CAPTAIN THOMAS COR AM. 147 



whose cases, after investigation, proved to be unsatisfactory. This 

 system continued in operation for 15 years. 



The public, who had been so difficult to move previously, now 

 through their governors erred in the other extreme, and opened the 

 door to wholesale abuse of an originally philanthropic scheme. They 

 wished to throw open their hospital on the most unrestricted plan, 

 and petitioned Parliament for the necessary funds. A new method 

 was adopted, which was to hang up a basket outside the doors of 

 the hospital bearing the announcement that all children under the 

 age of two years would be admitted. Accordingly on June 2nd, 

 1756, the first day of this plan of general reception, 117 children 

 were given up to the fostering care of the State. Such an easy 

 method of nidding themselves of destitute children was a boon not 

 likely to be long enjoyed by the ratepayers of the Metropolis alone. 

 Residents in the country soon strove to avail themselves of these 

 benefits. For this purpose a business sprang up to meet the object. 

 A man on horseback, going to London with luggage in two 

 panniers, was overtaken at Highgate, and, on being asked what he 

 was carrying, answered " I have two children in each pannier ; I 

 brought them from Yorkshire for the Foundling Hospital, and used 

 to have eight guineas the trip, but lately another man has set up 

 against me, which has lowered my price." But Captain Coram had, 

 ere this, withdrawn his name from the list of governors. It was 

 not until the first years of the present century that that body 

 adopted the plan, which has been adhered to ever since, of careful 

 examination into the necessities of the case before granting admis- 

 sion of a child into the hospital. But though errors were committed 

 in the early years of the institution no body of men could have 

 been influenced by more patriotic feelings than the governors of the 

 hospital at various times. In 1761, during the war with Germany, 

 in 1794, during the Peninsular War, and at the period of Waterloo 

 they freely opened the doors of the institution to the necessitous 

 children of those who had fallen in the war. 



The connection of the Foundling Hospital with the Fine Arts 

 forms an interesting chapter in its history. Cunningham says 



