Two Museums in Bloomsbury, London

Staircase, Foundling Museum

Two museums close together in London are the Foundling Museum and the Charles Dickens Museum. Although I'd been to both before, it was nice to revisit with a friend who hadn't.

The Foundling Museum was the idea of Thomas Corum. Having seen so many babies abandoned on the streets of London, he was keen to do something. With the backing of many concerned people, but especially the help of artist William Hogarth and composer George Frideric Handel this finally came about in 1739.

Tokens left by mothers

In the museum you can see paperwork for the admission of babies and young children. Each one was then baptised with a different name. Sometimes a mother (or father) would return at a later date to claim their child. Often not, and of course some died. In the glass cabinets are the tokens left by some mothers to be kept along side their admission papers. The museum shows how the hospital developed and later moved out of London, first to Redhill and then to Berkhamstead in 1935. It finally closed in 1954. There is a running video (30 minutes long) with audio and photos where past pupils remember their time there. Life was hard, regimented, no affection. Was it any wonder the boys mainly went into the armed forces!

The diet for the children

Committee Room

There are many paintings at the museum and currently there was a modern exhibition too. Upstairs is my favourite room - the Handel Room. Here are music manuscripts, a lovely timeline table and easy chairs where you can listen to four different works by Handel. Off that room is an area with a couple of musical instruments and a library (behind glass) containing Handel's music.

The Handel Room

Timeline Table

Keyboard presented to the Foundling Museum

Handel's Music Library

There is no cafe here, but there are toilets. From here we went to the Charles Dickens Museum (he was also a benefactor at the Foundling), and had lunch in the lovely cafe there before walking round the house.

Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and left school at the age of 12 when his father got into debt and was sent to Marshalsea Prison in Southwark You can still visit the site of the prison - only a wall and the gate is left, but there is a plaque about the Dickens connection. At this time Charles worked in factory sticking labels onto bottles, the glue was know as 'blacking', and the factory known as the blacking factory. The factory was by the Thames. The experience changed him. Like a lot of creative people, Charles Dickens was a complex person, a man wanting to help the poor, while treating his wife badly in later years.

Dining Room

We started our tour on the ground floor, seeing the dining room and Dicken's library/writing room. His desk is there, his inkwell. The desk looks well used. In the basement are the kitchens and on the first floor are the Dicken's bedroom and the room of Mary Hogarth (his wife's sister) who stayed with them. On the upper floors are the children's rooms and the servants' rooms. There are many pieces of historic memorabilia, and I was astounded to see in all his prolific writing, Dickens found time to write three volumes on the History of Great Britain for his children!