There's an intensely moving exhibition 'Threads of Feeling' at the Foundling Hospital at Coram's Fields in Fitzrovia. When mothers left babies to be cared for, a meticulous record was kept of the new arrival. This included details of the baby's given name, baptism status and clothing. Mothers often also left tokens, in order that they might be able to identify the baby on a future, happier date. These ranged from rings and beads, to letters, to scraps of ribbon or fabric.
The sense of thwarted love and hope is almost unbearable. While some children were reclaimed, thousands weren't.
This note, with a scrap of printed cotton pinned to it, reads "Florella Burney Born june the 19th: 1758: In The Parish off St. Ann's So Ho. Not baptiz'ed. Pray Let particulare care be take'en off this Child As it will be call'd for again ..."
Heartbreakingly, she was not claimed and was eventually apprenticed to a millner in Barking.
On a happier note, I also saw the 'Evolving English' exhibition at the British Library. This, as well as having the earliest known manuscripts of Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Caxton's bible, had some fantastic nineteenth century posters.
This one was posted wherever the Riot Act had been declaimed as a warning to protesters to disperse,
while this one advertises a fantastical sounding circus, complete with a giant rat, a skeleton man and a fat child,
And both were free! The London museums are wonderful things.
[http://thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]
