Page 138 - The Secret Museum

piece of fabric cut from the dress of the baby being handed over by its mother, for

life.

It was for Foundling No. 8959, a girl admitted on 19 June 1758. There is a note,
which says, ‘Florella Burney, born June the 19th 1758 In The Parish off St. Anns
SoHo. Not Baptize’d, pray Let particulare Care be Taken’en off this Child, As it will
be call’d for Again …’ She was left with a linen token with black dots and red
flowers on it.

I turned a page: ‘Sarah Goodman, 4 months, please to deliver their child when
called for …’A blue and white striped piece of fabric is pinned to the page.

I chanced upon Foundling No. 10455: ‘I was born the 12th November 1758 …
and baptized the 12th November 1758 by the name of Anne Irving, daughter of
Thomas and Mary Beaumont.’ Anne was left with a token made from a white and red

patterned fabric. On the next page I saw the same fabric, belonging to Foundling No.
10456, and the same initial words: ‘I was born the 12th November 1758 … and
baptized on the 12th November 1758 by the name of Rebecca second Irving, daughter
of Thomas and Mary Beaumont.’ Twins, left together.

A baby girl was brought to the hospital on the same day as the twins. I looked at
her navy blue ribbon token and turned over the piece of card on to which it was tied.
It had a note written on it: ‘Please to be carefull of this token as the child if living
will be certainly owned, it is not christened and if it is not too great a favour beg it

may be named Ann.’ I hope she was both named Ann and called for again.

I had a look in the book of 1758 to see which babies had become foundlings on my
birthday: Foundling No. 10670, ‘a female not christened’, was ‘marked on the eye
lids’; Foundling No. 10676, ‘poor destitute infant being improvided for and having
no friends it was born the 25th of this instant and is not yet baptized we request of
you to name it Anne and register it in the name of Waller’. Little Anne had a note
saying she had two conjoined toes on one of her feet.

There, among them all, was an unusual token, for Foundling No. 16515, a baby
named Charles. His mother, Sarah Bender, made a patchwork needle case from seven

pieces of fabric, and on it she stitched a heart. Above the heart, created in red thread,
she stitched the initials C (for Charles) and S (for Sarah). She cut the heart in two on
11 February 1767 when she handed Charles over, with his broken-hearted token, to
the Foundling Hospital. He was renamed Benjamin Twirl.

Eight years later, Benjamin was no longer a foundling. One summer’s day on 10
June 1775, his mother took the cherished fabric she had held over the years when
thinking about her son to the hospital, matched it to its other half and reclaimed her
little boy. What a wonderful thing to see and touch, this fabric that tells the tale of

how a mother got her son back and he his family.
But Benjamin/Charles was lucky. He was one of only 152 children of the 16,282
admitted between 1741 and 1760 to be reclaimed by their mothers. Disease and