"At the Foundling Hospital considers the foundling soul: its need to be adopted, and its need to be adaptive. These poems reimagine identity on the scale of one life or of human history: from 'the emanation of a dead star still alive' to the 'pinhole iris of your mortal eye'"--Amazon.com.

Through compelling black-and-white photography and informative, engaging text, this book chronicles the work of one of the nation's most remarkable social service institutions, the New York Foundling Hospital. As this book eloquently demonstrates, the Foundling is an institution that from its very inception was committed to helping society's most vulnerable members: children.

In 1739, the London Foundling Hospital opened its doors to take in the abandoned children of the city. It was the culmination of seventeen years of campaigning by Captain Thomas Coram, driven by his horror at seeing children die in the streets. He was supported in his endeavours by a royal charter and by William Hogarth and George Frideric Handel. The Hospital would continue as both home and school for over 215 years, raising thousands of children until they could be apprenticed out. London's Forgotten Children is a fascinating history of the first children's charity, charting the rise of this incredible institution and examining the attitude towards illegitimate children over the years. The story comes alive with the voices of children who grew up in the Hospital, and the concluding, fully updated, account of today's children's charity Coram is an ongoing testament to the vision of its founder.

Describes the life and times of Thomas Coram and his goal of establishing a safe refuge for abandoned babies in the early 1700s.

Sex, gender, charity and class in Victorian Britain.

The fascinating story of what happened to the orphaned and abandoned children of the London Foundling Hospital, and the consequences of Georgian philanthropy. From serving Britain's growing global empire in the Royal Navy, to the suffering of child workers in the Industrial Revolution, the Foundling Hospital was no simple act of charity.

This is the inspiring and “page-turning” (Booklist) true story of a man who discovered that he had been kidnapped as a baby—and how his quest to find out who he really is upturned the genealogy industry, his own family, and set in motion the second longest cold case in US history. In 1964, a woman pretending to be a nurse kidnapped an infant boy named Paul Fronczak from a Chicago hospital. Two years later, police found a boy abandoned outside a variety store in New Jersey. The FBI tracked down Dora Fronczak, the kidnapped infant’s mother, and she identified the abandoned boy as her son. The family spent the next fifty years believing they were whole again—but Paul was always unsure about his true identity. Then, four years ago—spurred on by the birth of his first child, Emma Faith—Paul took a DNA test. The test revealed that he was definitely not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul has been on a tireless mission to find the man whose life he’s been living—and to discover who abandoned him, and why. Poignant and inspiring, The Foundling is a story about a child lost and a faith found, about the permanence of families and the bloodlines that define you, and about the emotional toll of both losing your identity and rediscovering who you truly are.

New York Foundling Hospital was formed on 11 October 1869 by Mary Irene Fitzgibbon, a member of the New York Sisters of Charity. It manages more than forty programs for infants, youths, young parents, and families, and emphasizes home care.