Abandoned : foundlings in nineteenth-century New York City / Julie Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Julie, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Abandoned children--New York (State)--New York--History--19th century.

Abandoned children.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (333 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Two interesting items:. The author's article in New York Archives. A letter regarding foundlings in The Riverdale Press. In the nineteenth century, foundlings-children abandoned by their desperately poor, typically unmarried mothers, usually shortly after birth-were commonplace in European society. There were asylums in every major city to house abandoned babies, and writers made them the heroes of their fiction, most notably Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist . In American cities before the Civil War the situation was different, with foundlings relegated to the poorhouse instead of institutions d

Contents:

Children of accident and mystery : foundlings in history and memory

New York as a nursing mother : foundlings in the antebellum city

The murder of the innocents : New York discovers its foundlings

The basket at the door : the foundling asylums open

Out-Heroding Herod : the foundlings and the revolutionary

The end of the foundling asylums

Conclusion : the foundling disappears

almost.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-310) and index.

ISBN:

9780814764411

081476441X

9780814795699

0814795692

OCLC:

779828469