It’s true, I openly curse the crowds as I cram my limbs into the vacuum-packs of human flesh they call busy tube carriages, and yes, I swear wildly as I perch on the toilet, last night’s chicken palace carving through my system like a waterfall through air, oh and how I protest when the belching traffic gives me unnatural summer sniffles and a daily lacquer of grime. Certainly, this city life has its unsavoury aspects, but rather than railing against the hygiene deficiencies inherent in modern urban life, what I ought to be doing is thanking my lucky, light-pollution-obscured stars that I’m living in London now, not sometime in the 18th Century.

By the turn of the 18th Century London was growing faster than any city in the world, and with its nascent infrastructure groaning, it was rapidly becoming a less-than-pleasant place to inhabit for all but the most wealthy. Overcrowding was rife, dysentery and cholera were endemic, and in some areas of London the infant mortality rate was climbing above 50%. It was the densely populated slums that bore the brunt of the population boom, becoming ever more densely populated, the diseased and hopeless finding themselves crammed into squalid spaces like dying veal in crates of bleak stone.

It was in this atmosphere of blossoming deprivation and rocketing infant mortality rates that Thomas Coram, a retired shipwright and entrepreneur on the margins of polite society, took it upon himself to champion the cause of the child. Coram was a figure who stood at the intersection of two emergent discourses in British society, that of the great philanthropist engaged in a liberal reshaping of the world, and of the ‘child’ as it was rapidly becoming conceived, as something with its own demands and life, something that would come to be called ‘childhood’. The two discourses merged in the founding of his Foundling Hospital in 1741 (‘hospital’ in the sense of a place of shelter, rather than anything to do with healthcare) which was situated in Hatton Gardens before being relocated to the present site of the museum in 1742, overlooking Coram Fields.

With a large mock Georgian façade the museum is strikingly modern inside, clean lines, blond wood and glass dominate the gallery spaces and care is paid to interactivity in the form of listening posts, where one can listen to testimonies from original foundlings. These measured voices, aside from the content of the remarkable stories they tell, create a compelling patina of ambient sound as they compete for aural space with the light but mournful strings piped through speakers. A lot about this museum is sad. A heartbreaking piece of interactivity is provided in the shape of a small wooden lottery box. The visitor is encouraged to turn the handle and see one of the coloured balls drop, mimicking the lottery that a destitute mother was forced to play when she would be asked to blindly pick a ball from a bag. A white one and her child was taken, a red one and she would have to wait upon other considerations, a black one seeing her and her child turned back out onto the streets, more often often than not into the cold embrace of infant death. Similarly tragic is the elongated glass display of the small objects grieving mothers had left with their children, a collection of desperate parting gifts from people who had nothing to give. Arranged in a line are small enamel broaches, cheap chipped glass jewellery, and a metal plate bearing the inscription ‘ale’. What makes this collection all the more sad is the fact that the children never received these desperate tokens.

Assailing the original staircase for the boys wing of the hospital – a solid oaken affair with brutish right angles – brings you to the second floor which houses the many paintings accrued by the hospital over the years. The collection was initiated by William Hogarth who worked as an inspector for the hospital and it was he who painted the large and portentous Moses hung in the drawing room, while also encouraging many of his artist contemporaries to submit pieces to the burgeoning collection. These served as the corporate art of their day, hung in the stately drawing rooms where the Orphanage director would receive possible patrons, the paintings’ biblical moral presence levelling a gaze over the wealthy as they wavered over whether or not to confer their patronage. The drawing room is reproduced in a perfect simulacrum of its 18th century self, ornate moulding, a preponderance of gilt and carved fireplace intact. Standing in this room one can’t help but notice the stark contrast of the administrative rooms, all a match for the most resplendent interiors of their day, and the monolithic hunk of bleak stone that was the orphanage proper. Such a balance of attention seems to us today an imbalance, a disproportionate amount of money and resources to lavish on something secondary, less red tape than gold ribbon. However these stately rooms now form an interesting artefact unto themselves and a splendid setting for the many fine English artists represented therein.

At the summit of the house, tucked into the eaves of the attic is the cleanly yet not-very-functional Handel Room. Apparently boasting the finest collection of ‘Handeliana’ in Britain there is not a lot in here to excite anyone but the most ardent Handel pervert. Of general interest might be the man’s last will and testament, preserved in lightless sanctity under a blanket, and the deracinated keyboard of an organ that may or may not have been fingered by Handel himself. The majority of the space is taken up by 5 large armchairs which pipe Handel straight into your brain via a set of two little speakers secreted in the chairs’ head rests. It’s sweet, but massively pointless, unless you want a quick nap. On my way out of the museum the lady at the desk barked at me. Had I done something wrong? No, she simply loved my t-shirt. Such are the concerns of modern day London.