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  • Somebody's Bairns
  • Clare Rose (bio)
Lydia Murdoch , Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London, Rutgers University Press, 2006; xii + 252 pp., $44.95 (cloth); ISBN 0-8135-3722-3.

Imagined orphans came to the forefront of world news in October 2006 when a pop star decided to adopt a Malawian 'orphan' who had a father and grandmother still living. The announcement unleashed a storm of [End Page 288] debate at all levels, with a BBC online discussion forum on the topic receiving over 700 comments in eight days.1 There were accusations of 'cultural imperialism' from pressure groups such as Eye of the Child, and published accounts by former adoptees of the long-term consequences of such acts. The baby's father issued a series of poignant statements expressing his wish both to secure his child's material future and to provide emotional support through familial contact: desires that ultimately proved incompatible.

One strand of this public discussion focused on the father's aims in placing his child in an orphanage: was he motivated by selfless concern for his child's future, or by a selfish wish to shrug off his financial responsibilities? British commentators strained to comprehend a society where such choices were necessary, unaware of how much the case was replicated in the files of nineteenth-century British orphanages. This amnesia has been fostered by the tendency of long-established children's charities to present their historic mission as 'rescuing' abandoned and deserted children.2 This over-simplification denies the evidence available in their files of the acute dilemmas faced by poor parents in the past.

Such evidence is clearly presented in the galleries of the Foundling Hospital museum, redesigned in 2004 in the Brunswick Square head-quarters of Coram Family, successor charity to the Foundling Hospital. The information panels in the galleries explain the procedures for recording the identity of the children admitted, which allowed families (mainly mothers) to reclaim them later. Elaborate precautions were taken to detail the child's physical appearance and clothing on admission, and to preserve the 'tokens' left with them. These objects, which range from bottle-tops to items of jewellery, were deliberately selected by mothers as a way of maintaining a link with their children and as a symbol of their intention to return for them if possible. As places in the Hospital filled up, mothers also wrote requesting the admission of their child, arguing their case as persuasively as they could. One of the most heartrending missives, scrawled on a sheet of torn paper, reads: 'I am the unfortunate woman that now lies under sentens of death at Newgatt. I had a child put in here [Foundling Hospital] when I was sent here his name is James Larney and this [h]is name is John Larney . . . . let them know one another.'3 This document, with its wish to provide not only physical sustenance but a family connection for a soon-to-be-orphaned child, acts as a forcible reminder of the timelessness of the Malawian father's dilemma.

A detailed examination of the interaction between poor parents and children's institutions lies at the heart of Lydia Murdoch's Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London. Murdoch's work is notable on several counts. Following the example of Ellen Ross and Anna Davin,4 it views this interaction from the point of view of the families, who are treated not as passive objects of charity but as active participants with an acute awareness of their rights. Two sets of institutions [End Page 289] are studied whose rationales were very different: the London Poor Law Schools and Dr Barnardo's Homes. Using quantitative techniques, Murdoch analyzes the records of these institutions to show how the reality of their practices diverged from their official rhetoric, and how administrative and social constraints ultimately produced ways of operating which converged to a surprising degree.

Murdoch's investigation of the users of Barnardo's services addresses a gap in the extensive literature on this charity, which has focused on its public face and its charismatic founder. Seth Koven's Slumming (reviewed in HWJ 62) placed the...

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