FOUNDLING HOSPITAL

 But to start with, this is Thomas Coram who was badly treated as a child, went to sea age 11 to escape his poverty, and then trained as a shipwright in America.

When he returned, he was shocked to see the sheer numbers of unwanted children living on the streets.

He badgered the government to give him a grant to start a hospital (not a medical place, but in the original meaning of a place of hospitality) to help these children. He got his grant, but on the stipulation that he never turned an unwanted child away. In four years, they received over 15,000 children. Those numbers were unsustainable, so they had to devise a system to reduce numbers and maintain standards of care. When it closed in 1953, it had cared for over 27,000 abandoned children.

The foundling hospital no longer exists per se, but the charity that Thomas founded, is now called 'Coram', and it finds foster homes for children, rather than caring for them on site.

Not sure of all the details yet, but he formed an alliance with the artist William Hogarth, and he encouraged other artists to paint pictures to raise funds for the charity.  In doing so, Hogarth created Britain's first public art gallery, and the collection contains works by himself, Reynolds and Gainsborough, amongst others.

George Frederick Handel was another prime contributor to the funds. He donated the proceeds from annual performances of The Messiah, and bequeathed the original manuscripts to the hospital. The museum has since acquired a great number of items associated with Handel.

The museum building houses an extensive art collection. I will name them, when I work out which ones they are. :)

(above) William Hogarth - The March Of The Guards To Finchley (1750)

All of 18th century life is here. Musicians, soldiers, drunkards, beggars, lusty tricorned officers, boxers, thieves, harlots and smokers. In the thick of it all are the King’s Guard, who will shortly head north to defend the capital against Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite Rising of 1745.

These soldiers have got themselves into a right old mess. One gutter-stoops from booze, yet still reaches for gin. Another man kisses and fondles a woman, seemingly against her will. Others letch, swipe, scrimshank and stagger, like a bunch of crapulent numbats. 

One soldier seems a little more sober than his comrades. He has the urgent attention of two ladies, at least one of whom is pregnant. The left-hand lady’s basket contains flyers that say “God Save the King” She’s supportive of George II and the Hanoverians. Meanwhile, the lady on the right has robes reminiscent of a nun, with a crucifix-shaped fold at the back. Catholicism is implied, and therefore the Stuart cause. The scroll she holds is reckoned to be a Jacobite newspaper. The man is torn between two futures, though he’s leaning towards the Hanoverians.

Happily, not all the troops are so compromised. In the background, a column of soldiers holds formation while marching into the distance. Given the painting’s title, we can assume they are on their way to Finchley, to defend against the Jacobites.

In the 1740s, Tottenham Court was pretty much the northern limit of London. Little but trees stood between here and the hills of Hampstead and Highgate, clearly visible in Hogarth’s painting. All the location clues we need are there in the painting. The most obvious is at the top left, where a hanging sign gives a name, the Tottenham Court Nursery: Curiously, the sign is dated 1746… the year after the muster. I’m not sure if Hogarth made an error (he painted this a few years after the event). Later engravings have it as 1745.

Tottenham Court was, quite logically, the manor to which Tottenham Court Road once led. This is an ancient name. It is first written down around the year 1000, and is later recorded in Domesday Book (1086) as Totehele. So far as anyone knows, Tottenham Court has nothing to do with Tottenham in north London. It’s coincidental etymology.

The ‘Tottenham Court Nursery’, advertised on the sign, was a real place, though neither a nursery for toddlers, nor for botanical cultivation. Rather, it’s Hogarth’s wry reference to a boxing arena, George Taylor’s ‘Great Booth’. Here, young pugilists would study the fistic arts in what might be considered a nursery of sorts. Hogarth was friends with Taylor. He even worked up a design for Taylor’s gravestone, which featured the veteran pummeller triumphant over death. We can see a pair of bare-headed, bare-knuckled combatants, to the lower-right of the sign.

The nursery board is accompanied by another pendent placard — a pub sign. This is labelled “Giles Gardener” and features an image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We have yet another real location. This is a reference to the Adam and Eve pub and tea gardens (owned by Gardener), which also occupied the site from around the mid-17th century. It would linger on in various forms until the 1960s.

A second pub sign can be seen to the extreme right of the image. No name is given, but the distinctive royal profile accompanied by the letters CR identify it with Charles II. This might be the pub known as the King’s Head, which also survived at this crossroads (albeit rebuilt) into the 20th century. Note that the sign board is in shadow. Charles II belonged to the Stuart dynasty, which Bonnie Prince Charlie was seeking to restore. 

The building behind the Charles II sign is also based on a real location. This is the brothel of Jane Douglas (c.1698-1761), commonly known as Mother Douglas. There she is, bottom right, praying for all her worth for the safe return of the troops — not so much for their own sakes, but because the soldiery formed a large chunk of her client base. The remaining windows are filled with her girls, all beckoning to the men below. Note the cats on the roof. Cattery was a slang term for brothel.

In reality, Douglas’s house of pleasure was a well-known landmark of Covent Garden, a mile south-east of our location. Hogarth was a regular visitor, in search of subjects for his paintings and illustrations (that was his excuse, anyway). His transposition of the brothel to Tottenham Court adds to the melee of sin unfolding before us.

If the location looked riotous in Hogarth’s time, then today it is cacophonous. This is where Euston Road cuts across (and under) Tottenham Court Road. It is one of the busiest junctions in central London, just outside Warren Street tube station. 

Indeed, the whole painting is contrived (in a good way). The muster on Finchley Common really did take place in December 1745, but there is no record of any revelry at Tottenham Court. All newspaper reports speak of an orderly and swift assemblage. It was some gathering, too. One account speaks of 14,000 men who, in mid-December, were joined by some serious firepower:

“Yesterday, a Train of Artillery; consisting of 33 Field Pieces, with 48 cover'd Waggons, 20 Chests of Arms, and 240 Matrosses, set out from the Tower, for the Camp that is to be formed on Finchley Common under the Care of Capt. John Speedwell, an old Officer, who served both in K. William's and Q. Anne's Wars.” - The Gloucester Journal, 17 December 1745

As it happened, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s incursion never got anywhere near the capital. The limits of his southern advance were in Derbyshire, and he retreated back north in late December 1745. A few months later, his forces were wiped out at Culloden.

Hogarth wanted to dedicate his new painting to King George II. Hogarth had depicted His Majesty’s armed forces, some carrying the King’s monogram, in humiliating and degrading circumstances… and then asked the King for endorsement. He was not amused. Hogarth ended up dedicating the painting to the King of Prussia instead.

William Hogarth designed uniforms for the children. The girls are pictured above. The uniform for the boys was black breeches, eton shirts, black bow ties, and a red ribbed jacket.

(above) Charles Brooking - 'A Flagship Before The Wind, Under Easy Sail, With A Cutter, A Ketch, and Other Vessels' (1754)

The museum covers three floors of the handsome building. The ground floor covers the actual hospital story and the children. The first floor is given over to the art collection. The second floor is all about Handel, and is my favourite. They've got these big red leather armchairs see, with built in speakers in the wing pieces, and buttons on the arm which, when pressed, play Handel's music. ...........

The keyboard is the actual one depicted in the picture above,whilst below, is a picture of a piece of Handel's music written in his own hand (from the British Library). 

This round table shows the high spots of the life of Handel, in the timeline context of other composers