Exhibition recalls the children left behind

Now the Foundling Museum, the hospital was the capital's first home for abandoned children.

Children's charity Coram is now based on the site, and the exhibition includes representations from the children, young people and families Coram works with today.

Small objects or tokens of more than 4,000 babies left at the hospital between 1741 and 1760 were kept as an identification record, attached to registration forms and bound in ledgers to help reunite the child with the mother should she return to claim her baby.

John Styles, research professor of history at the University of Hertfordshire, who received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to curate the exhibition, said, 'The process of giving over a baby was anonymous. It was a form of adoption, whereby the hospital became the infant's parent and its previous identity was effaced. The mother's name was not recorded, but many left personal notes or letters exhorting the hospital to care for their child.'

The tokens are on display alongside examples of the kinds of garments made from the cloth and individual stories about the mothers and their babies.

Renuka Jeyarajah-Dent, Coram director of operations, said, 'Coram remains a charity that works with children parted from their parents, including those in state care, to enable parents and children to deal with their emotions. Even today, an object can be a reminder and comfort when someone is parted from a parent.'

The exhibition, Threads of Feeling, runs to 6 March 2011.