LEFT ON THE SPINDLE: CORRESPONDENCE FROM UNWED MOTHERS TO THE LONDON FOUNDLING HOSPITAL, 1857-1872 by MARGARET SNOWDEN A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY University of Central Oklahoma Fall, 2018 Margaret Snowden | Left on the Spindle i THESIS APPROVAL The abstract and thesis of Margaret Snowden for the Master of Arts in History was submitted to the graduate college on December 7, 2018 and approved by the undersigned committee. Margaret Snowden | Left on the Spindle ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Abstract v Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Mothers’ Letters 30 Chapter 2: “The Poor Mother Will Be Glad To Hear”: Interpersonal 51 Relationships as the Go-Between Chapter 3: Gone, Not Forgotten: Emotional Confession Post- 64 Surrender Chapter 4: “Pardon the Boldness of a Mother’s Love”: Special 81 Relationships with the Foundling Conclusion 109 Bibliography 116 Margaret Snowden | Left on the Spindle iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day. — Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale My research would not have been possible without the aid and support of the University of Central Oklahoma’s Research, Creative, and Scholarly Activities Grant from the Office of High Impact Practices, as well as the College of Liberal Arts Study Tour Scholarship, and the Centre for Global Competency Travel Award. I am profoundly grateful to my friends and family for their support of this project, especially Ethan, without whom this would not have been possible, and for Ella, whose spark catalyzed the flame. Margaret Snowden | Left on the Spindle iv THESIS ABSTRACT Candidate: Margaret Snowden Title: Left on the Spindle: Unwed Mothers to the London Foundling Hospital, 1857-1873 Advisor: Dr. Michael Springer 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 Margaret Snowden | Left on the Spindle v 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. Margaret Snowden | Left on the Spindle vi 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.”1 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 1 Jessica A. Sheetz-Nguyen, Victorian Women, Unwed Mothers and the London Foundling Hospital (London: Continuum, 2012), 170. Margaret Snowden | Left on the Spindle vii to hear she was better and hope by this time she is quite cured.”2 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 2 Correspondence from Mothers of Children, A/FH/A/09/019/008 Box 1, LMA. Letter from M. Hall, 1866. Margaret Snowden | Left on the Spindle viii 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.