Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/516

484 O U F U guishing mark was put on each child by the parent. These were often marked coins, trinkets, pieces of cotton or ribbon, verses writ ten on scraps of paper. The clothes, if any, were carefully recorded. One entry is, "Paper on the breast, clout on the head." The applications became too numerous, and a system of balloting with red, white, and black balls was adopted. In 1756 the House of Commons came to a resolution that all children offered should be received, that local receiving places should be appointed all over the country, and that the funds should be publicly guaranteed. A basket was accordingly hung outside the hospital ; the maximum age for admission was raised from two to twelve months, and a flood of children poured in from the country workhouses. In less than four years 14,934 children were presented, and a vile trade grew up among vagrants of undertaking to carry children from the country to the hospital, an undertaking which, like the French meneurs, they often did not perform, or performed with great cruelty. Of these 15,000 only 4400 lived to be apprenticed out. The total ex pense was about 500,000. This alarmed the House of Commons. After throwing out a bill which proposed to raise the necessary funds by fees from a general system of parochial registration, they came to the conclusion that the indiscriminate admission should be discontinued. The hospital, being thus thrown on its own resources, adopted a pernicious system of receiving children with considerable sums (e.g., 100), which sometimes led to the children being re claimed by the parent. This was finally stopped in 1801 ; and it is now a fundamental rule that no money is received. The com mittee of enquiry must now be satisfied of the previous good character and present necessity of the mother, and that the father of the child has deserted it and the mother, and that the reception of the child will probably replace the mother in the course of virtue and in the way of an honest livelihood. The principle is in fact that laid down by Fielding in Tom Jones "Too true I am afraid it is that many women have become abandoned and have sunk to the last degree of vice by being unable to retrieve the first slip." At present the hospital supports about 500 children up to the age of fifteen. The average annual number of applications is 236, and of admissions 41. The children used to be named after the patrons and governors, but the treasurer now prepares a list. After three years in the country the children come back to town. At sixteen the girls are generally apprenticed as servants for four years, and the boys at the age of fourteen as mechanics for seven years. There is a small benevolent fund for adults. The hospital has an income of above 11,000, which will be enormously increased in 1895, when the leaseholds of the Lamb s Conduit grounds expire. From the famous chapel built by Jacobsen in 1747 the hospital derives a net income of 500. The musical service, which was originally sung by the blind children only, was made fashionable by the generosity of Handel, who frequently had the "Messiah" per formed there, and who bequeathed to the hospital a MS. copy (full score) of his greatest oratorio. The altar-piece is West s picture of Christ presenting a little Child. In 1774 Dr Burney and Signor Giardiui made an unsuccessful attempt to form in connexion with the hospital a public music school, in imitation of the Conserva- toilum of the. Continent. In 1847, however, the present successful " Juvenile Band " of about 30 boys was started. The educational effects of music have been found excellent, and the hospital supplies many musicians to the best army and navy bands. The early con nexion between the hospital and the eminent painters of the reign of George II. is one of extreme interest. The exhibitions of pictures at the Foundling, which were organized by the Dilettanti Club, un doubtedly led to the formation of the Royal Academy in 1768. Hogarth painted a portrait of Captain Coram for the hospital, which also contains his March to Finchley, and Roubiliac s bust of Handel. Corar" 1 , the founder, was remarkable for the versatility of his public spirit. He did much for the development of Georgia and Nova Scotia. (See History and Objects of tlie Foundling Hospital, with Memoir of its Founder, by J. Brownlow, 3d ed., 1865.) In 1704 the Foundling Hospital of Dublin was opened. No inquiry was made about the parents, and no money received. From 1500 to 2000 children were received annually. A large income was derived from a duty on coal and the produce of car licences. In 1822 an admission fee of 5 was charged on the parish from which the child came. This reduced the annual arrivals to about 500. In 1829 the select committee on the Irish miscellaneous estimates recommended that no further assistance should be given. The hospital had not preserved life or educated the foundlings. The mortality was nearly 4 in 5, and the iptal cost 10,000 a year. Accordingly in 1835 Lord Glenelg (then Irish Secretary) closed the institution. 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 purpose " 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. The fundamental difference between Scotland and most other Pro testant countries on the one hand, and those Catholic countries which have adopted the Code Napoleon on the other, is that in the former proceedings for aliment may be taken against the putative father. Hence the mother is not helpless. She cannot, however, in Scotland deposit her bastard in the poorhouse, unless she herself is entitled to relief and prepared to go there ; and relief is of course given only so long as the mother is not able to support herself. An infant absolutely deserted would of necessity be taken care of by the poor law authority. It is in Scotland a crime at common law to expose " a young child to the risk of death or to any serious danger ; and it is also an offence against the Poor Law Act of 1845 for either the mother or the putative father (who has acknowledged the paternity) to desert an illegitimate child. In England the offence is denned as the abandoning or exposing a qhild under the age of two, whereby its life is endangered, or its health is, or is likely to be, permanently injured (24 and 25 Viet. c. 100, 27). Besides this the provisions of the Industrial Schools Acts apply to a large proportion of the cases of homeless and deserted children which in other countries might be entrusted to the foundling hospitals. And indeed the system of boarding out pauper children seems to have realized most of the advantages promised by the hospital. The disagreeable feature of the Scotch practice is the number of women who, without any feeling of shame, get a family of illegitimate children by different fathers, whom they attack in succession for aliment. The rate of illegitimacy in some Scotch counties has reached 14, 15, and 16 per cent. It is not likely, however, that the hospital principle, though cured of its worst fault, that of secret admission without inquiry 1 , will ever be received in Great Britain or Ireland. The key-note of public opinion on the question was probably struck by Lord Brougham in his Letters to Sir Samuel liomilJij on the Abuse of Charities, and by Dr Chalmers in his Christian Economy of Large Towns. The true solution, however, depends less on abstract political reasoning than on prudent management of existing institutions. In France, for instance, a great fund of practical skill in administration has been accumulated. In Great Britain the evil may be more safely left to private charity and religious effort. If fewer women fall there, there is perhaps a profounder degradation of those who do. The following are the most important systematic works on this subject. Histoire Statistique et Morale des Enfant s Troures,>y MM. Tcrme et Montfalcon, Paris, 1837. The authors wetc eminent medical men at Lyons, connected with the administration of the foundling hospital. Remade, DCS Hospices d En f ants Tronres en Europe. Paris, 1838. Hiigel, Die Fimtelhduser und das Findelwesen Europ-ts, Vienna, 1863. Emminghaus, " D.is Armenwesen und die Annengesetz- gebung." in Europdis<-hen Staaten, Berlin, 1S70. An English translation of part of this book was published in 1873, by Mr E. B. Eastwick, M P., in the interests of the Charity Organization Society, but it does not contain the German editor s European statistics. Some recent information may also be got in the Reports on Poor Laws in Foreign Countries, communicated to the Local Government Board by the Foreign Secretary. Accounts and Papers, 1875, vol. 65, c. 1225. See also the well-informed articles by MM. Esquiros and do Marisy, in vols. xiii. and liv. of the Revue des Deux Moniles. The references to Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, xxiii. 22, and to Voltaire, Diet. Phil., article " Charite," are more of literary than of practical interest. . (W. C. S.) FOUNT AIN, a spring of water. The term is applied in a restricted sense to such springs as, whether fed by natural or artificial means, have arrangements of human art at a point where the water emerges. Pure water is so necessary to man, and the degree of plenty, constancy, and purity in which it is procured, transported, prepared for use, and distributed in populous districts is so fair a standard of civilization, that it hardly seems unreason able in Pausanias to put it among the criteria, asking, with reference to Panopseus, if that can rightly be called a city which has neither ruler, gymnasium, forum, nor fountain of water. Among the Greeks we learn, mainly from Pausanias, that fountains were very common in the cities ; and springs being very plentiful in Greece, little engineering skill was required to convey the water from place to place. Receptacles of sufficient size were made for it at the springs ; and to maintain its purity, structures were raised inclosing and covering the receptacle. It is not surprising that so beneficent an object as a spring of water should be connected with religious belief. It is certain that until modern times fountains have been in some way connected with the religion of the people among whom they sprang, and dedicated to one or other of its personalities. In Greece they were dedicated to gods and goddesses, nymphs and heroes, and were frequently placed in or near temples. The references to fountains by 1 As M. de Marisy has said, the Enfant trouve exists no longer; he has been replaced by the Enfant assiste.