StoryGnat #32: Tokens of care

Good day, fine StoryGnatter!

How goes it? I usually start with a little introduction, but I’ll be honest, my brain’s a little bit addled from today’s (Friday’s) hot weather, so I’m going to jump straight in.

Today’s story starts on the streets of Georgian London and takes us to a slightly unexpected textile archive. And there’s a fascinating (to me at least) story that gets us there. I think I first heard this one on a TV documentary, but I can’t for the life of me remember what the doc itself was about. Ah well. I remembered the important bit.

Here goes…

Tokens of meaning

A small pot of rouge. A scrap of blue and white checked cloth. A shiny mother of pearl button.

They’re relatively unassuming trinkets to our modern eyes. But they each share a story.

These tiny objects are just a handful of the hundreds of “tokens” cared for in the collections of London’s Foundling Museum, chosen by mothers leaving their children at what was then the Foundling Hospital from the 1740s to the 1760s.

Each token would help to identify the child in the event that they were reclaimed by their family. Few were ever used.

These small items were given by mothers in what must have been heartbreaking moments.

Some were carefully chosen in advance with painstaking planning. Others, like swatches of cloth taken from clothing, were perhaps hastily picked in the moment. Each token had its own story, its own child and its own mother – and most of these tales are now lost to us.

But together, the tokens can tell us something about those mothers, who had very few belongings to give, and about their lives. These objects open a rare window on the possessions of London’s poorest residents – especially the samples of cloth, ribbon and buttons, which are now an invaluable resource for understanding the clothing worn by these women.

The Foundling Museum’s website can tell you so much more about these tokens – and the work of the Hospital itself – than I can here. I can easily get lost in their online collections for hours, and I hope you enjoy exploring them, too.

I’m off to stick my head in a cold bath. I’ll be back next week, if I don’t melt.

Meg