Few of the newborns left anonymously at the Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century were in possession of such luxuries as blankets, bibs, caps or cloths. Instead, many of the children were accompanied by a piece of fabric that was pinned to their registration form, intended as a means of identification should the mother’s circumstances change.
‘Threads of Feeling’ tells the story of the hospital’s 5,000-strong archive of textile tokens in a handful of display cases. Each vitrine contains six ledgers, open at significant pages, with captions that summarise the often hard-to-read handwriting they contain, as well as background information.
The scraps of fabric are surprisingly vivid. The cloth needed to be distinctive if it was to feature successfully in any subsequent identification process. Yet the well-preserved hues are an eye-opener not only because they paint an alternative idea of the dress of the eighteenth-century urban poor but also because, rather like seeing for the first time colour film footage from World War II, they serve to close the historical gap, to make the subject matter seem somehow more real.
Printed linens and cottons – the bulk of the textiles here – are patterned with a variety of birds, flower buds and acorns, their symbolism transcending the written word (most of the women arriving at the hospital were illiterate). Equally symbolic are ribbons, often knotted to denote a bond. Many women brought needlework, much of it accomplished.
In reality, out of the 16,282 babies left at the hospital between 1741 and 1760, only 152 were reclaimed. The Foundling Museum has done an exemplary job in maintaining a restrained, scholarly atmosphere that only adds to the emotional power of this excellent exhibition.