Memento Reading Handout

The London Foundling hospital in the eighteenth century established a “for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children” movement where the hospital would admit babies who were unwanted by their mothers/parents and take them in, nurturing them into a better life. When the hospital could no longer admit anymore, they established a lottery system in which only a certain number of applicants could drop off their son or daughter. After that happened and the government extended more financial aid to the hospital, the hospital went through a time known as ‘the great reception’ where all babies were accepted and sometimes even left in a basket at the hospital gates. Mothers would leave trinkets with their babies at the time that they left them so that if they ever were to see them again, they’d have a means of permission to have their child back again. Some of these trinkets that were used by mothers in the eighteenth century were used in various displays to attract donors.