topics like anatomy, astronomy, electricity, mechanics, physics and chemistry, through a mix of theatre and science.

Dr King didn’t just describe experiments but performed them using devices of his own design, including a rotating model showing the orbits of the sun, moon and earth.

Alongside his lectures, Dr King ran daytime courses for women which he advertised in his wife's lace shop. We can't know how the woman that left this token with her child came by it, whether she attended a course herself or came across it by chance.

Because it was one of dozens of tokens that were separated from admission records in the 19th century, we haven’t been able to match this token to a child.

However, it does hint at the varied backgrounds of the women who sought help from the Foundling Hospital, and provides an insight into the exciting scientific spirit of the age.

On this day Dr Richard Mead, doctor, philanthropist and patron of the arts, was born 🩺 Well known throughout his life fo...
11/08/2026

On this day Dr Richard Mead, doctor, philanthropist and patron of the arts, was born 🩺

Well known throughout his life for his amiability, dedication to his work, and support of charities like the Foundling Hospital, the writer Samuel Johnson is said to have commented that Mead, his friend, ‘lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man’.

He was the leading doctor in England, attending the prime minister, Sir Isaac Newton, and Queen Anne; an expert on the spread and prevention of smallpox, measles and plague, and pioneer on poisons; and a founding Governor of the Foundling Hospital.

Dr Mead was born in 1673, the 11th of 13 children. After studying in Europe, by the early 18th century he was one of the leading physicians in England, and was personal physician to George II.

He was also an avid collector, amassing a library of over 10,000 volumes, and a lifelong patron of the arts. Allan Ramsay, who painted the portrait of Mead in the Foundling Museum's Collection, was supported by Mead in his early career.

Dr Mead was also something of a character. During his extensive research on poisons, he is said to have proven that snake venom was ineffective when taken orally by swallowing it himself.

In 1719 he allegedly fought a sword duel with a rival doctor in defence of his theories on smallpox (fortunately the other doctor fell over before any blows could be exchanged).

It was his work on smallpox that made a lasting impact on the life of the Foundling Hospital.

An early supporter of Thomas Coram’s campaign to open an institution for the welfare of London’s most vulnerable children, Mead served as a founding Governor and informed much of the medical care at the Hospital.

Under his direction, the children of the Foundling Hospital were inoculated against smallpox decades before Edward Jenner pioneered the vaccine. He oversaw medical care at the Hospital and occasionally attended to the children himself.

Upon Dr Mead’s death in 1754, he left £100 to the Hospital in his will, worth over £10,000 today. By coincidence, Mead’s house on Great Ormond Street later became the site of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

🔍 Allan Ramsay (1713–84), ‘Portrait of Dr Richard Mead’, 1747

Estimated currency value from the National Archives.

07/08/2026

How were the newborns brought to the Foundling Hospital fed when breastmilk wasn’t available? 🍼

Watch volunteer Deb describe a tiny - but very important - object from our Collection.

Babies were brought to the Foundling Hospital when they were only a few months old, long before they were weaned.

While most were wet nursed, some - due to malnourishment, trouble breastfeeding, or a wet nurse becoming ill or being unavailable - would have their diets supplemented by or made up entirely of ‘pap’. Recipes vary, but in the 18th century a standard mix of breadcrumbs and water (and occasionally eggs) would be used. The Foundling Hospital also records adding a mix of ‘rhubarb and magnetia’ (magnesium). Animal milk was rarely used, and may have done more harm than good as it was often contaminated.

To learn more about how babies were fed at the Foundling Hospital, join Deb, who holds a doctorate in the history of early years nutrition, for an in-depth talk on wet nursing at the Hospital as part of our Meet the Experts series. Tickets are available on our website.

04/08/2026

Take inspiration from our Collection with 🐑

Alongside the beautiful artworks in the Museum’s Collection are many hidden details, inset in picture frames, engraved on plaques, and ornamenting everyday objects. This baptismal font, while not ‘everyday’, was used to christen foundling babies in the 19th century. It features a lamb motif, a reference the Hospital’s coat of arms.

Why not pay us a visit and see what you can find?

Nits are no fun! 🪳The children of the Foundling Hospital had their heads shaved or closely cropped as young children fro...
02/08/2026

Nits are no fun! 🪳

The children of the Foundling Hospital had their heads shaved or closely cropped as young children from the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, as can be seen in this photo. This was to combat the prolific problem of head lice. In a time before antibiotics and insecticides, skin infections due to scratching could be very serious. When children were brought to the Hospital from the countryside, where they spent their earliest years, their heads would often be shaved as a precautionary measure.

In Hospital Sub-Committee meeting minutes from 1779, a note is made of a bill paid to Luke Knowler for 'shaving the Children's Heads'. Luke was himself 'a Boy of this Hospital', who had been apprenticed to an apothecary.

While boys generally kept their hair quite short, as they got older girls at the Hospital would grow theirs longer.

📷 Archive photo of young girls at the Foundling Hospital, c. early 20th century.

Many former pupils of the Foundling Hospital went into the Army after they left school. The regimen, uniform and discip...
30/07/2026

Many former pupils of the Foundling Hospital went into the Army after they left school.

The regimen, uniform and discipline were familiar to those that had grown up in the Hospital. John Darrell, who was left in the care of the Hospital as a baby in 1929, recalls his first night in the Army aged 16.

‘We didn't have civilian clothes when we left the school [so] we went from school uniform straight into Army uniform.

‘I remember the first night there, a lot of sobbing going on in the dormitory, or in the Army hut, where boys were missing their mums and were homesick.

‘But our boys weren't homesick 'cos we were used to being disciplined or whatever. We listened to the other boys sobbing as they went to sleep, missing their home. We had nothing to cry about.’

John, who was an excellent sportsman, joined an Army band which was looking to boost its football team. John wasn’t a musician and ended up ‘just holding a cornet’, and doing the morning wake-up call. After nine years in the Army, he left and became a bookmaker, a career which lasted 40 years. He married his wife Alice in 1959 and they had three children. John died in 2022 at the age of 93.

Hear John in his own words as part of our oral history project. Search 'Foundling Voices' on our website.

📷 John in his Army uniform, 1940s; John with the Foundling Hospital football team, 1930s [John is in the second row, two in from the left]; John aged 81 in his home

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

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