Sir, Coram Family, the latest incarnation of Thomas Coram’s 18th-century children’s charity (Weekend Review, June 12), continues his innovative ways of caring for children, for which my family have particular cause to be grateful.
My mother was admitted to The Foundling Hospital in Central London in January 1915 at the age of nine weeks, and grew up in its care.
Most girls were placed in service when they reached school-leaving age but in the 1920s, realising they had some academically bright girls, Coram’s rented a house in Hampstead and used it as a home for a dozen girls, my mother among them, who were enrolled at the prestigious (and fee-paying) Camden High School for Girls. My mother went on to London University, with full financial support from Coram’s throughout.
After graduating in 1936 she wanted a secretarial qualification too, and Coram’s again paid for the best, sending her to the top-flight St James’s Secretarial College in Belgravia (the only place the governors had heard of, it was rumoured, as their debutante daughters went there).
Although it could not compensate for the emotional deprivation she had suffered as a child, this unstintingly generous education stood my mother in excellent stead in her career, thanks to the farsightedness of that unique institution The Foundling Hospital, now Coram Family.
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Yours sincerely,
VAL SOUTHON,
40 Defoe House,
Barbican, EC2Y 8DN.
June 19.