Saving London's Abandoned Babies in the Eighteenth Century - Gudrun Limbrick - diskuze

In London, as the eighteenth century began, there had been significant recovery from the Great Plague and the Great Fire in the past three decades. Tracts of the city had been rebuilt and the population was growing once more. The city, largely through England’s success in battles at sea, was taking centre stage in Europe and, critically, through taking the lion’s share of the lands of the New World of America and snatching slave trading rights in West Africa. England had great wealth at its fingertips and London was at the heart of all of it.People flocked to the capital to seek their fortune. Wealthy people invested in the new companies exploiting Africa or set up manufacturing concerns in the city. They moved into large houses in the wealthy area of the Strand and spread into other prosperous areas such as Cavendish Place. Their houses were staffed by teams of domestic servants.At the other end of the income scale, people were leaving their rural homes where traditional jobs as labourers and in the fields were drying up, hoping to make a living in London. So many people arrived searching for work that there were too few jobs and many opportunities to be exploited. With no safety net, they had to resort to desperate measures to survive.Babies were abandoned on the mounds of animal and human waste which towered over the overcrowded alleys. Some were dead, others dying. People walked past this tragic sight every day an
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