FOUNDLING STORIES

The Unexpected Fate of Foundling Hospital Children

Historian Helen Berry talks about her new book Orphans of Empire: the Fate of London’s Foundlings, which charts the surprising fate of nearly 6,000 orphaned and abandoned children raised by the London Foundling Hospital, the most famous charity in Georgian England.

Orphans of Empire uncovers the harrowing and often inspiring history of the thousands of children who had to fight for survival before the creation of the modern welfare state.  She reveals the surprising truth about the fate of many hundreds of children raised by the charity: toiling, not onboard Royal Navy ships (as was the original mission of the Hospital) but in the fields of rural Yorkshire.

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Helen Berry is Professor of British History at Newcastle University. She studied history at the University of Durham and Jesus College, Cambridge, and has published extensively on the social history of Georgian Britain. A prizewinning Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Orphans of Empire is her third book.

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