Foundling Hospitals, strictly speaking, are institutions in which children that have been deserted by their parents or guardians are received to be nourished and cared for by private charity or at the public expense. Their primary purpose is to serve as a preventive of infanticide and the wilful procurement of abortion, and to counteract the temptation on the part of unmarried women to abandon their illegitimate offspring, and of married women to leave exposed on the streets children they are themselves either unwilling or unable to nurture and support. Although the practice of infanticide was largely prevalent amongst some of the nations of antiquity, especially the Greeks and Romans, amongst whom the father of a family possessed an almost absolute right of life and death over his children, even to selling them into slavery or to slaying them, nevertheless the state was not altogether careless of the preservation of foundlings and abandoned children. Private persons were encouraged to take care of deserted infants, and to educate them, by decrees which assigned them as slaves to those who should thus adopt them. Of the rest—such as were not thus taken charge of—many were educated at the public expense. The ancient Egyptians, Jews, and Thebans (in Greece), however, looked upon infanticide as a crime; and this also was the sentiment of the ancient Germans. But from the time when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman empire a sensible change began to show itself amongst its leading peoples in relation both to infanticide and to the exposure of children. The more enlightened emperors, as Constantine, Valentinian, and Justinian, devised legislative measures for the prevention of both offences. But it was only when the church turned its attention to the matter seriously that the preservation of those unfoundlings began to be carried out in a systematic way. In spite, however, of imperial edict and ecclesiastical exhortation, exposure and the selling of offspring, especially in times of public calamity or distress, still continued to be largely practised, more particularly in the Western empire. The germ of the modern foundling hospital may perhaps be found in an institution which owed its existence to the Bishop of Treves in the 6th century: in the cathedral porch a large marble basin was built, in which children might be placed, to be afterwards reared by members of the church under the superintendence of the ecclesiastical officers. Similar arrangements are mentioned in some of the capitularies of the Frankish kings. But the first well-authenticated instance of a foundling hospital, as we now understand the term, is one that was established at Milan in 787. From the end of the 11th to the end of the 14th century several institutions of a similar character were founded in some of the chief towns of France, Italy, and Germany. It is, however, in the first-named country that they have received the most attention and been most thoroughly studied and organised.
At Paris foundlings were generally deposited in the porch of Notre Dame. For the reception of children so exposed Marguerite de Valois opened a special home in 1536, and nine years later the government afforded shelter to 136 orphans in the Trinity hospital. But, no provision being made for their sustenance, they were dependent upon the alms which their nurses begged on the streets or which they themselves could collect when old enough to go a-begging; till in 1552 the parliament of Paris set apart for their maintenance the proceeds of a special tax. Amongst these children the mortality averaged 90 per cent. About the same time the Bishop of Paris built another house of refuge for foundlings picked up within his diocese; this was known as the Couche. But the accommodation was insufficient, and children were selected for admission by lot, those who were not elected being generally left to die on the street. Subsequently the inmates of the Couche became the objects of a brisk traffic, children being sold to professional beggars, acrobats, and others at the fixed price of 20 sous each. These evils at length attracted the attention of St Vincent de Paul, who in 1638 established a more satisfactory home and a humane system of treatment. Out of this grew the celebrated Foundling Hospital of Paris, which was incorporated in 1670. With it the Couche, reformed and enlarged, was joined in 1688, and Marguerite de Valois's orphanage in 1772. Under the Revolution all illegitimate children and foundlings were virtually adopted by the state, which in 1793 issued a decree bestowing a premium upon all girls who should declare themselves to be the mothers of illegitimate children, and, as the Emperor Trajan had done, proclaiming all such infants 'children of the country.'
At the Foundling Hospital of Paris children are admitted (since 1886) under conditions which allow any person to leave a child openly without giving an account of it; in fact, the system in vogue is that of indiscriminate admission under the cover of secrecy. The infants admitted belong to the following categories: foundlings proper—i.e. children deserted by parents who are unknown; children who are abandoned by parents who are known; and orphans left destitute, the general designation for them all being not enfants trouvés, but enfants assistés; besides these, the hospital also takes in children moralement abandonnés—i.e. incorrigible children sent by the law-courts, by the prefecture of police, or by their parents. The scope of the institution is not, however, confined to this; it also gives presents of money, baby-clothes, and cradles to mothers who are poor, and sends out nurses to give suck to the infants of such women as cannot themselves perform that service for their offspring. As a rule infants only remain in the establishment at Paris a short time—the average is four days; when adjudged strong enough to travel, they are sent with their nurses into the country, to be boarded with peasants or artisans. For the custody of each child the government pays a monthly subsidy, decreasing from 15 francs during the first year to 6 francs during the twelfth. Once that age is reached nothing further is paid; the child is then generally apprenticed to its foster-father if he is an artisan, or becomes his domestic servant if he is a peasant engaged in agriculture. The central administration, however, still keeps its eye upon these children through its provincial inspectors, nor does it lay down its guardianship or cease its surveillance of them until after they have attained twenty-one years of age. These inspectors also keep the provincial hospitals and the central hospital at Paris supplied with wet-nurses, recruited from the women of the countryside. Parents are allowed to reclaim a child at any time on satisfactorily establishing their title to it, and that without recouping the expense of rearing it. Also, persons who prove to the satisfaction of the hospital administrative authorities that their motives are sincere and laudable are allowed to adopt a child from amongst those whose parents are altogether unknown. On an average about 12,500 children pass through the hands of the authorities of the Paris hospital annually. Of these nearly 4000 are enfants assistés, and 1200 enfants moralement abandonnés, amongst whom the mortality is about 3 per cent. Besides these some 7000 children are assisted outside; and amongst them the mortality is 16 per cent. The provincial statistics show an average number of 36,000 children annually under the surveillance of the authorities, of whom 27,000 are enfants assistés; of these children about 3 per cent. die annually, though of the children under one year of age about 22 per cent. die every year. Besides these there are between 3000 and 4000 incorrigible children. The administration has established a savings-bank for the benefit of its wards, with the result that at the end of 1886 there stood to the credit of each enfant assisté an average of 179 francs, and of each incorrigible child an average of 20 francs.
In the United Kingdom and Germany the care of foundlings is for the most part left to the active ministrations of the charitable or to the operations of the poor-law administration. For instance, the Foundling Hospital of London, established in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram (q.v.), is not, strictly speaking, a foundling hospital at all, nor does it receive any governmental or parochial subsidy; it is reserved exclusively for illegitimate children, the offspring of mothers who have previously borne a good character, and who themselves make personal application for the admission of their infants. The institution supports constantly about 500 children, of whom some 140 under four years of age are boarded out in the country. Of the remainder the girls continue in the hospital until they are fourteen years of age, when they are sent out into domestic service; the boys on reaching their sixteenth year are apprenticed to trades, or enter the army, or become clerks. But, as in France, they remain up to their twenty-first year under the charge of the hospital authorities, who receive annual reports of their behaviour, and reward the most deserving with donations of money. The mortality of the inmates in the country is about 4½ per cent.; in the city hospital there is about one death annually. The real foundlings of Great Britain, together with the waifs and strays, are received either into the workhouses or into private charitable establishments, like Dr Barnardo's homes or the infant orphan asylum at Wantage.
Russia possesses two large foundling hospitals, one at Moscow, admitting 13,000 children per annum, and the other at St Petersburg, which accommodates an annual average of 7500. Here the rules of admission are so lax that it is no unusual thing for a woman to expose her own child at the hospital, and then get herself put on the staff of wet-nurses to nurse it. This is done for the sake of the good living and the small daily wage granted to nurses in the hospital; after they take the child home with them the daily wage is changed for a monthly gratuity that is continued until the child reaches ten years of age. Indeed, many cases occur in which married women leave their own infants of tender age at home, where they are not properly attended to, and go to serve as wet-nurses in the hospitals. This evil it was sought to counteract in France by putting the infants out to nurse in a different department from that in which they had been exposed; but this system of déplacement was soon abandoned on the ground of expense and loss of control. At St Petersburg and Moscow infants prematurely born are reared in 'frames very like those used for melon culture,' padded inside, and surrounded outside with a jacket of hot water, so that the temperature may be kept uniform. Foundling hospitals exist in most of the countries of Europe, particularly in Italy, Austria, Spain, and Scandinavia.
In the United States deserted children are for the most part sent to the almshouses, or are taken care of in private charitable institutions, like the foundling asylum of the sisters of charity, for instance, in New York city, established in 1869; the infants' hospital, established in 1868; the nursery and child's hospital; and the infant asylum, organised in 1871—all at New York. There are large foundling hospitals at Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, and at Buenos Ayres (founded in 1774, with an annual average of about 1200 to 1300 inmates). China, it should be stated, has admirably conducted establishments for the care of destitute and abandoned children in nearly all the large cities of the empire.
During the early part of the 19th century it was customary for foundling hospitals to be provided with a revolving pillar or basket or wheel, a contrivance by means of which a child could be deposited at a foundling asylum without the person who left it there being seen or any questions asked. This apparatus, which was indeed first used at Marseilles about the beginning of the 13th century, was largely employed in France, Belgium, Italy, and elsewhere; and, though it has been almost entirely abolished, it still survives in a few foundling hospitals of Italy. And the new regulation put in force at the Paris hospital in 1886 is virtually a return to the principle underlying the use of this apparatus—viz. secret and indiscriminate admission. The revolving box was condemned on the ground that it acted as an encouragement to parents to abandon their offspring, and thus weakened the sense of parental responsibility.
Foundling hospitals have been condemned on the ground of the great mortality which takes place in them. For instance, the Dublin hospital, which for several years from 1704 received from 1500 to 2000 children annually, was finally closed in 1835 on account of the excessive mortality, the death-rate being 4 in 5. Again, the asylums of Russia have for many years lost 50 to 60 per cent. of the infants annually sent to them; at Buenos Ayres the mortality is 50 per cent.; in Vienna it rose even as high as 75; and it stood at a high figure in France, Italy, and Portugal. But in the case of France and London at least a great improvement has been effected, the percentage for each being less than 4, except in the case of children under one year of age boarded in the rural districts in France. Another system of rearing, and sometimes killing off, illegitimate children is that known as baby-farming, for which see INFANT.
See Ferme and Montfalcon, Histoire Statistique et Morale des Enfants Trouvés (Paris, 1837); Epstein, Studien zur Frage der Findelanstalten (Prague, 1882); Revue des Deux Mondes (Esquirois in 1846; Bailleur de Marisy in 1864; and Du Camp in 1870); a lecture by Dr S. Osborn (1886); and Annuaire Statistique de Paris.