Thomas Coram
Thomas Coram (* 1668 in Lyme Regis, Dorset, United Kingdom, † March 29, 1751 in London) was a British businessman and philanthropist.
Coram already drove over twelve years at sea and later became captain. Between 1694 and 1705 he ran a shipyard in Taunton, Massachusetts. 1720 he returned from the United States to Great Britain, where he worked as a merchant. In 1732 he was one of the trustees of the newly founded by James Oglethorpe colony of Georgia. 1735 he financed a settlement for unemployed artisans in Nova Scotia.
Even on his return in 1720 Coram was noticed that in London a very high number of orphaned children were, for their maintenance nobody felt responsible. The view that charity would not help the poor, but on the contrary, further drives into poverty was widespread. Coram argued that poor and poorest children needed an education, notably the girls that if they were mothers, the model for their own children were: "giving girls a vertuous [sic ] education is a vast advantage to Their posterity as well as to the public " ( to let girls play a virtuous education is a huge advantage for their offspring as well as for the general public).
The situation was so bad that Coram had not been able to alone can bring about a change. He began a campaign for a royal charter, which should be the basis for the first hospital for abandoned children. Coram won many prominent supporters for his cause, including seven duchesses, countesses and eight five Baronesses. Almost 20 years should the struggle for protection last by the king - only on 17 October 1739 wrote King George II, the founding document of the Foundling Hospital "for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children" ( Foundling Hospital for livelihood and education of exposed and deserted young children).
From 1742 to 1745 the Foundling Hospital was built in Lamb 's Conduit Fields, Bloomsbury. It was the first non-profit charitable foundation in the world. One of the first governors of the Foundation was the artist William Hogarth, who was a friend of Coram and this also painted. Hogarth decorated together with other artistically active promoters also the space of the governor in the hospital. He donated paintings for the foundation, it was issued in the Foundling hospital - the first open-access Picture Gallery of Great Britain, and the nucleus of the future Royal Academy of Arts. Georg Friedrich Handel donated the proceeds from performances of the Messiah in the chapel of the hospital.
The first two children, who recorded the Foundling Hospital, were baptized in the name of Thomas and Eunice Coram, her godfather was Coram himself He took over the sponsorship for about 20 more children, but was otherwise not involved in the daily operations of the hospital. 1756 the error was committed to make available to the hospital for all children in the country - as a result children were delivered in such numbers that it was impossible to take care of all. In the first four years after that almost 10,000 children died in the Foundling Hospital.
Hogarth's painting of Coram contains a detail that takes on Corams interaction terms: Corams next to right foot rejects a hat. Coram had the company of hatters done you a favor, but did not accept any remuneration for it. When the Hatter pressed him he said he would like a hat. The company made sure that he always got new hats from one of their members to end of his life.
Coram died in 1751 in relative poverty and is buried in the Saint- Andrew Holborn Cemetery in London. 1936 a park was created on the site of the now-demolished Foundling Hospital; Coram was honored, this Coram 's Fields called.