The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames
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I can never adequately thank my husband, Patrick, for his encouragement, and for showing me that unconditional love really does exist.
Source Materials and Selected Bibliography
I would never have been able to piece together my mother’s story if she had not taken the heroic step of writing down the details of her painful childhood. I was able to corroborate her account with various sources, including the archival files maintained by Coram and the London Metropolitan Archives, along with interviews of former foundlings and historians.
The Foundling Museum was indispensable in my efforts to reconstruct the daily lives of foundlings, particularly its Foundling Voices project, which is based on interviews with seventy-four men and women who grew up in the care of the hospital in the twentieth century, between 1912 and 1954.
I also read dozens of books, articles, pamphlets, and other materials most of which I have listed below, but a handful deserve special mention. They were my constant companions, always within reach, their pages dog-eared, their margins filled with my illegible scribbles: Orphans of Empire: The Fate of London’s Foundlings, by Helen Berry; Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century, by Ruth McClure; and London’s Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital, by Gillian Pugh.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1986.
Bernard, Sir Thomas. An Account of the Foundling Hospital in London, for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, 2nd ed. London: Thomas Jones, 1799.
Berry, Helen. Orphans of Empire: The Fate of London’s Foundlings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Blum, Deborah. Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection. New York: Basic Books, 2011.
Bowlby, John. Attachment. New York: Basic Books, 1969.
Boylston, Arthur. “William Watson’s Use of Controlled Clinical Experiments in 1767.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 107, no. 6 (June 2014): 246–48.
Brownlow, John. The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital: With a Memoir of the Founder. London: C. Jacques, 1881.
Cadogan, William. An Essay upon Nursing and the Management of Children, From their Birth to Three Years of Age, 2nd ed. London: J. Roberts, 1748.
Campanella, Richard. Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828–1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History. Lafayette: University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2010.
Carrington, Paul D. “Asbestos Lessons: The Unattended Consequences of Asbestos Litigation.” Review of Litigation 26, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 583–611.
Curtis, Myra, et al. Report of the Care of Children Committee. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1946.
Dear, I.C.B. and Foot, M.R.D. The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Dickens, Charles. American Notes for General Circulation. London: Chapman and Hall, 1842. Reprint, London: Penguin Classics, 2004.
———. Oliver Twist. New York: Shine Classics, 2014.
———. “Received, A Blank Child.” Household Words 7, no. 156 (March 1853): 49–53.
Dolan, Alice. “The Fabric of Life: Linen and Life Cycle in England, 1678–1810.” PhD diss., University of Hertfordshire, 2015.
Foundling Hospital. A Copy of the Royal Charter, Establishing an Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children. London: J. Osborn, 1739.
———. Regulations for Managing the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children: By Order of the Governors of the Said Hospital. London: Foundling Hospital, 1757.
———. “Rules for the Admission of Children.” As provided to Lena Weston, January 4, 1932.
Foundling Museum. Foundling Voices: An Oral History Project of the Foundling Museum. London: Foundling Museum, 2011.
Gardiner, Juliet. The Blitz: The British under Attack. London: HarperPress, 2011.
Gärtner, Niko. Operation Pied Piper: The Wartime Evacuation of Schoolchildren from London and Berlin, 1938–1946. Charlotte, NC: Information Age, 2012.
Grassian, Stuart. “Psychopathological Effects of Solitary Confinement.” American Journal of Psychiatry 140 (November 1983): 1450–54.
Das Gupta, Jyoti Bhusan, ed. Science, Technology, Imperialism and War. History of Science, Philosophy, and Culture in Indian Civilization, vol. 15, pt. 1. New Delhi: Pearson & Longman, 2007.
Hanway, Jonas. A Candid Historical Account of the Hospital for the Reception of Exposed and Deserted Young Children; [ . . . ] with a Proposal for Carrying a New Design into Execution, 2nd rev. ed. London: G. Woodfall and J. Waugh, 1760.
———. An Essay on Tea: Considered as Pernicious to Health, Obstructing Industry, and Impoverishing the Nation. London: H. Woodfall, 1756.
———. A Review of the Proposed Naturalization of the Jews; Being an Attempt at a Dispassionate Enquiry, 2nd ed. London: J. Waugh, 1753.
———. Solitude in Imprisonment: With Proper Profitable Labour and a Spare Diet, the Most Humane and Effectual Means of Bringing Malefactors, Who Have Forfeited Their Lives, or Are Subject to Transportation, to a Right Sense of Their Condition. London: F. Bew, 1776.
Holden, Katherine. The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914–1960. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Johnson, David Alan. The Battle of Britain and the American Factor, July–October 1940. Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 1998.
Jungnickel, Christa, and Russell McCormmach. Cavendish: The Experimental Life. Bucknell, PA: Bucknell Press, 1999.
Kaplan, E. Ann. Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama. London: Routledge, 1992.
Kellermann, Natan. “Transmission of Holocaust Trauma—An Integrative View.” Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 64, no. 3 (February 2001): 256–67.
Levene, Alysa. Childcare, Health and Mortality at the London Foundling Hospital, 1741–1800. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2007.
McClure, Ruth. Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Mignot, Jean-Francois. “Child Adoption in Western Europe, 1900–2015.” In Cliometrics of the Family, edited by Claude Diebolt, Auke Rijpma, Sara Carmichael, Selin Dilli, and Charlotte Störmer, 333–66. New York: Springer, 2019.
Mortimer, Gavin, “Cat’s Eyes: John Cunningham’s Wartime Nickname Concealed a Vital Military Secret—The Invention of Airborne Radar.” Air & Space, November 19, 2010. https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/cats-eyes-72622832/.
Neal, Toby, “Happy Memories of a Shropshire Wartime Evacuee.” Shropshire Star, Shropshire February 2, 2014.
Oliver, Christine, and Peter Aggleton. Coram’s Children: Growing Up in the Care of the Foundling Hospital, 1900–1955. London: Coram Family, 2000.
Peters, Ellis, and Roy Morgan. Shropshire: A Memoir of the English Countryside. New York: Mysterious Press, 1992.
Pugh, Gillian. London’s Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital. Stroud, England: History Press, 2007.
Roberts, Andrew. The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War. New York: Harper, 2012.
Ross, Stewart. Rationing at Home in World War Two. London: Evans Brothers, 2005.
Sheetz-Nguyen, Jessica A. “Calculus of Respectability: Defining the World of Foundling Hospital Women and Children in Victorian London.” Annales de demographie historique 2, no. 14 (2007): 13–36.
———. Victorian Women, Unwed Mothers and the London Foundling Hospital. New York: Continuum International, 2012.
Schmidt, William E. “Two ‘Jovial Con Men’ Demystify Those Crop Circles in Britain.” New York Times, September 10, 1991.
Silverman, Mark E. “The Tradition of the Gold-Headed Cane.” The Pharos of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, Winter 2007, 42–46.
Stopes, Marie. Married Love. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Tarullo, Amanda, Jelena Obradović, and Megan R. Gunnar. “Self-Control and the Developing Brain.” Zero to Three 29, no. 3 (January 2009): 31–37.
Taylor, James Stephen. Jonas Hanway, Founder of the Marine Society: Charity and Policy in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London: Scholar Press, 1985.
US War Department. Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain. Washington, DC: US War Department, 1942. Reproduced from the original typescript, Oxford, England: Bodleian Library, 2004.
Wagner, Gillian. Thomas Coram, Gent., 1668–1751. Woodbridge, England: Boydell Press, 2015.
Williams, Edward Huntington, and Henry Smith Williams. A History of Science. Vol. 2. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1904.
Wimperis, Virginia. The Unmarried Mother and Her Child. London: Sir Halley Stewart Trust, 1960.
Zunshine, Lisa. Bastards and Foundlings: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005.
Notes
1.Foundling Hospital, A Copy of the Royal Charter, Establishing an Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children (London: J. Osborn, 1739), 1.
2.Foundling Hospital, “Rules for the Admission of Children,” as provided to Lena Weston, January 4, 1932.
3.Marie Stopes, Sex and the Young (London: Gill Publishing Co. Ltd., 1926), 134, quoted in Ross McKibbin, introduction to Married Love, by Marie Stopes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), xvi.
4.John Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health (World Health Organization, Geneva H.M.S.O. 1952), 93, quoted in Virginia Wimperis, The Unmarried Mother and Her Child (London: Sir Halley Stewart Trust, 1960), 95.
5.John Brownlow, The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital: With a Memoir of the Founder (London: C. Jacques, 1881), 3.
6.Ibid., 70.
7.Foundling Hospital, “Rules for the Admission of Children,” (emphasis in original).
8.Foundling Hospital, Regulations for Managing the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children: By Order of the Governors of the Said Hospital (London: Foundling Hospital, 1757), 34.
9.“Report of the Gentlemen Appointed . . . to Consider of a General Plan,” Report of the General Committee, p. 5, FHL 41, item 1, quoted in Ruth McClure, Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 46.
10.Jonas Hanway, A Candid Historical Account of the Hospital for the Reception of Exposed and Deserted Young Children [ . . . ] with a Proposal for Carrying a New Design into Execution, 2nd rev. ed. (London: G. Woodfall and J. Waugh, 1760), 16.
11.McClure, Coram’s Children, 9–10.
12.Thomas Bernard, An Account of the Foundling Hospital in London, for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, 2nd ed. (London: Thomas Jones, 1799), 4–5.
13.Foundling Hospital, Regulations, 50.
14.Ibid.
15.Porcupinus Pelagius [pseud.], “The Scandalizade: A Panegyri-Satiri-Serio-Comi-Dramatic Poem” (London, 1950), quoted in McClure, Coram’s Children, 105.
16.Foundling Hospital, Regulations, 49.
17.Ibid.
18.McClure, Coram’s Children, 229–30.
19.Psalms, Hymns and Anthems Used in the Chapel of the Hospital for the Maintenance & Education of Exposed & Deserted Young Children (London, 1744), 66, quoted in McClure, Coram’s Children, 232.
20.Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (New York: Shine Classics, 2014), 7 (emphasis in original).
21.Ibid., 166.
22.Foundling Hospital, Regulations, 39.
23.Ibid., 17.
24.Jonas Hanway, A Review of the Proposed Naturalization of the Jews; Being an Attempt at a Dispassionate Enquiry, 2nd ed. (London: J. Waugh, 1753), 25 (emphasis in original).
25.Ibid., 40 (emphasis in original).
26.Jonas Hanway, Solitude in Imprisonment: With Proper Profitable Labour and a Spare Diet, the Most Humane and Effectual Means of Bringing Malefactors, Who Have Forfeited Their Lives, or Are Subject to Transportation, to a Right Sense of Their Condition (London: F. Bew, 1776), 109.
27.Ibid., 105 (emphasis in original).
28.Minutes of the General Committee, Foundling Hospital, 15:284, quoted in McClure, Coram’s Children, 234.
29.Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (London: Chapman and Hall, 1842; rpt., London: Penguin Classics, 2004), 111–12.
30.Deborah Blum, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 218.
31.Ibid., 219.
32.Minutes of the General Committee, Foundling Hospital, 3:30, quoted in McClure, Coram’s Children, 233.
33.Christine Oliver and Peter Aggleton, Coram’s Children: Growing up in the Care of the Foundling Hospital, 1900–1955 (London: Coram Family, 2000), 35.
34.Ibid.
35.Blum, Love at Goon Park, 145.
36.William Cadogan, An Essay upon Nursing and the Management of Children, From their Birth to Three Years of Age, 2nd ed. (London: J. Roberts, 1748) 10.
37.Ibid., 3.
38.Ibid.
39.Ibid., 21.
40.McClure, Coram’s Children, 124.
41.Charles Dickens, “Received, A Blank Child,” Household Words 7, no. 156 (March 1853), 53.
42.Ibid., 50–51
43.Letter from Secretary to Mrs. Storer, Nov. 17, 1852, Letterbook A/FH/66/002/011/:1849-53, London Metropolitan Archives, quoted in Gillian Pugh, London’s Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital (Stroud, England: History Press, 2007), 84.
44.Pugh, London’s Forgotten Children, 106.
45.Ibid.
46.Ibid., 106–7.
47.James C. Humes, Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History’s Greatest Speakers (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002) 116.
48.Juliet Gardiner, The Blitz: The British under Attack (London: HarperPress, 2011), 193.
49.Ibid.
50.Ibid., 197.
51.Cadogan, An Essay upon Nursing, 14.
52.Pugh, London’s Forgotten Children, 58.
53.Cadogan, An Essay upon Nursing, 17–19.
54.Ibid., 5.
55.Ibid.
56.US War Department, Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain (Washington, DC: US War Department, 1942; reproduced from the original typescript, Oxford, England: Bodleian Library, 2004), 3.
57.Ibid., 5.
58.Ibid., 20.
59.Helen Berry, Orphans of Empire: The Fate of London’s Foundlings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 222.
60.Ibid., 223.
61.Minutes of the General Committee, Foundling Hospital, 13:162–63, 243, quoted in McClure, Coram’s Children, 134–35.
62.Care of Children Committee (Myra Curtis, chair), Report of the Care of Children Committee, Cmd. 6922 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1946), 53.
63.Ibid., 160
64.Ibid., 70.
65.Ibid., 60.
66.Ibid., 160.
67.Ibid., 138.
68.Pugh, London’s Forgotten Children, 117.
Photo Section
Receipt given to Lena for her daughter, March 2, 1932
Courtesy of Coram
Foundlings pose for a publicity shot on opening day of the Berkhamsted Campus, 1935
Foundling Hospital dormitory, circa 1930
Foundlings pretend to prepare a meal for the camera, circa 1930
The Foundling Hospital chapel in Berkhamsted, 1941 (Dorothy, left center)
Getty Images
Foundlings pray before a meal, 1941 (Dorothy is present but not pictured)
Getty Images
Foundlings pose with toys that were taken away afterward, 1941
Getty Images
A physician assesses Lena’s virtue, February 4, 1932
Courtesy of Coram
Lena asks for her child back as war breaks out, September 2, 1939
Courtesy of Coram
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br /> Justine, around age twelve
Dorothy the day after she was reclaimed, age twelve
Eileen, aka Dorothy, in San Francisco, 1962
John during World War II
Eileen (left) poses as a Welsh Lady for the society pages, 1993
Monterey County Weekly
Eileen and John after fifty years of marriage
Photograph credit: Patrick Cowan
About the Author
JUSTINE COWAN is an attorney and environmentalist who spent more than two decades exposing corporate corruption and holding polluters accountable. A graduate of UC Berkeley and Duke University School of Law, she lives with her husband in Atlanta, Georgia. The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames is her first book.
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Copyright
THE SECRET LIFE OF DOROTHY SOAMES. Copyright © 2021 by Justine Cowan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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