This message was seen on the wall of Coram's Fields in Bloomsbury, and was just one of many political statements I saw written on buildings around the city.
Until the 1920s the Fields, now a children's playground and youth center, was the site of The Foundling Hospital, founded by former sea captain Thomas Coram in 1739, to shelter destitute and abandoned children. Handel & Hogarth were heavily involved in the hospital's affairs, and acted as governors.
The site was then known as Lamb's Conduit Field, and Lamb's Conduit Street, and the Lamb pub can still be found just across the road. The Foundling Hospital Museum is adjacent to the Fields, on Brunswick Square. Among the artefacts you can see there, there's a sad collection of tokens left behind by mothers for their infants to remember them by.
If you want to go to inside Coram's Fields, you'll need to be accompanied by a child. I didn't happen to have one handy while I was staying near here. My room actually overlooked the grounds, so this was tantalizing to say the least.
3 comments:
Love those top two photos! Are you back already?
Those tokens are so sad.
Yes, indeed. Back.
The Foundling Museum is a very strange & sad place. A good part of my trip had a strange, Blakean resonance.
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