Pollution forces Foundling Hospital out of London - archive, 22 April 1926

22 April 1926: The capital's first home for babies whose mothers were unable to care for them fears air quality has worsened because of the railways

FLEET STREET, WEDNESDAY.
Within a couple of months or so the housebreakers will have been let loose on the Foundling Hospital, and London will have lost perhaps its most fascinating link with the eighteenth century architecture and life. No more will the statue of Captain Coram look down with crabbed benevolence from over the niche in the wall in which the mothers used to deposit their unwanted babes, no more shall we flock to the chapel at Christmas time to hear the foundlings sing their carols to the music of the organ given by Handel. London, in short, will be appreciably more drab than it was before.

A party of members of the London Society went round the old place this afternoon. Sightseers have been visiting the Foundling for nearly two centuries, but now a picturesque page must be struck from the guidebooks. It is astonishing with what indifference London has taken the loss of the Foundling Hospital. Hardly a voice has been raised for its preservation. Before the war it would have been very different. The visitors to-day could only get what consolation there is in the thought that the children will be happier and healthier at Redhill, where the institution is to be housed until a new hospital is built. The last children's service in the old chapel is to be held on June 13.