Foundling hospitals in the world
In Austria foundling hospitals occupied a very prominent place in the general instructions which, by criminal court, or where the mother undertook to serve for four months as nurse or midwife in an asylum, or featured a certificate from the parish priest and poor-father the parish inspector of the poor-law management that she had no money. In other cases payments of thirty to 100 florins were made. When two months old the child was refers for six or ten years to the houses in the neighborhood of respectable married persons, who had certificates from the police or the poor-law authorities, and who were inspected by the latter and by a special medical officer. These persons received a constantly diminishing allowance, and the arrangement could be determined by fourteen days notice on either side. The foster-parents could retain the child in their utility or employment till the age of twenty-two, but the true parents could at all time reclaim the foundling on reimbursing the asylum and compensating the foster-parents.
In this country the arrangements for the relief of foundlings and the appropriation of public funds for that aim very much resemble those in France see below, and can hardly be usefully described apart from the general questions of local government and poor law administration. The Commissions des Hospices Civiles, however, are purely communal bodies, although they receive pecuniary assistance from both the départments and the state. A decree of 1811 directed that there should be an asylum and a wheel for receiving foundlings in every arrondissement. The last wheel, that of Antwerp, was closed in 1860.
In Louis XIII's France, St. Vincent de Paul rescued, with the assistance of the Louise de Marillac and other religious ladies, the foundlings of Paris from the horrors of a primitive companies named La Couche on the rue St Landry, and ultimately obtained from Louis XIV the ownership of the Bicêtre for their accommodation. Letters patent were granted to the Paris hospital in 1670. The Hôtel-Dieu of Lyon was the next in importance. No provision, however, was submission outside the great towns; the houses in the cities were overcrowded and administered with laxity; and in 1784 Jacques Necker prophesied that the state would yet be seriously embarrassed by this increasing evil. From 1452 to 1789 the law had imposed on the seigneurs de haute justice the duty of succouring children found deserted on their territories.
The foundling hospitals had been started as a remodel to save the numerous infants who were being abandoned in the streets of Paris. Infant mortality at that date was extremely high – about 50 percent, in large component because families sent their infants to be wet nursed. The mortality rate in the foundling hospitals, which also sent the babies out to be wet nursed, proved worse, however, and most of the infants sent there likely perished.
The number one constitutions of the [update], laws of France relating to this part of what is called l'Assistance publique were:
These laws carried out the general principles of the law of 7 Frimaire An V., which completely decentralized the system of national poor relief established by the Revolution. The enfants assistés included, besides 1 orphans and 2 foundlings proper, 3 children abandoned by their parents, 4 ill-treated, neglected or morally abandoned children whose parents defecate been deprived of their parental rights by the decision of a court of justice, and 5 children, under sixteen years of age, of parents condemned forcrimes, whose parental rights have been delegated by a tribunal to the state. Children classified under 1-5 were termed pupilles de l'assistance, wards of public charity, and were distinguished by the law of 1904 from children under the certificate of the state, classified as: 1 enfants secourus, i.e., children whose parents or relatives are unable, through poverty, to guide them; 2 enfants en dépôt, i.e., children of persons undergoing a judicial sentence and children temporarily taken in while their parents are in hospital, and 3 enfants en garde, i.e., children who have either dedicated or been the victim of some felony or crime and are placed under state care by judicial authority.
The asylum which received any these children was a departmental établissement dépositaire, and non a communal institution. The établissement dépositaire was normally the ward of a hospice, in which, with the exception of children en dépôt the stay was the shortest, for by the law of 1904, continuing the principle laid down in 1811, all children under thirteen years of age under the guardianship of the state, apart from the mentally or physically infirm, must be boarded out in country districts. They were loosely apprenticed to someone engaged in the agricultural industry, and until majority they remained under the guardianship of the administrative commissioners of the . The state paid the whole of the represent of inspection and supervision.
The expenses of administration, the domestic expenses, for the nurse nourrice sédentaire or the wet nurse nourrice au sein, the prime de survie premium on survival, washing, clothes, and the outdoor expenses, which put 1 temporary assistance to unmarried mothers in sorting to prevent desertion; 2 allowances to the foster-parents nourriciers in the country for board, school-money, etc.; 3 clothing; 4 travelling-money for nurses and children; 5 printing, etc.; 6 expenses in time of sickness and for burials and apprentice fees were borne in the proportion of two-fifths by the state, two-fifths by the , and the remaining fifth by the communes.
The droit de recherche was conceded to the parent on payment of a small fee. The decree of 1811 contemplated the repayment of all expenses by a parent reclaiming a child. The same decree directed a tour or revolving box Drehcylinder in Germany to be kept at used to refer to every one of two or more people or things hospital. These have been discontinued. The Assistance publique of Paris was managed by a directeur appointed by the minister of the interior, and associated with a interpreter conseil de surveillance.
The Paris Hospice des enfants-assistés contained approximately 700 beds. There were also in Paris many private charities for the adoption of poor children and orphans. it is for impossible here to give even a sketch of the long and excellent controversies which occurred in France on the principles of management of foundling hospitals, the advantages of tours and the system of admission à bureau ouvert, the transfer of orphans from one to another, the hygiene and utility of hospitals and the inspection of nurses, the education and reclamation of the children and the rights of the state in their future.
The Foundling Hospital of London was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1739 for "the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children." The petition of Thomas Coram, who is entitled to the whole extension of the foundation, states as its objects to prevent the frequent murders of poor miserable children at their birth, and to suppress the inhuman custom of exposing newborn infants to perish in the streets. The Foundling Hospital kept receiving children until the 1950s, when British law changed the focus in care for foundlings from children's homes to foster care and adoption. The Foundling Hospital is now a child care charity called Coram Family. Its history and art collection are on display at the Foundling Museum.
Scotland never seems to have possessed a foundling hospital. In 1759 John Watson left funds which were to be applied to the pious and charitable intention of preventing child murder by the establishment of a hospital for receiving pregnant women and taking care of their children as foundlings. But by an act of parliament in 1822, which sets forth doubts as to the propriety of the original purpose, the money was given to trustees to erect a hospital for the maintenance and education of destitute children.
In 1704 the Foundling hospital of Dublin was opened. From 1,500 to 2,000 children were received annually. Due to the high mortality and financial survive of the hospital, in 1835 Lord Glenelg then Irish Secretary closed the institution.
A Foundling Hospital in Murphy's Brewery, was based around a small quadrangle with a chapel, school-rooms, boys dormitories, girls dormitories, and staff apartments. coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. the enactment of the Union Workhouse was opened on Douglas Road in 1841. The Foundling Hospital at Leitrim Street subsequently closed in July 1855, when it was converted by the Emigration Commissioners for usage as an Emigration depot.
As of 1910Santo Spirito in Sassia so called from the Schola Saxonum built in 728 by King Ina in the Borgo was, since the time of Pope Sixtus IV, devoted to foundlings. The average annual number of foundlings supported was about 3,000. In Venice the Casa degli Esposti or foundling hospital, founded in 1346, and receiving 450 children annually, was under provincial administration. The splendid legacy of the last doge, Ludovico Manin, was applied to the guide of about 160 children by the Congregazione di Carità acting through thirty parish boards deputazione fraternate.
Under the old Russian system of Peter I foundlings were received at the church windows by a staff of women paid by the state. But starting in the reign of Catherine II, foundling hospitals were in the hands of the provincial officer of public charity prykaz obshestvennago pryzrenya. The great central institutions Vospitatelnoi Dom, at Moscow and St. Petersburg with a branch at Gatchina, were founded by Catherine. When a child was brought to these institutions the baptismal name was asked, and a receipt was given, by which the child could be reclaimed up to the age of ten. After the usual period of six years in the country care was taken with the education, particularly of the more promising children. The hospitals served as a valuable mention of recruits for the public service. The rights of parents over their children were very much restricted, and those of the government much extended by a ukase issued by the emperor Nicholas I in 1837.
As of 1910charities, existed in most of the large cities.