Feeding the 400: Food, Charity and Childhood [working title] (360G-Wellcome-202712_Z_16_Z)

This interdisciplinary exploration of foundling food, 1740-1950, will result in a special exhibition at the Foundling Museum (23 September 2016–8 January 2017). Based on new research into this fundamental yet little-examined aspect of the children’s experience, it will show the multi-faceted impact of food on their lives. We will reveal that food choices are far more than questions of economy, nutrition and health, and that food is inextricably linked to individual and collective wellbeing, culture and socialisation. If decisions about diet, food preparation and service have a lasting impact on every child’s development, what might this mean for a child in an institution like the Foundling Hospital? This collaboration between historians, scientists and cultural practitioners will bring alive the connections between what, when, where and why the foundlings ate what they ate; the beliefs and science that underpinned those decisions; and the physiological and psychological impact they had on the children. Using the Foundling archive’s historic ‘diet tables’ as a central motif, we will tell the fascinating, unexpected stories of foundling food through objects, photographs, audio recordings and artworks, accompanied by an educational programme including specially designed workshops for children, families and patients at Great Ormond Street Hospital.