Luxury and licentiousness: funding the Foundling Hospital, London, 1739 – 1760 by Alison Hegarty

A concert ticket from 1750 for a performance of Handel’s Messiah at the Foundling Hospital represents the appeal to private sponsors through music and art. Later, when the hospital is supported through taxation, a pamphlet, Candid Remarks on Mr Hanway’s Candid Historical Account of the Foundling Hospital (1760) expresses resentment at public money being spent on what are seen as the immoral purposes of the Hospital. Ultimately, neither private nor public funding provided a complete answer to the problem of the vast number of unwanted babies in the eighteenth century.