“My Dear Good Sister, please accept this little outcast son of mine trusting with God’s help that I will be able to sustain him in your institution. I would not part with my baby were it in any way possible to make a respectable living with him, but I cannot . . . his name is Joseph Cavalier.”
“Dear Madam, knowing my little infant will get better care in your Institution than I am able to give it, I for the present leave it in your charge. . . . Born Monday 7 a.m., she has not been christened, I call her Mary. Yours ever truly, a Poor Mother.”
These notes, records from the New York Foundling Hospital that are part of the collections of the New-York Historical Society, are heartbreaking glimpses into a growing social problem of the 19th century city: infant abandonment.
Unwanted babies were often left by poor unmarried mothers on stoops and streets, then brought to the City Hall Park almshouse or the almshouse on Blackwell’s Island. Their odds of surviving weren’t good.
But in October 1869, three nuns took action. They renovated a red-brick brownstone at 17 East 12th Street and opened what they called the Foundling Asylum.
One sister placed an empty wicker cradle on the front step, and that very night, a bundled baby was left inside it, a note pinned to her chest saying her name was Sarah.
By the end of 1869, they took in 81 infants.
The next year, as they took in more babies, they moved into a larger facility on Washington Square, then in the 1870s to a block-long building at Lexington Avenue and 68th Street.
The Asylum pioneered adoption and participated in the “orphan trains” that sent thousands of homeless kids to families across the rural U.S.
Long renamed the Foundling Hospital, it’s now on Sixth Avenue and 17th Street, overseeing thousands of kids in foster care as well as running a pediatric center for kids with special needs and a maternity center.
Tags: City Hall Park almshouse, Foundling Asylum 12th Street, infanticide New York City, New York City infant abandonment, New York Foundling Asylum, New York Foundling Hospital, orphan trains
October 1, 2012 at 7:34 am |
Aw this made me sad and yet happy. Can’t imagine how heart-wrenching it must have been for those mothers to leave their children, some never intending to be able to see them/support them again. But it makes me glad there are people in the world who care enough about something that has nothing to do with them and take it into their own hands to start something to help.
October 1, 2012 at 8:46 pm |
Thankfully we have abortion now, so this does not have to be an issue anymore.
October 9, 2012 at 7:46 pm |
LMAO!!!!!!!
October 1, 2012 at 11:26 pm |
Yes. Thank God we kill them now, instead of helping them. What a society we’ve become.
October 2, 2012 at 12:04 am |
um, re: Jeb – ouch. not a lot of tact there. very sad article, I suppose Jeb is bitter that his own mother didn’t choose to leave him behind somewhere…..
October 4, 2012 at 2:11 am |
Looks like the UK Daily Mail ran Ephemeral NY’s story practically word for word without credit:
http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/the-uk-daily-mail-steals-an-ephemeral-ny-story/
October 8, 2012 at 1:15 pm |
Hate to say it but several EV, LES, and Brooklyn neighborhood bloggers have complained about similar “borrowing” from the NY Post.
October 8, 2012 at 2:50 pm
I know, those guys get ripped off all the time.
October 13, 2012 at 7:35 pm |
[...] Notes pinned to babies at the Foundling Asylum Share this:Vind ik leuk:LikeWees de eerste die dit leuk vindt. [...]
October 19, 2012 at 7:56 am |
[...] Notes pinned to babies at the Foundling Asylum (ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com) [...]
October 21, 2012 at 8:34 am |
[...] via Notes pinned to babies at the Foundling Asylum « Ephemeral New York. [...]
October 27, 2012 at 2:06 am |
My great-grandfather was born in 1898 at St. Ann’s Maternity Hospital, part of the Foundling Home organization, and he lived in the Foundling two years, until he was sent to Kansas via the Orphan Train. The New York Foundling staff was kind enough to copy his entire file for me when I provided proof of relationship. The identify of his parents remains a mystery.
November 3, 2012 at 5:24 pm |
[...] notes pinned to abandoned [...]