The Fallen Woman
The first section
concentrated on images in art while telling the history of the idea. It pointed
out that the 1836 Marriage Act had made marriage in registry offices easier so
that it was easier to be respectable! It talked about how the growth in urban
life made many women more vulnerable. I loved a picture called “Breakfasting
Out” by Robert Dowling which showed a shop girl buying a coffee from a stall on
her way to work and a gentleman eying her up, as my grandmother would have
said! Beware Starbucks girls!
In an extra room
upstairs they had, of course, borrowed “Found Drowned” by Watts which has to
appear in any show on this topic or Victorian morality generally. It was shown
by a petition to the hospital from a mother who said that the father of her
child had told her to drown herself!
Most moving were
the petitions from the women telling the real stories. The hospital had changed
its admittance policy in the 19th century to focus on restoring respectability
to unmarried mothers. Many of these were shown in a small section of the
gallery playing a sound installation by Steven Lewins using the names and word
of the women against a new arrangement of the Foundling Hospital Anthem by
Handel. It gave a real sense of the ghosts of the past talking to you.
Closes on 3
January 2016.
Review
Telegraph
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