Following a series of online lectures and discussions, please join us for our first in person event of 2024. We are excited to be joined by Kristen Renzi, Associate Professor of English at Xavier University, who is on a research sabbatical in London, working in Coram’s Foundling Hospital Archive. To mark Women’s History Month, she will be discussing the women whose experience navigating pregnancy and motherhood brought them into contact with the Foundling Hospital. We will discuss the particular challenges and inequities they faced in their experience of pregnancy in 19^th century London and how we can access and explore these through Coram’s Foundling Hospital Archive. Kristen will be in discussion with Carol Harris, a writer and speaker who produces content for talks, exhibitions, and events on the history of the charity as Coram’s historian. Carol will be discussing the earliest days of the Foundling Hospital and how, at different times, the charity reflected and rejected prevailing attitudes to unmarried mothers.

Guests are invited to arrive from 4:30pm for a hot drink and some informal conversation. The historical discussion will begin at 5:00pm and be followed by an opportunity for questions and more conversations afterwards. The event will finish by 6pm.