Coram Secret Garden

Discover an intimate secret garden in the heart of London’s Bloomsbury, hidden in the grounds of a wonderful charity…

Coram is the UK’s first children’s charity, established as a refuge for abandoned children by Captain Thomas Coram who, in 1720, returned from sea and was determined to help the children he saw abandoned on London’s streets. His 19-year campaign finally caught the attention of King George II who, in 1739, gave Captain Coram a Royal Charter to create the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury, which was then surrounded by fields. The Hospital organised for foster families to care for the babies and young children until the age of five, when they were then brought to live and be educated in the Foundling Hospital until the age of 16, many being trained for domestic or military service.

Artist William Hogarth and composer George Frideric Handel were early supporters of the charity’s work. Hogarth donated a number of his paintings to the Hospital and Handel composed the Foundling Anthem for the charity, performing it to raise funds each year on his birthday. Handel left a copy of the Messiah to us in his will, which is on display today in The Foundling Museum.

Over the centuries, thousands of children’s lives were saved: some 27,000 children, before the 1952 Children Act changed what children needed from charities. In 1954 the Foundling Hospital’s doors were closed, placing the children in its care back with birth mothers, or with foster or adoptive parents, and changing the charity’s name to the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children.

Based on the original London site in Bloomsbury, the charity evolved to develop new approaches to childcare and education, taking into account developments in child psychiatry and psychology which highlighted the importance of children’s emotional well-being.

Today Coram, as it is now known, offers practical and emotional help to more than 15,000 vulnerable children, young people and their families, runs a leading voluntary adoption agency and reaches more than 800,000 children in UK schools through health, drug and alcohol education. Coram Children’s Legal Centre champions children’s rights in the UK and internationally.

Coram pioneers in its field and celebrates its rich heritage and history through the Foundling Museum and events, such as a Handel Birthday Concert, still held to this day.