Stories of mother and babies parting

“Threads of Feeling will showcase fabrics never shown before to illustrate the moment of parting as mothers left their babies at the original Foundling Hospital, which continues today as the children’s charity Coram.
In the cases of more than 4,000 babies left between 1741 and 1760, a small object or token, usually a piece of fabric, was kept as an identifying record. The fabric was either provided by the mother or cut from the child’s clothing by the hospital's nurses. Attached to registration forms and bound up into ledgers, these pieces of fabric form the largest collection of everyday textiles surviving in Britain from the 18th Century.
A selection of the textiles forms the focus of the Threads of Feeling exhibition, exploring the stories they tell us about individual babies, their mothers and their lives.”
Curator John Styles: http://www.johnstyles.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
http://www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk/future_exhibitions.php
Threads of Feeling at The Foundling Museum, London, 14 October 2010 - 6 March 2011