The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

by Justine Cowan

  Dear Sir,

  Thanking you for your letter of Thursdays date. I note that you cannot accept my application under the circumstances.

  Would you kindly give permission for an interview, I should then be able to give a better and further description of details of my case. I feel sure would not be rejected, awaiting your reply.

  I am,

  Yours respectfully,

  Lena Weston

  Her persistence paid off, and on January 25 she received the following reply:

  Dear Madam,

  Referring to your application, will you please attend at these Offices tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon at 3.30 o’clock to be interviewed by the Committee.

  Please do not bring the child with you.

  Yours faithfully,

  Secretary

  “Please do not bring the child with you.” The last line of the letter spoke volumes about the type of interview Lena could expect at the hands of the “Committee” of governors who would ultimately make the decision to admit or deny her child. The governors who’d been given the power to manage the Foundling Hospital and shape the future of the mothers and children who came before them would not be swayed by an apple-cheeked infant. As they decided which children would be admitted, they would cast judgment solely upon the mothers.

  By design, the committee of governors was comprised of men of wealth and influence, many of them of noble birth. Notably missing from their ranks were any women, though, as I would later learn, women had been key to the hospital’s founding. A plan to allow them to formally participate in the governance of the institution was proposed, but ultimately rejected, since women were “excluded by Custom from the Management of publick Business.”9 Instead, only men would decide the fate of thousands of mothers and their children—determining not only who would be admitted but also how they would be raised and educated, and even the methods used to punish them. Almost two centuries would pass before a woman would sit among their ranks.

  I was no stranger to inequality, having spent much of my career as an attorney in the South, litigating high-profile cases, often in small rural towns. To succeed, I’d had to navigate a world dominated by men—the federal judge who addressed only the male lawyers during an in-chambers hearing, the former attorney general who would speak to me only through his female secretary, opposing counsel who described me as a bit “too strong” in advocating on behalf of my client (a trait generally admired in male litigators). But these men and their underestimation of my skills had inspired me to advocate with a deepened sense of purpose, to be more outspoken, and to take any opportunity to challenge norms I viewed as antiquated and unfair.

  It was a trait that often got me in trouble.

  I was seven when I first challenged a man—and he was at least six times my age. Mr. Nakamoto was a parent who shared carpool duty with my mother, ferrying me and his daughter back and forth from the violin recitals that were a regular part of the Suzuki music curriculum.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked us one afternoon.

  “The president!” I boldly proclaimed as I climbed through a window into the jump seat in the back of his tan station wagon.

  “Why, you can’t be the president, Justine! You’re a girl!”

  “You’re wrong,” I countered. “I can!”

  He continued to school me on my gender’s limited prospects, and I continued to argue back without hesitation until he gave up, no match for my willfulness. I folded my arms in defiance and glared at him as he closed the back gate of the wagon. He never asked me any questions again.

  It was that same brazenness that fueled me to challenge a group of male attorneys two decades later, between my second and third years of law school, during a friendly game of softball. I was serving as a summer clerk for a prestigious law firm in Nashville. If all went well, they would offer me a job upon my graduation.

  It was my turn at bat, and I approached home plate.

  “Take first,” instructed the umpire as he pointed his glove toward first base. Puzzled, I was informed of a long-standing league rule: if the pitcher walks a male batter who precedes a female in the lineup, the female batter automatically “gets a walk” to first base. The rule was designed to prevent savvy pitchers from walking a strong and skilled male batter in order to strike out the next batter—the weak and inept female.

  My male teammates, the lawyers who would determine whether I was worthy of employment with their firm, urged me to take the base. I hesitated, but not for long.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I retorted as I took my place at bat, ignoring their groans. I can still hear that crack as the bat made contact, hurtling the ball into the outfield. I did little to hide my smirk as I breezed past first base and took my place on second.

  While I eventually made it to home plate, I didn’t get the job offer.

  I had been so proud of my performance that day, viewing myself as a trailblazer of sorts—a regular Susan B. Anthony! But reading about Lena’s struggles, I felt foolish, the feather in my cap won so easily and with so little risk. While the law firm’s rejection stung, I had other options. Lena did not. Nor did she have the bulwark of higher education, as I did, or the help of an advocate. On the afternoon of January 26, 1932, she pleaded her case alone before a panel of the wealthiest and most highly educated men she had ever encountered. The meeting took place in a wood-paneled room on the second floor of the administrative offices of the Foundling Hospital at 40 Brunswick Square, an oblong space that no longer exists in its original form. The walls were adorned with fine art, the molded ceilings decorated with elaborate plasterwork. A crystal chandelier hung in the center of the room. A large fireplace provided warmth for the governors who sat along one side of a long table, perhaps in high-backed chairs like the one I’d seen in the Foundling Museum and recognized from my childhood home.

  There are no detailed records of what transpired that day. The London Metropolitan Archives contained only perfunctory minutes reflecting who was in attendance and the committee’s final decision. The meeting was chaired by Sir Roger Gregory, a hospital governor who served from 1892 until his death in 1938. I didn’t uncover much about Gregory, only that he was a solicitor who served as a senior partner at the prominent London firm Gregory, Rowcliffe, & Co. A portrait of Sir Gregory hangs in the Foundling Museum gallery today. In it, his rumpled black suit seemed modest compared to the attire of other governors I’d seen portraits of, and he had the look of a charitable man, with tufts of gray hair, a trimmed mustache, and kind eyes. Eight other men, listed in the archives’ minutes only by their surnames, joined Sir Gregory that day. The notes reveal nothing of how they treated Lena, whether they expressed sympathy or judgment. Lena would have sat alone on the other side of the table, allowed no assistance from counsel or even a trusted friend, as the governors deposed her about the details of her misfortune. The proceedings typically included an inquiry into the nature of the liaison that had led to the unwanted pregnancy.

  How long have you known the father?

  Did he use force?

  Was there alcohol involved?

  I don’t know whether Lena stuck to her story—a stranger passing through town, no promises made, no information exchanged. According to a scholarly article detailing the process of admissions, an applicant who claimed a promise of marriage prior to sexual intercourse was more likely to receive admission for her child. Lena might have understood that answers reflecting a woman’s naïveté and a man’s duplicity were much more likely to lead to her desired outcome. In her written application, she had included few details of her illicit liaison, only that in February 1931 a man had taken “liberties” with her during a walk to the Wrekin, an iconic rock formation on the outskirts of Wellington, and that this had been “repeated the two subsequent weeks.” The timing of Lena’s story would have resulted in an improbably long pregnancy, and I had no way of knowing whether the governors conducting the interviews were astute enough to question
Lena’s chronology of events. With no record of the details of the meeting, I knew only that her pleas were successful as she received a letter the following day.

  27th January, 1932

  Dear Madam,

  With reference to your application for the admission of your child to this Hospital—the Governors decided yesterday to have enquiries made into your case.

  Yours faithfully,

  Secretary

  Despite its dry tone, the letter was an indication of success. I silently cheered when Lena passed through the first threshold of the arduous process, but there was more to come. Next, the governors would investigate whether Lena was who she claimed to be—a respectable woman. She had already assured them in her application that she was virtuous, and that “this is the only occasion on which I have ever been interfered with, and if the Governors relieve me of my child I propose to return home to look after my brother.” But Lena’s word would not be enough. Instead, the governors sought corroboration from the men who knew her—her brother, her doctor, and her pastor. Her family’s physician, Dr. Mackie, supplied a reference vouching for Lena’s respectability, while censuring the “lapse” that had occasioned her current situation:

  I have been Medical Attendant to the Weston Family for years and have always had a great respect for them all. . . . I have never heard the slightest hint or suggestion of any moral turpitude in her character, in fact the recent lapse came as a great surprise to me, and from what I know of her I am pretty certain it will never happen again.

  Her pastor, Reverend Nock, added his voice to the chorus: “This is to certify that I have known Miss Lena Weston for a number of years and she is of a most respectable family and attends my Church as one of my Church followers.” The underlining, presumably added by a governor reviewing Lena’s case, was telling—respectability was essential for an applicant to succeed.

  The governors were exceedingly thorough in the execution of their task, going so far as to dispatch an investigator to interview each of the letter writers personally. More notes and documentation would follow. During his interview, Reverend Nock reiterated his earlier assessment, that Lena came from “respectable people,” adding that they were “highly thought of in the district.” He described Lena as “truthful, reliable and dependable,” and he “had never seen her about with any men.” Dr. Mackie affirmed Reverend Nock’s assessment that Lena came from a “very respectable family,” adding that “the girl was quite straight-forward, but easily led.” The not-so-subtle implication behind the assurances from these male guarantors was that Lena wouldn’t stain the Foundling Hospital’s reputation by repeating her mistake—nor were they at risk of housing the offspring of the worst kind of repeat offender, a common prostitute. For his part, Lena’s brother, Harry, attested that “his sister had always been a very nicely conducted girl” and that “if the Governors helped her, he was quite willing to have her back.” (Quite a turnaround, given that he’d thrown her out just a few months earlier.)

  Shuffling through the reports and letters, I could feel the blood rushing to my head. How freely these men rendered their opinions! Scrutinizing my grandmother, adjudicating her virtue, deciding whether she measured up to their exacting standards; it all seemed to come so easily to them. I felt oddly protective of a woman I had never known, whose name had held no meaning for me until so recently.

  In the end, Lena succeeded. Vouched for by her doctor, her pastor, and her brother, she received the following letter a month after her interview:

  24th February, 1932

  Dear Madam,

  Referring to your application—the same was considered by the Governors at their Meeting yesterday and I am pleased to inform you they decided to receive your child. You must bring her to these Offices yourself on Wednesday morning next, the 2nd proximo, punctually at 10.30 o’clock.

  Please acknowledge this letter and be punctual as there are other children for admission the same day and if you are late it will upset the whole arrangements.

  It will not be necessary for you to provide any additional clothing for the child.

  Yours faithfully,

  Secretary

  As instructed, at the appointed time, Lena Weston brought her baby girl to 40 Brunswick Square. Just blocks from the fashionable Russell Square, where gray-and-white buildings with brightly colored doors and large brass door knockers housed wealthier inhabitants of London, the Foundling Hospital was modest, constructed of common red brick, its windows adorned with crisp white trim that gave the facade a well-ordered and tidy appearance. There was only one entrance, a set of plain concrete steps that led to an unassuming wooden door.

  How Lena must have trembled as she walked up those stairs, the hope of sparing her family from disgrace fueling her with the strength to lift her each step. In truth, I don’t know much about Lena’s character or her thoughts on that day, since the only trace left of her is the trail of administrative bread crumbs in the Foundling Hospital’s files. But by the measure of the times, Lena had been given a rare gift, one that would allow her to regain her respectability and no small degree of security.

  In return, she was asked to do only one thing—forget that her daughter had ever existed.

  5

  Bastards

  To understand Lena’s choice, I’d have to go back to the eighteenth century, to images that seem barbaric to us now—dead or dying babies tossed into open sewers or thrown atop piles of refuse on London’s streets. Medieval as it sounds, the disgrace of an unwanted pregnancy was still so ruinous at the time that a woman from any walk of life might find herself turning to infanticide. Where better to hide the evidence of her crime than among butchers’ bones strewn along narrow alleys, where a child’s discarded corpse would be buried under the excrement dumped from chamber pots emptied from the windows above?

  Not all children died at the hands of their desperate mothers, of course. Many were simply left to fend for themselves. A thousand children or more might be abandoned on the streets of London in a given year, and those fortunate enough to survive past infancy were often relegated to lives of begging, theft, and prostitution. The wickedness of London’s streets was so commonplace that it was reflected in the art of the time, memorialized most famously by William Hogarth. A leading eighteenth-century artist who would eventually find a sideline saving children cast off by society, Hogarth captivated London in the early 1730s with his Rake’s Progress series of paintings. The story of a man who forsakes his pregnant fiancée and squanders his fortune on wild parties and orgies would have resonated at the time. Of course, punishment awaited: the final painting depicts the rake’s demise at Bedlam, London’s infamous mental asylum.

  London’s ruling class had a long history of providing for children whose fathers had died honorably or were too long at sea, serving their country. But the growing number of illegitimate children abandoned along the city’s streets was another matter altogether. Members of high society didn’t see fit to help children born outside of marriage, an act that would have been considered immoral, against the teachings of Christ. Eighteenth-century philanthropist and author Jonas Hanway summed up the prevailing view in describing the failure of earlier attempts to save forsaken children during the reign of Queen Anne: to help a child born out of wedlock “might seem to encourage persons in vice, by making too easy provision for their illegitimate children.”10

  Not all members of society shared this view. Thomas Coram, whose own tragic childhood would inform his life’s work, viewed these discarded children not as the wages of sin but as a worthy cause. Born in 1668, Coram started life unluckily, losing his mother when he was four, a few days after she gave birth to a younger brother who also perished. At the age of eleven, the poor, motherless Coram was sent to sea by his father, later becoming an apprentice for a shipwright. Somehow, with no pedigree or resources, the competent and tenacious boy managed to turn that apprenticeship into a successful career as a shipbuilder. From there he made his way in society, sai
ling for Boston in 1694 to stand up a shipbuilding business. He traveled the world, became a trustee of the brand-new colony of Georgia, and developed a plan (implemented by the Earl of Halifax, among others) for the settlement of Nova Scotia. Yet no matter how changed his own circumstances, he could never turn a blind eye to the tiny corpses or starving children with outstretched hands on London’s streets, as so many Londoners did. Instead he made a pact with himself—he would find a way to care for these forgotten children.

  Coram’s quest would not be an easy one. The practical difficulties of carrying out any philanthropic efforts in this area were compounded by his countrymen’s moral objections.

  It is difficult to imagine an entire nation turning its back on defenseless infants. But as historian Ruth McClure noted in her meticulously detailed account of the Foundling Hospital, eighteenth-century foundlings had been effectively dehumanized: “The most difficult obstacle to overcome, as Coram soon found out, was prejudice because, for the most part, the attitude of the average Englishman towards foundlings was not recognized as a prejudice. Everyone took for granted the equation: foundling equals bastard; . . . everyone also took for granted the corollary: bastard equals disgrace. That was the accepted order of things in God’s universe and all decent English society; few questioned it.”11

  There was an exception; the very highest members of society did not always share in loathing the illegitimate child. Among their ranks, bastard births were remarkably common. Perhaps that is why women of great status and wealth were among the first constituency to rally by Coram’s side—“Ladies of Quality and Distinction,” as he called them.

  The first woman to support Coram’s efforts was Charlotte, the Duchess of Somerset, whose husband, Charles Seymour, the 6th Duke of Somerset, was one of the richest men in England. Her rank allowed her to support the cause without running the risk of censure, paving the way for the others that soon joined her—daughters and wives of barons, marquesses, earls, and dukes. Twenty-one of them would sign the “Ladies Petition” calling for the establishment of an institution to care for deserted children. The document was presented to King George II in 1735, and although the plea did not immediately persuade the king, it was thought to be the key to Coram’s ultimate success, as it provided respectability to an otherwise taboo subject. The ladies also had the ear of the king’s bride; many of them served as ladies of the bedchamber to Queen Caroline.