Thanks for the comments on the post about the Foundling Museum. If you can visit, please do - it’s really worth it. Outside on the railings is a tiny baby’s mitten in cast iron by Tracy Emin, looking like it has been stuck there having been found abandoned, so look for that.
One of the safest things on display (as well as the tokens which make me cry every time I go) is a letter trying to persuade the trustees that an unmarried mother really was made pregnant against her will so they should take the baby. There were far more babies than places for babies in the hospital so they had a lottery to assign the places. Many parents if abandoned babies were traced and forced to take their babies back, or turned away at the door.
A place was a guarantee that your child, who would more than likely die otherwise, would be fed, clothed and apprenticed/found a job eventually. And even then, monitored for fair treatment.
Sorry for the hijack!
I would like to be a Sheridan. Having said that, my married surname with my first name is Mills and Boon romantic. I should like I should be dressed in a flowing gown angsting on a wild moor about a bounder called Cliff or Peregrine.
Sadly I am a stumpy, plump, dumpy, almost dusty, , middle-aged scruff who loves museums.