Ladies of Quality and Distinction


Fabulous exhibition at the Foundling Museum looking at the contribution of women to the Foundling Hospital.

In the downstairs gallery the show looked at the women who had worked at or for the hospital. The stories were told with excellent information boards and commentaries as well as fantastic archive material. From the original founders who looked to their wives who were used to running big houses for advice on how to run the hospital, through the wet nurses and women in rural areas who fostered the babies, inspectors of those foster parents, the servants who kept the hospital running and finally the girls and women who sang in the famous chapel choir.

The show was packed with fascinating stories and a huge amount of research had obviously gone into tracing the lives of these women. Anyone one of the stories could have been a novel. I loved Esther Yargrove, the 40th orphan to enter the hospital who stayed and worked her way through the organisation to running the workshop making coats for the children. Also the laundry maids who were sacked for “entertaining gentlemen”!

Upstairs focused on the initial petition in 1735 calling for the foundation of the hospital which was signed by 21 “ladies of quality and distinction”. They had brought together portraits of all 21 women, some in reproduction, but still an amazing achievement to have all of them. There was an excellent booklet which included biographies of all 21 women.

I loved the series of four full length portraits of ladies in their Coronation robes and a small Hogarth of Frances, Baroness Byron, Byron’s great grandmother. They formed a wonderful picture of the great ladies of the land at the time and showed that although they may not have had individual power they were a powerful group when they worked together. 
Closes on 20 January 2019

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