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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