Nevertheless, one of the top priorities of the committee at the Foundling Hospital was children's health, as they combated smallpox, fevers, consumption, dysentery and even infections from everyday activities like teething that drove up mortality rates and risked epidemics.

[2] With their energies focused on maintaining a disinfected environment, providing simple clothing and fare, the committee paid less attention to and spent less on developing children's education.

The petition was signed by 21 prominent women from aristocratic families, whose names not only lent respectability to his project, but made Coram's cause "one of the most fashionable charities of the day".

[5] The founding royal charter, signed by King George II, was presented by Coram at a distinguished gathering at 'Old' Somerset House to the Duke of Bedford in 1739.

[6] It contains the aims and rules of the hospital and the long list of founding governors and guardians: this includes 17 dukes, 29 earls, 6 viscounts, 20 barons, 20 baronets, 7 privy counsellors, the lord mayor and 8 aldermen of the City of London; and many more besides.

These were often marked coins, trinkets, pieces of fabric or ribbon, playing cards, as well as verses and notes written on scraps of paper.

On 16 December 1758, the hospital governors decided to provide receipts to anyone leaving a child making the identifying tokens unnecessary.

[17] In September 1742, the stone of the new hospital was laid on land acquired from the Earl of Salisbury on Lamb's Conduit Field in Bloomsbury, an undeveloped area lying north of Great Ormond Street and west of Gray's Inn Lane.

The hospital was designed by Theodore Jacobsen as a plain brick building with two wings and a chapel, built around an open courtyard.

A basket was accordingly hung outside the hospital; the maximum age for admission was raised from two months to 12, and a flood of children poured in from country workhouses.

After throwing out a bill which proposed to raise the necessary funds by fees from a general system of parochial registration, they came to the conclusion that the indiscriminate admission should be discontinued.

The principle was in fact that laid down by Henry Fielding in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling: "Too true I am afraid it is that many women have become abandoned and have sunk to the last degree of vice [i.e. prostitution] by being unable to retrieve the first slip.

"[1] There were some unfortunate incidents, such as the case of Elizabeth Brownrigg (1720–1767), a severely abusive Fetter Lane midwife who mercilessly whipped and otherwise maltreated her adolescent female apprentice domestic servants, leading to the death of one, Mary Clifford, from her injuries, neglect and infected wounds.

[19] The Foundling Hospital grew to become a very fashionable charity, and it was supported by many noted figures of the day in high society and the arts.

Hogarth also decided to set up a permanent art exhibition in the new buildings, encouraging other artists to produce work for the hospital.

By creating a public attraction, Hogarth turned the Hospital into one of London's most fashionable charities as visitors flocked to view works of art and make donations.

[21] Several contemporary English artists adorned the walls of the hospital with their works, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Richard Wilson and Francis Hayman.

In the chapel, the altarpiece was originally Adoration of the Magi by Casali, but this was deemed to look too Catholic by the hospital's Anglican governors, and it was replaced by Benjamin West's picture of Christ presenting a little child.

In 1774, Dr Charles Burney and a Signor Giardini made an unsuccessful attempt to form in connection with the hospital a public music school, in imitation of the Pio Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, Italy.

When, in the 1950s, British law moved away from institutionalisation of children toward more family-orientated solutions, such as adoption and foster care, the Foundling Hospital ceased most of its operations.

Although smaller, the building is in a similar style to the original Foundling Hospital and important aspects of the interior architecture were recreated there.