| dc.description.abstract | 1. Statement of the Problem or Issue - Unwed mothers in Victorian London had very few options for how to care for their children. Women who had children admitted to the London Foundling Hospital (FH) agreed to sever their biological ties to the child for the benefit of both parties, so the mother could work again, and the child could be raised to be a responsible citizen of London. Despite relinquishing the parental role, some mothers continued writing letters inquiring about the health of the children they surrendered. These letters express an agency and command over their lives unseen in most working-class women of the time. All previous academic writing about the Foundling Hospital Mothers barely touches on the letters they sent to the charity's secretary, while this study employs the letters to examine what mothers' lives looked like after they had left the hospital empty-handed. This study provides an extraordinary glimpse at working women, motherhood, agency, that is unlike any other project, because their stories are told through their own words. 2. Brief Summary of the Literature - The literature previously produced on the FH went through three phases: histories of the institution written by participants, histories focused on the children, and histories looking at the mothers. Scholars such as Gillian Pugh, Anna Clark, John Gillis, Jessica A. Sheetz-Nguyen, Françoise Barret-Ducrocq, and Ginger Frost have all produced studies on the Foundling Hospital's archives. The earliest studies covered the structure of the charity while the charity was still running. The next phase looked at how the children went through the charity, were treated and cared for. And finally, in the last thirty years, (as the archives have opened to the public) professional historians have examined the mothers who surrendered children, focusing mostly on the descriptions of sexual activity found in their petitions. 3. Thesis Statement - The FH mothers found agency, or a capacity for individual action, through their interpersonal relationships and the letters that communicated their needs and fears, as well as their stories. Through their letters we can see the mothers actively seeking the institutions best able to help mother and child. In addition, the correspondence gave women a voice and an opportunity to tell their story in their own words. 4. Statement of the Research Methodology. Examples of Qualitative Analysis, most applicable to studies of small groups, whole populations, or non-repetitive or non-repeatable phenomena include but are not limited to: Case study, participant observation, narrative, biography, focus group, textual and contextual, qualitative theory, philosophical and artistic. Examples of Quantitative Analysis, most applicable to studies of population samples and to repetitive or repeatable phenomena include but are not limited to: Scientific survey, quantitative theory, statistical, and predictive. The thesis develops from a qualitative analysis of over 800 women and their letters to Secretary Brownlow. The research draws on the London Metropolitan Archives' Foundling Hospital Collection, specifically the Correspondence from Mothers of Children, 1857-1872. This file is comprised of about three thousand letters from women asking about the health of their surrendered children to those asking permission to visit, thereby challenging the by-laws. Jessica Sheetz-Nguyen described them best: "The secretary kept them on a spindle. Archivists tied up the letters with red ribbon; they were dusty with coal soot and unlikely to have been touched, as many stuck together until the 1990s." Many letters in the collection are not numbered, just tucked into boxes and labeled at risk. The letters that populate this file were photographed, digitized, and organized for purposes of this research project. The petitioner mothers with the most letters were selected for transcription, although in the long term all will be transcribed. Original petition paperwork (a mother's application) was pulled for those women because they required signatures, so the signatures on the letters could be compared and verified to prove authorship. Proxy writers wrote occasionally, but those cases are easily determined. While this was the official response form for the hospital, on some occasions, John Brownlow would respond with a personal letter, based on what some mothers would say. "Your last letter alarmed me a little but I was glad to hear she was better and hope by this time she is quite cured." Mothers might occasionally write at length in response to their conversation with Mr. Brownlow. This study is unlike most studies of letters, because these documents are distinctly different. The letters are raw, manuscript, stream-of-consciousness notes. They are not well thought-out, privileged words of business, but rather desperate notes begging for information from people who were not given the highest, best educations, but rather whatever they could get. For this reason, transcriptions of letters have been left in their original state - misspellings, lack of punctuation, and all. If there is a question of the accuracy of a transcribed word, it will be noted. This is an effort to preserve as much as possible the tone, grammar, and voices of the mothers who wrote and poured their hearts out onto the page in the best way they could. 5. Brief Summary of Findings - This project provides evidence of agency in Victorian working-class women in their letters. Individual cases such as mentions of financial status and wages, an exceptional case involving incest, and connections to a Charles Dickens play are a few of the specific new findings, and overall the letters show the agency these extraordinary women possessed and how they operated within the system of the foundling hospital to keep a line of communication open about the child they gave up. Women actively participated in their choice to give up the child, they actively chose to disclose their emotional upheaval, and they utilized whatever skills they had to exercise some level of control over their relationship with John Brownlow and the foundling hospital. 6.Confirmation, Modification, or Denial of Thesis - The research confirms the thesis that the mothers possessed agency over their lives. The choice the mothers had to make between their livelihood and their baby, the tension with Victorian norms, and the emotional struggle they continued to endure all reflect this. Their interpersonal relationships (with Brownlow, female employers, and friends or family) were key to their agency. Victorian society provided the women with few options and the interpersonal relationships they forged provided the capacity for individual action (agency). They accomplished this living in a time and place in which Victorian norms were inimical to their interests as working-class, unwed mothers. 7.Statement of the Significance of the Findings - In a time when women had little, if any, control over their lives, these mothers forged voices for themselves. In their attempts to share their lives with, and forge a relationship with, John Brownlow and the FH, they used letters to tell their story, to create a sense of themselves, to validate their struggle, and to assert their desires for the life of their child, as well as their own lives. They occasionally broke social protocol in letter writing, but for the most part they forged a way to operate within the system and express their own needs and concerns while living under Victorian social norms. This collection of letters, of agentic voices of Victorian women, is exceedingly rare and its value lies within the stories it contains. 8.Suggestions for Future Research - Much more work can be done with these letters, and will be, in the form of a doctoral dissertation. Further work will include more quantitative analysis on the mothers' addresses before and after the child was admitted, the occupations they held, the secretary's responses, and the records of the matrons and wet-nurses who worked for the charity. | |
