The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

by Justine Cowan

  Mead’s cane was an exemplary model, having been given to him by Sir John Radcliffe, the personal physician to King William III. With his gift, Radcliffe started the tradition of passing on the gold-headed cane to England’s greatest physician of the time, and “gold-headed cane physician” came to mean a doctor at the peak of his profession. Six physicians would own this particular cane, which, after 134 years of service, was retired and entrusted to the Royal College of Physicians in London.

  As Dr. Mead entered the hospital, passersby might have stopped to stare. After all, he was physician to King George II, Queen Anne, and Sir Isaac Newton. A key advisor to the royals, he counseled the British government on how to contain the plague during an outbreak in the 1720s. Highly celebrated and sought-after, his fees were so exorbitant that only the wealthiest could afford him. But foundlings received his services for free.

  One of the original supporters of the Foundling Hospital, Dr. Mead was in attendance when Thomas Coram presented the Duke of Bedford with the royal charter opening the facility in 1739. After that, he took on the role of personally looking after the foundlings, advising on which medicines should be kept in stock and how to improve the children’s care.

  Dr. Mead was joined in his efforts by other notable physicians including Sir Hans Sloane, who succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as the president of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence in the world. Sir Sloane’s practice was lucrative, allowing him to become an avid collector of art, coins, medals, books, and manuscripts—a haul he eventually bequeathed to King George II. Sir Sloane’s collections, which included animal and human skeletons and dried plants, became the foundation for both the British Museum (the world’s first national public museum) and London’s Natural History Museum.

  With London’s finest doctors to look after them, the foundlings received superior medical care, particularly given their lowly station in society. The diseases that struck the children included scarlet fever, measles, dysentery, the “itch” (scabies), and scrofula (a tubercular condition of the lymph glands), but the most pernicious was smallpox, the “speckled monster,” as it was called, likely the single most lethal disease in eighteenth-century Britain. While knowledge of how disease spread was rudimentary at the time by modern standards, it was understood that limiting contact with those who had fallen ill could reduce contagion. The hospital was merciless in this task, screening children prior to admission and rejecting those who appeared ill, regardless of the fate that would befall them, whether they would be left to die of their illnesses or relegated to a life of starvation on London’s streets. Those who fell ill after being admitted would have their clothing and bedding destroyed and be placed under strict quarantine. The practice of separating the sick from the well became an essential part of the hospital’s medical care—and one that would have terrifying consequences for my mother almost two centuries later.

  To its credit, the hospital also implemented lifesaving medical protocols that were ahead of their time. With a smallpox vaccine decades away, the institution carried out an inoculation program wherein the virus itself was inserted into the skin. The practice was controversial, and Dr. Mead, one of the leading physicians advocating its use, was reported to have fought a duel to defend it as a course of treatment. His convictions were based on a groundbreaking trial of the inoculations performed on a group of prisoners held in the Tower of London; ordered by Princess Caroline of Ansbach, a smallpox survivor herself, the trial paved the way for the treatment to become recognized as an essential lifesaving procedure.

  Although Mead died in 1754, his innovations continued to save lives. By 1756, at a time when smallpox mortality was at its peak, 247 children had been inoculated at the Foundling Hospital, and only one had died of the disease.

  But inoculation methods were far from settled, and doctors administered a wide range of treatments, some controversial, even dangerous. Sir William Watson, appointed as the Foundling Hospital’s physician in 1762, developed a plan to identify the best method of treating smallpox. Like his colleagues, he had already made his mark on history, not in the medical field but by virtue of his work identifying and controlling electricity. A leading member of the Royal Society, he approached his experiments with enthusiasm. In 1747 he laid twelve hundred feet of wire across the new Westminster Bridge over the river Thames, and with the help of a Leyden jar (a metal-sheathed glass jar capable of storing an electric charge) and volunteers from the Royal Society, he used the river to complete an electrical “circuit” (a term coined by Sir Watson himself), his theory proven when the volunteers felt shocks in their wrists and elbows. He continued the research over the span of several weeks, extending the circuit up to four miles and onto dry land, demonstrating both that electrical conduction was nearly instantaneous and that it could occur via the earth. Twenty-five volunteers participated, with venison pastries and French wine compensating them for their discomfort at receiving the occasional electrical shock.

  When Watson was finished experimenting with electricity, he turned his attention to children. He was a man of insatiable curiosity, and after adding the study of medicine to his endeavors, he decided to investigate the multitude of “treatments” being used to allegedly improve the effectiveness of smallpox inoculations. Some physicians had their patients refrain from eating meat prior to receiving their inoculations, others prescribed laxatives or the ingestion of poisonous substances like mercury and antimony (used today in batteries and flameproofing materials). As a scientist, Watson was skeptical of the findings of his colleagues, yet understood that he needed a large group to study how inoculations best worked. His appointment as the Foundling Hospital’s physician gave him access to the ideal human laboratory. The children ate the same food, wore the same clothes, slept in the same dormitories, engaged in the same activities. Their lives were virtually identical—a perfect petri dish for his experiments.

  Watson began to undertake his inoculations in a series of carefully controlled tests. One group of children received mercury and jalap (a laxative) prior to inoculations; another senna and a syrup of roses (also a laxative); and some only the inoculations. The pretreatment of mercury and laxatives provided no additional benefits, he concluded.

  Watson’s experiment was the first study on inoculations resembling a modern clinical trial, with an explicit study design and methodical quantification of the results. The ethics of conducting experiments on parentless children without their consent did not appear to be considered, and the uniformity of the foundlings’ upbringing allowed for other experiments as well. Some of these were undertaken by a Dr. William Cadogan, a respected physician who became a governor and house physician for the Foundling Hospital. Like Watson, he experimented on the children in attempts to improve inoculation methods. He also recognized the advantages of uniformity in developing a broader base of knowledge on proper methods for child-rearing. In An Essay upon Nursing and the Management of Children, From their Birth to Three Years of Age, based on his observations of the foundlings, he wrote about the effects of cleanliness, food and clothing, even how long a child should be breastfed. His conclusions were considered as revolutionary at the time as Dr. Benjamin Spock’s insights on child care would be in the twentieth century. In writings that would be translated into French and German and reprinted for the American market, Dr. Cadogan rejected many prevailing views of the time, such as the belief that infants should be tightly swaddled: thus bound, he argued, an infant’s “Bowels have Not Room, nor the Limbs Any Liberty,” which might lead to swelling, and even “Distortions and Deformities” of the body.36

  Dr. Cadogan also believed that child-rearing should not be left to the “Unlearned,” but should be based on rigorous “Observation and Experience.”37 The key mistake of the past was entrusting the task to “Women, who cannot be supposed to have proper Knowledge to fit them for such a Task, notwithstanding they look upon it to be their own Province.”38 Instead, husbands should take a more active role in c
hild-rearing. Not long after his essay was published, mentions in hospital records regarding “feminine advice” on child-rearing began to disappear.

  When Dorothy arrived in the 1930s, the children continued to receive excellent (if sometimes experimental) medical care. The infirmary was spacious and bright, equipped with a well-stocked pharmacy, and the children had access to high-quality optical and dental services. As my mother recounted years later, it seemed that every possible medical procedure was used to maintain a foundling’s health. She recalled a series of ultraviolet treatments on account of her “natural pallor,” to no apparent effect. Even the staff in the infirmary was notably superior to the grim “nurses” who patrolled the institution’s halls and enforced its rules. Chosen for their training and skills, the infirmary’s staff members were kind and attentive. They would make a fuss over the foundlings, chatting with them and allowing them to speak to one another. As a result, Dorothy was always delighted to be admitted to the infirmary. Jaundice, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, or measles—whatever the cause, it was a special treat to be sick.

  As my mother nursed me back to health all those years ago, she never mentioned the women who had tended to her when she was a child. But I have to think that the tenderness she received on those days and nights when she had a sore throat or was weak with fever might have stayed with her as she nursed me back to health. It was the only training she ever received in caring for others.

  When I traveled to London to view my mother’s records, I took the short train ride to Berkhamsted to see the institution where she had been raised. Passing through the large black gates, I saw for myself the fields where she once played. Since the 1950s, the campus has been known as Ashlyns School. A secondary day school for children over the age of eleven, this self-described progressive learning environment places a high value on student engagement, with students “actively encouraged to make choices, knowing that they are in a safe and supportive environment.” I visited on a school day, and the grounds were filled with energy as small groups of teenagers strolled through the hallways, books in hand, chatting casually, laughing, unaware that similar behavior in the past would have brought a swift and painful rebuke. I wandered through the area that had once been the infirmary, a bright room lined with windows, with a large door that led to a courtyard. I learned that on warm days the nurses wheeled the children through the door, allowing them to be outside, if only for a short time. I imagined my mother there, breathing in the fresh air and feeling the sun on her face.

  Early medical practices and theories left their mark at the Foundling Hospital in many ways, especially when it came to views on exposure to the elements. In the 1700s it was generally held that fresh air, particularly during the colder months, could be harmful to a child’s health. But Dr. Cadogan believed that infants should be taken outside every day, no matter the weather, and that children should be free to roam, even proposing that they do so barefooted. Exposure to “all Weathers” would produce healthy and strong children, he believed.39 The Foundling Hospital’s daily practices reflected this belief—windows were opened and closed according to the direction of the wind, and it was considered particularly important for boys to work outside, to make them hardy.

  The Berkhamsted grounds where Dorothy was raised were well suited to preparing children for a life of physical labor. When the hospital relocated to the site in 1935, the property spanned over two hundred acres. The facilities themselves were likewise expansive and modern, with large rooms and long hallways, an indoor swimming pool, and a gymnasium. I wondered what visitors thought, decades ago, when my mother was housed there. From time to time distinguished supporters would visit the facility, men dressed in suits with stylish top hats, women sporting the latest fashions—wool skirts with silk blouses, brooches pinned to their collars, fine hats perched atop expertly coiffed hair. The foundlings would be paraded out onto the field and lined up in military formation, dressed in white linen tippets and aprons adorning their plain brown frocks, their uniformly cut hair topped with white peaked caps. They would stand quietly, each awaiting their turn to meet these strange and wonderful visitors who would stroll the grounds, see the state-of-the-art infirmary, hear of the outstanding medical treatment the children received, delight in the expansive fields, the gymnasium, and the pool. The cruelty of the Foundling Hospital was tucked away, belied by slick parquet floors and freshly painted walls.

  The bright and airy infirmary where the children were nursed back to health and the well-kept grounds where they marched and played were created not to provide parentless children with a positive learning environment but to build strong bodies well suited for inevitable lives of service. Recreation and exposure to fresh air were not diversions but an integral part of a regimen to strengthen foundlings’ bodies, making them better soldiers, seamen, or scullery maids.

  In the early years, foundlings even received a weekly immersion in cold baths. While I found no mention of the practice during my mother’s time at the Foundling Hospital, she described being sent outside in all weather short of snowstorms. If it rained, the children would huddle under the colonnades to stay dry.

  But when the weather was fine, the activities that strengthened their bodies for hard work also provided a break from the cruelty of their existence. Sent outdoors for rare unsupervised moments, the children would spend their time charging around the mowers, getting covered with grass. There was no structured play time at the Foundling Hospital, but a few toys could be found, perhaps donated by a local charity, allowing them to jump rope or play with tops and marbles. Dorothy’s favorite activity was rounders, a game that somewhat resembles baseball, played with an old bat and any ball they could find.

  Each summer the children were sent off to a camp in Folkestone, an industrial port town on the English Channel. The camp was basic, comprised of row after row of white canvas tents in a field. But for six weeks, dressed in lightweight khaki uniforms, the children would be granted a hiatus from their captivity as they slid down hills, picked wildflowers, and splintered off into smaller, haphazard groups, a respite from the crocodile formation that dominated their daily lives. These were some of my mother’s happiest memories as a child, moments when she experienced rare glimpses of joy as she watched small lizards scamper up an old fence or breathed in crisp sea air while playing carelessly in the fields. But those days would be cut short as an army mobilized along the border of Poland. Soon Dorothy would need the memories of those carefree summer days to sustain her during dark and lonely nights, as the skies above England erupted in battle.

  12

  War and Isolation

  I don’t remember if it was the siren or my mother’s piercing screams that woke me. I must have been four or five at the time, and that night remains my earliest recollection of my mother. I rushed to my parents’ bedroom and saw her hunched over in a white nightgown. Her hands were shielding her ears from the siren’s relentless pulses, and my father was beside her, his arms encircling her, murmuring in her ear. The siren stopped abruptly, and my mother’s howls became quiet whimpers.

  “Go back to bed,” my father told me when he saw me in the doorway. “It’s all right. She just had a nightmare.”

  He explained the next day that the loud sounds that had rung out into the night came from an air raid siren left over from World War II. We passed by it almost every day, a tall wooden pole topped with plain slate-gray speakers and indistinguishable from an everyday utility pole, but I hadn’t known what it was. The sirens had been installed after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, my father told me. There were fifty of them at the time, located in various places around San Francisco. They would warn of an attack if the Japanese air fleet made it to California. Of course, an attack hadn’t been the reason the alarm sounded that night. It was just a malfunction, a technical glitch, no cause for concern.

  The sirens are still there, now used to alert San Franciscans of impending disasters—should an earthquake trigger a tsunami
, for instance. There are more than a hundred sirens now, sitting atop their nondescript poles, scattered throughout the city. Most residents pass them by without noticing the utilitarian pieces of urban architecture. I only understood why they so terrified my mother after learning what had happened to her in the infirmary all those years ago.

  AT 4:45 A.M. on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. One and a half million German troops spilled across the border as Luftwaffe planes crisscrossed the skies, bombing Polish airfields.

  The next day, Lena Weston asked that her child be returned to her care.

  September 2nd, 1939

  Dear Sir,

  In the event of war breaking out, I would like you to consider my application for custody of my little Girl. I feel that I could give her greater protection in this country district than would be possible elsewhere, at the moment it looks as if we are likely to be subjected to a certain amount of air raids.

  Yours truly,

  Lena Weston

  When the Foundling Hospital opened in the mid-1700s, it was not unusual for parents to reclaim their children before they were discharged. According to historian Ruth McClure, the first recorded request occurred in 1742, and others soon followed. At first, children wouldn’t be returned unless their parents had paid for past upkeep and posted security for the child’s future care. In 1764 the rules were relaxed, and the hospital encouraged parents to reclaim their children without a fee, provided the parent be proven “of such Character, and in such a Condition to Maintain” their child.40 A notice of the new policy was placed in a major London newspaper, and forty-nine children were reclaimed in that year alone. While not insignificant, the count was small when compared to the thousands of children in the care of the hospital in the early years of its operations.