Egham and Staines, and the Eighteenth-Century London Foundling Hospital
Article by Hannah Dennett
After a long campaign by its founder Thomas Coram, London’s Foundling Hospital opened its doors on 25 March 1741 to receive the first infants into its care. It offered an alternative for mothers who may otherwise have abandoned their babies on the doorsteps of churches or left them to die in the streets, unable or unwilling to care for them. In rescuing these infants and providing them with an education, training, and religious and moral instruction, Coram saw an opportunity to give these children a better future whilst eventually producing useful adults who would contribute to Britain’s labour force. The Hospital also aimed to help restore the character of the unmarried mothers, enabling them to regain employment and so continue to be productive members of society.
Theodore Jacobsen
Egham’s connection to the Foundling Hospital began because of the need for the Hospital to provide nurses for newly-admitted babies. Early on in the life of the institution, the Governors recognised the benefits to infants and young children of being cared for away from the dirty, overcrowded conditions of London. So, when infants were first admitted they were baptised, given a unique identification number and quickly sent to be nursed by women in the counties surrounding the capital city. Networks of nurses were developed who were paid to foster the infants until the age of about four years. Many of these women were part of the labouring classes, and taking in an infant from the Foundling Hospital could help supplement their families’ income. Every nurse came under the supervision of an inspector, who was responsible for ensuring the children were cared for properly by their nurses. Inspectors also wrote regularly to the governors in London, updating them about the welfare of the children.
In the course of my research to uncover the lives of African and Asian children admitted into the Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth-century, I have discovered two children of African heritage who were sent to be nursed in the inspection area of Egham and Staines. Foundling number 75 was admitted into the Foundling Hospital in May 1741. A slip of paper recorded that the baby was male and about a week old. Included at the bottom was a note stating the infant was ‘of a very tawny complextion’. This term was commonly used in the period to describe people who appeared to be of mixed African and European parentage. Foundling number 75 was christened July Green on 10 May, having been named by the Duke of Montagu. Montagu was a governor of the Foundling Hospital and is best remembered for providing an education to the former enslaved African Ignatius Sancho. Sancho became a butler in Montagu’s household, later owned a grocery business, and became the first known African to earn the right to vote in Britain. Research has revealed that July’s mother was an African woman, Julie Green, also living in Montagu’s household, and this perhaps explains the name given to her infant by Montagu.
On 7 October 1748, foundling number 448 was admitted to the Hospital. Recorded as a male child about two months old, the baby was described as ‘a Tawnymoor very meanly dressed’. The infant was christened George Juba and his surname is an indicator of his ethnicity. ‘Juba’ meaning ‘Monday’, was a commonly-used African name given to enslaved females in the West Indies, and George was admitted into the Hospital on a Monday.
Both July Green and George Juba were sent to be nursed in the Egham and Staines inspection area of Surrey. Though it is not known who nursed them, the inspectors for the area were Mrs Helden of Egham and Mrs Bissell of Staines. Being appointed an inspector was one of the few roles open to women within the management of the Foundling Hospital, as supervising the care of poor ‘motherless’ infants was ‘work’ deemed worthy and appropriate for women of their social status.
We know John and Mary Bissells were well acquainted with John and Mary Heldon, as John Bissell was a witness for John Helden’s will. As friends, it is likely that both Marys agreed together to become inspectors for the Foundling Hospital. Their social rank meant they were well-placed in the local community to create a network of reliable nurses. Through their role they would have come to know many of the families of the local labouring classes, as they carried out regular visits to check on the children in their care. Both Mary Bissell and Mary Helden would therefore have been familiar with July Green during the four and half years that he lived in the parish. Mary Helden would have also been aware of George Juba in the brief period he lived in the area, before his death in October 1748.
Mary Bissell had married John Bissell, an apothecary of the parish of Staines, on 3 October 1734. From the first instance of babies being sent to be nursed in Egham and Staines in 1741, Mary acted as an inspector for the Foundling Hospital. Her husband’s profession as an apothecary and the position his afforded him in the local community was typical of the middling sorts from which the Foundling Hospital governors appointed their inspectors. Mary died on 1 July 1748 and was buried at St Mary’s, Staines. She was not the only member of her family actively involved in local life, as her brother was Rev. Thomas Beighton, vicar of Egham from 1725 until his death in 1771.
Charles Phillips (1708-1748)
©National Trust
John and Mary Helden came to Egham in 1730 from the island of Kitts in the West Indies, where John had been a member of the Council of St Christopher [St Kitts] and Collector of the Customs. Whilst living there the couple had a son John, who died aged two years in 1722, and a daughter Mary, born in 1726. John Helden purchased an estate of 157 acres just before the family left the island. On her husband’s death in 1737, Mary inherited the plantation, known as ‘Negroes Nest’, which included enslaved people.[1] The world of the British Empire also continued to be present in the Heldens’ home in Egham, through an unidentified enslaved African boy. In 1739 a portrait of Mary and John’s daughter was painted by Charles Phillips.[2] It includes the figure of a young African boy dressed in the livery of a page boy, which was fashionable in this period as a way for prosperous families to demonstrate their wealth and connections to the wider empire. Very possibly the enslaved boy was brought to England from the Caribbean by the Heldens when they moved to Egham. When Mary (Snr) died in 1753, her will stated ‘I give my dearest daughter Mary Foster all my right and title to the Negroes and personal Estate at St Christophers called Negro’s Nest for her life’.[3] She was buried, alongside her husband John, at St John’s, Egham.
Mary Helden’s involvement in the Atlantic plantation economy meant she benefitted from the enslaved labour of African people, both in the Caribbean and in her home at Egham. As a long-serving inspector, she clearly carried out her role diligently, and this included supervising the care of African foundlings July Green and George Juba. We have no way of knowing if Mary saw this as contradictory, but she highlights some of the complexities of empire which existed in the Foundling Hospital and wider society during the eighteenth century. It is also raises the question of how July Green might have felt growing up in Egham in the 1740s. Without the voices of children like July Green and George Juba it is impossible know how African children viewed their time at nurse, but their presence in Egham and Staines is a significant part of their stories.
My thanks to Jill Williams, President of Egham by Runnymede Historical Society, for her help with this research.
[1] John Helden, Legacies of British Slaverydatabase.
[2] Charles Phillips, Mary Helden (1726-1766) and an Unidentified Enslaved Child (1739), National Trust.
[3] Will of Mary Helden (1753), Ancestry.co.uk.
Hannah Dennett is an AHRC-funded Midlands4Cities PhD candidate at the University of Warwick. Her research project is in collaboration with the Foundling Museum, London, and is uncovering the lives of African and Asian children taken into the Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century. She is curator of the exhibition, Tiny Traces: African and Asian Children at London’s Foundling Hospital, being held at the Foundling Museum until 19 February 2023.