How a Sleeve Inspired the Foundling Museum Vest Knitting Patterns

Here's a little story about the Foundling vest patterns I put out last year. Part of the driving force behind the knitting patterns I design are the stories behind them, and these sleeveless vests inspired by the Foundling Museum come with a particularly heart wrenching story.

First a bit of history about the museum … the Foundling Museum opened in 2004, but over two hundred years before that, in 1739, Thomas Coram had established the hospital to care for babies at risk of abandonment. Coram, a philanthropist and former sea captain, was appalled by the conditions children faced in London: though the city was a global powerhouse of industry and wealth, it was also polluted and disease-ridden. 

Child mortality rates soared. Each year, some one thousand babies were abandoned by parents experiencing extreme poverty or other terrible maladies (these famously debauched images here are by William Hogarth who was also a supporter of the hospital, along with composer Frederic Handel). 

During its two centuries in operation, the Foundling Hospital looked after a remarkable 25,000 children. In the 1920s the hospital moved to a more rural location in Surrey, and then in the 1950s childcare moved from institutions to adoption and foster care, with the hospital closing its doors in 1954. Between the 1740s and 1760s, mothers leaving their babies at the Foundling Hospital would also leave a small object as a means of identification. The hope was that they would one day be able to reclaim their child. Children were renamed on admission, so the token would help prove their relationship. Each object was kept in the Hospital archives, not given to the child.

There are around 400 tokens in the Foundling Museum Collection, with many thousands more paper and textile ones in the National Archives, giving us extraordinary glimpses into eighteenth-century society and individual lives. So how did this inspire a knitting pattern? Some of these tokens were small textile items, and the inspiration for this children’s vest from a lone cotton baby’s sleeve, left with Foundling 235 who was admitted 23 May 1746.

Sleeves could be a detachable item in the 18th century, so this pattern imagines a garment it may have come from, a whole piece of clothing that the mother may have wanted for the child. It is a positive ‘what if’, one which knitters everywhere will recognize as an urge to clothe a loved one and to knit something lovely as well as practical. 

Once I’d finished the children’s vest, it seemed a natural progression to create an adult one, intended as another connection between mother and child, something which might keep them bound together even if they were physically apart. I hope this has been of interest, I’ll do some more short reels for some of the other designs too. If you’re interested in buying the patterns, they’re available here, 10% of the proceeds goes towards the museum.

Today, the museum building is situated in the grounds of the old hospital in Bloomsbury, London, next to Coram Fields, another great place to explore (although you’re only permitted entrance if you’re accompanied by children!). The museum also houses an internationally important collection of material relating to George Frederic Handel, William Hogarth and their contemporaries, who were strong supporters of the hospital, plus work of art from contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin, Yinka Shonibare and Grayson Perry.