Imatges de pàgina
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from 20 to 40s. only, which your Committee think inadequate to the procuring good masters.

"It appears that the register directed to be made out by the Act of the 2d of His present Majesty, intituled, An Act for keeping a regular, uniform, and annual register of all parish poor infants under a certain age, within the bills of mortality,' is deficient, by not setting forth how children are disposed of after the age of four years.

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Upon the whole, your Committee came to the following resolutions: That it is the opinion of this Committee, that the parish infant poor, within the bills of mortality, should be sent into the country to be nursed, at a distance not less than a certain number of miles from any part of the town: That it is the opinion of this Committee, that the parish officers should allow and pay a certain sum for nursing each child: That it is the opinion of this Committee, that a proper number of principal inhabitants should be chosen in every parish respectively, under the denomination of Guardians of the parish infant poor, to inspect into the treatment of the said children nursed as above: That it is the opinion of this Committee, that the parish officers, governors, and directors of the poor, should have the alternative of sending such children to the Hospital, for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children; and the governors

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and guardians thereof be permitted to take them at a certain sum, and to be paid by the said officers for nursing such children out of the parish rates: That it is the opinion of this Committee, that parish children should be placed out apprentice for a shorter time than is by law prescribed: That it is the opinion of this Committee, that a proper sum should be given as apprentice fees with the said parish children: That it is the opinion of this Committee, that the register of infant poor under four years of age, should be continued on till the children are in the same manner disposed of in the world.

"These resolutions were agreed to by the House, and a bill ordered."

It appears from a return inserted in the Journals of the House of Commons, 1778, that, in the preceding eleven years, the following was the state of the reception and discharge of parish children in the parishes mentioned, from which an accurate estimate may be formed for the rest of London.

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Children under Died. Returned to Appren

St. James, Westminster
St. Clement Danes
St. Andrew, Holborn,

and St. George Martyr Saffron Hill

St. James, Clerkenwell
St. Mary, Whitechapel
St. Saviour's, Southwark
St. Leonard, Shoreditch
St. John, Southwark
St. Luke, Old-street
St. Botolph, Aldgate
St. Martin in the Fields
St. Paul, Covent-garden

6 years old.

their parents. ticed.

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Children, nursed as the above authentic documents prove they were, cannot but have been checked in their growth; and perhaps many of them are at this moment part of the miserable objects we daily see in the streets. The exercise of a little humanity may prevent similar evils in future.

There is an admirable example, which has long been established for our imitation, where the offspring of vice and humble virtue, equally innocent, are received and nurtured with the utmost care, and where human nature is rescued from debasement, corporeal and mental. Let

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the reader reflect on the thousands originally preserved, and their descendants rendered happy, through the god-like benevolence of Captain Coram; and he will immediately recollect the Foundling Hospital.

In consequence of that worthy man's petition, George II. granted a Charter of incorporation, which authorised Charles duke of Richmond, and several other eminent persons, to purchase lands, &c. in mortmain, to the annual amount of 4000l. to be applied to the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted infants.

The first quarterly general meeting of the Corporation was held December 26, 1739, when subscription-books were ordered to be opened at the Bank of England and various bankers, for inserting the names of annual contributors. The governors and guardians then amounted to near 400, who unanimously determined to vote their thanks to Captain Coram; but he declined them, and modestly requested they might be transferred to those ladies whose subscriptions had enabled him to procure the Charter. This proposal was acceded to, and the benevolent Captain deputed them.

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Montague house, now the British Museum, had been thought by the governors in 1740, an eligible receptacle for the objects of the intended charity; but Messrs. Fazakerly, and the Attorney and Solicitor Generals, to whom the matter was

referred,

referred, gave it as their opinion that the expence of obtaining those extensive premises would be too great. The governors resolved, in consequence, to open subscriptions for the purchase of land on which to erect an hospital, and in the mean time to receive sixty children in a temporary receptacle.

They accomplished their wishes in the following December, by obtaining 56 acres North of Ormond-street, of the earl of Salisbury, for 7000l. the present site of the Foundling hospital, Guildford-street, &c. On the 25th of March, 1741, 19 male and 11 female infants were received, all of whom were less than two months old; their baptism took place the ensuing Sunday, when two were honoured with the names of Thomas and Eunice Coram; others of robust frames and apparently calculated for future seamen, were called Drake, Blake, and Norris.

John Milner, esq. vice-president of the corporation, assisted by many governors, laid the first stone of the new hospital in 1742, when a copper plate, secured between two pieces of milledlead, was deposited in a cavity; the plate is thus inscribed: "The foundation of this hospital for the relief of exposed and deserted young children, was laid 16th September, 16 George II. 1742."

The Corporation, laudably attentive to the future happiness of the orphans committed to their care, determined to have them inoculated for the

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