Ladies of Quality & Distinction
The Foundling Museum, September 2018 - January 2019
Ladies of Quality & Distinction centred the remarkable women who supported the establishment and the running of London’s Foundling Hospital. Portraits of the female aristocrats who signed Thomas Coram’s original petition to King George II calling for the establishment of the Foundling Hospital, replaced portraits of the male governors in the museum's Picture Gallery; the lives of the women who supported the day-to-day running of the institution were brought to life in the exhibition gallery.
Ladies’ portraits in the Picture Gallery. LQD, 2018 © Peter Mallet Photography
Cooks and Kitchen Maids. LQD, 2018 © Peter Mallet Photography
In the exhibition gallery, visitors found out about Lady Vere, an enormous support in the earliest days of the hospital, and Beatrice Forbes, one of the earliest female Governors. They met Hannah Johnson, the ‘motherly’ Matron at the end of the eighteenth century, who wrote to the Governors requesting a pay rise, and Hester Yardgrove, the fortieth foundling, who would eventually become the Hospital’s Schoolmistress.
Women worked in many roles inside the hospital, from laundresses and scullery maids, through to cooks and matrons. Outside the hospital the organisation was supported by many wet nurses, who fostered the children in their infancy, and inspectors, occasionally female, who supervised them. It was not until the twentieth century that the first woman was appointed as a Governor. Before then, many female supporters of similar social class to the Hospital Governors advised on the proper care of girls and female staff.