The sprawling redbrick complex known as the Foundling Hospital lay in Bloomsbury, just north of Guilford Street. Dating back some seventy years to the mid-eighteenth century, it was a hospital only in the word’s original sense of a charitable institution offering “hospitality.” It owed its existence to the efforts of a retired sea captain named Thomas Coram, who had been so horrified on his return to England by the number of dead and dying infants he saw abandoned in the streets of London that he decided to do something about it.
It hadn’t been easy, for the stern moralists of Coram’s day argued that saving the lives of illegitimate children would serve to encourage the sin and debauchery against which they railed endlessly. But he persisted, and in the end managed to secure a royal charter. A number of aristocratic ladies convinced their lords to lend their respectability to the scheme, while artists and musicians such as Hogarth and Handel helped raise the necessary funds.
Yet despite its name, the institution no longer actually took in foundlings. In the first years of its existence it had been so inundated with babies—fifteen thousand in four years—that it now received only infants surrendered by known mothers who could successfully prove they had been of “good character” before their fall. And there were still so many of those applicants that the few babies lucky enough to be taken in had to be selected by a lottery system.
The children who made it past those hurdles lived in a three-story brick building that included two dormitory wings fronted by long arcades, a large chapel in which Handel had once staged yearly performances of his Messiah, and an impressive art gallery that helped fund the hospital by attracting patrons who then made donations. Hero had visited the institution before, in the course of research for a different article, and the impressive financial gift she’d given at that time brought the Foundling Hospital’s chaplain, the Reverend Reginald Kay, bustling out to meet her when she arrived there that morning.
They exchanged the usual polite pleasantries and then, at Hero’s suggestion, turned to stroll along the institution’s famous art gallery. “I fear you find us all at sixes and sevens today,” said the Reverend with a sigh. A small white-haired man with pale blue eyes and a pink, unlined face, he was visibly shaken, and kept bringing up one plump white hand to swipe down over his nose and mouth. “You’ve heard the dreadful news about Lady McInnis?”
“I have, yes. It’s beyond horrid.” Hero made a show of pausing before a canvas depicting the story of Moses brought before the Pharaoh’s daughter and tried to make her next question sound as casual as possible. “When was the last time you saw her?”
The Reverend Kay looked thoughtful. “Let’s see . . . It must have been last Tuesday, I believe. Yes, Tuesday. She is—or I suppose I should say was—organizing a benefit concert for the foundlings and had come to look at some details of the layout of the chapel.”
“Did she say anything while she was here to suggest that she felt in any kind of danger?”
“Danger? Good heavens, no. She was quite cheerful—you know what she was like.”
“Yes,” said Hero, surprised to find herself suddenly blinking away the sting of threatening tears. She had to swallow hard before she could go on. “Tell me about this benefit concert she was organizing.”
“It’s scheduled for next month, although I don’t suppose it will happen now. She organized a concert of operatic selections last year, but she wanted something different this time. I understand she was putting together a collection of popular stage songs—pieces from Shield and Dibdin and the like—along with some Scottish and Irish airs arranged by Haydn and Beethoven . . . that sort of thing. She hoped it might attract some new, younger audience members. Her thinking was that we need fresh blood if we’re to keep the donations coming . . .” His voice trailed away, his face blanching as if he’d suddenly remembered the circumstances of her death and feared his use of the word “blood” might be considered inappropriate.
Hero said, “Was anyone working on the concert with her?”
“Yes, Mrs. Veronica Goodlakes. You know her?”
“I do, yes.” Veronica Goodlakes was a wealthy widow in her late thirties who, unlike Laura, was not especially known for her devotion to philanthropy and benevolent works. “Is Mrs. Goodlakes an active supporter of the Foundling Hospital, as well?”
“Not exactly,” said the Reverend hesitantly. “But she has been quite keen to help Lady McInnis with this year’s benefit concert.”
“Perhaps she’ll be able to keep it going.”
“Perhaps,” said the Reverend, although he didn’t sound convinced.
“What about Lady McInnis’s efforts to convince Parliament to improve the current laws regulating apprenticeships? Do you know if she’d made any enemies in her work on that?”
“Enemies? I don’t know if I’d go so far as to use that word, but there’s no denying she definitely ruffled a few feathers.” He paused, his face looking pinched. “You can’t think that’s why she was killed?”
“No, of course not,” said Hero mendaciously. She moved on to the next painting, this one a pastoral scene with a young shepherd holding a lamb. “When you say she ruffled a few feathers, precisely whose feathers are we talking about?”
The Reverend’s watery blue eyes drifted sideways. “Well . . . I believe she tangled with the director of more than one of the workhouses. The Foundling Hospital learned long ago the importance of screening the tradespeople who take our children. But I fear the workhouses bind their children out to virtually anyone who will have them, and I understand Lady McInnis didn’t hesitate to voice her disapproval to some of the directors.”
Of course, the reason the Foundling Hospital had learned long ago the importance of screening the tradespeople who took their children was because they’d once apprenticed a young girl to a midwife who was ultimately hanged for torturing the poor child to death. But all Hero said was, “Do you know precisely which workhouse directors?”
The Reverend glanced away and cleared his throat. “I can’t say that I recall, sorry.”
Which was not, Hero noticed, exactly the same thing as saying that he could not recall. But all she said was, “Before she died, Lady McInnis was arranging for me to interview several children who’d been bound out by the workhouses to masters and mistresses that had abused them terribly.”
Kay nodded. “Yes, I remember her telling me about one case involving a cheesemonger that was beyond shameful. The poor child had been bound out terribly young—at eleven, I believe. We typically apprentice our boys at fourteen, for seven years, and the girls at sixteen, for five years. But the workhouses will bind out both boys and girls much younger, and into some of the least desirable and most dangerous trades. They even sell their children to chimney sweeps when the poor tykes are scarcely four or five years old. I know people say the sweeps need them small so they’ll fit up the chimneys, but the wretches beat their charges horribly. The little ones are so terrified, it’s the only way to make them climb up such hot, dark, narrow spaces. It was one of the things Lady McInnis was particularly anxious to see changed, but I don’t believe she was getting very far.”
“Was Mrs. Goodlakes working with her on that, as well?”
“I don’t believe so, no. Organizing a benefit concert is one thing, but I fear dealing with the likes of grubby little climbing boys is something else again.” Then he colored, embarrassment flooding his cheeks as he rushed to say, “How terribly ungracious of me that was. Please forget I ever said it.”
“It’s forgotten,” said Hero with a sympathetic smile. She glanced around as the tall, ornate clock at the far end of the gallery began to strike the hour. She had originally planned to come here today to ask the Reverend some searching and probably uncomfortable questions about the Foundling Hospital’s own apprentice program, but that no longer seemed appropriate. “Goodness, I’d no idea it was so late. I’ve taken up far too much of your time. I know how busy you are.”
“Always happy to help, Lady Devlin,” he said, turning to walk with her toward the hospital’s ornate eighteenth-century entrance hall. “If we can be of any further assistance, please don’t hesitate to let us know.”
“That is very kind of you. Thank you.”
She was aware of him watching her as she walked away down the institution’s forecourt, with its two long flanking ropewalk arcades. The day was warm without being unpleasantly hot, the morning breeze balmy. But the boys working beneath the arcades to twist the massive piles of hemp into long, thick cords were largely silent, for it was difficult, unpleasant work. They ranged in age from twelve or thirteen down to five or six, for this was the way of their world: Poor children were put to work as young as possible, either by their parents or by whatever officials found themselves saddled with their care. Somewhere out of sight behind the brick walls of the Foundling Hospital, the little girls who were these boys’ female counterparts would likewise be busy cleaning, cooking, and sewing. But at least these children were given a few hours of education a day, sufficient food, and warm clothes and shoes to wear in winter. Most of the children taken into London’s workhouses died, usually of malnutrition, disease, neglect, or simple despair. There were so many ways for a child to die.
As she let herself out the hospital’s massive iron front gates, Hero couldn’t help but wonder what had driven Laura McInnis to devote so much of her time to bettering the lives of the city’s wretched poor children. As the Reverend Kay had so bluntly observed, it was one thing to organize a prestigious benefit concert in the Foundling Hospital’s grand, illustrious chapel, but something else entirely to risk alienating one’s peers—and one’s own husband—by working to save the likes of grubby little climbing boys.
And yet Laura had been undeterred. What had drawn her to dedicate her life to such an admirable but unfashionable undertaking? It was something Hero had never thought to ask her friend while Laura still lived. Now it was too late.