Posts

Showing posts from November, 2022

The foundling hospital - Coram boy

Image
As part of the Bloomsbury Festival 2022, the writers' organisation '26' participated in a project called '26 orphans' in conjunction with the Foundling Museum in Coram Fields, London.  They also ran a writing workshop I wanted to attend.  In conversation about this with a friend, he told me a remarkable story about the foundling boy, a painting commissioned by the Foundling Hospital in 1919. My friend's grandfather was a foundling, John O'Connor, who was chosen to pose for the painting of the founding boy in 1919, a commission intended to showcase the work of the institution. Two children were chosen for the portraits as 'mascots'.  John O'Connor was sent to Meltham, West Yorkshire at 14 years old as a painter and decorator's apprentice. A representative of The Foundling Hospital would visit the children regularly for a welfare report. The person who visited John O'Connor changed over the years but a constant visitor was a rather smart,