THE NEW YORK FOUNDLING HOSPITAL
Up-dated 3/8/2005
On October 11, 1969, the New York Hospital celebrates its one hundredth anniversary. The story of ten decades of dedicated service to Christ's little ones is inspiring to recall.
After the Civil War one of the most gripping of New York's social problems was the abandonment of infants in the streets of the City. Poverty, immigration, inadequate housing, and a financial depression were the factors which made abandonment in ever present evil.
In 1869, it had no longer become an item of news, or even of interest, to find an abandoned infant on the doorsteps of a rich family, in the hallway of a tenement, or at the entrance to a convent. St. Peter's Convent on Barclay Street was a favorite refuge of distraught mothers and very often the Sisters on opening their door in the morning, would find a tiny waif deposited on the doorstep.
, of St. Peter's Convent called the attention of Mother Mary Jerome, the Superior of the Sisters of Charity, to the need of rescuing these children. When the matter was as placed before Archbishop (afterwards Cardinal) McCloskey, he not only sanctioned the plan of providing an asylum for the care of abandoned children, but urged the Sisters to put this plan into execution. Accordingly Mother Mary Jerome directed Sister Irene to make a beginning. With only $5.00 as capital, but with undaunted courage and unlimited faith and confidence in God, Sister Irene undertook the work.
On October 8, 1869 the New York Foundling Asylum of the Sisters of Charity, in the City of New York was incorporated. Three days later on October 11th, the Feast of the Maternity of Our Lady, Sister Irene and her two companions, Sister Teresa Vincent and Sister Ann Aloysia, moved into a small house at 17 East 12th Street. Although they expected to spend three months in preparing for the opening of the institutions, an infant was laid on the door -step that very first night. Before January 1, 1870, the proposed opening date, they had received 123 babies.
Within a year, a larger house at 3 Washington Square was secured. Soon this also proved to be inadequate. In 1870, the State Legislature authorized the City to grant a site for a new building, and appropriated $100,000 toward its erection on condition that a similar amount be raised for the same purpose by private contributions.
Sister Irene at once set to work to take advantage of this help and organized a committee amongst some of the leading financiers and business men of the time. The construction of the buildings on the property bounded by 68th and 69th Streets and by Lexington and Third Avenues was begun in 1872. In November 1873, the main building was completed and occupied. Through the years other buildings were added until the Foundling Hospital was completed.
While the building was in progress the services of the institution were expanding. Shortly after its establishment, the Foundling became a refuge not only for abandoned babies but also for unmarried mothers.
Another important development was the inauguration of the Boarding Department. Because of the lack of room in the late house on 12th Street, the Sisters asked their neighbors to care for some of the infants in their own homes. Thus was inaugurated, on November 15, 1869, the Boarding department of the Foundling.
As soon as Sister Irene was settled in the new building on 68th Street, she established the Adoption Department to find suitable permanent homes for those children who were legally free for adoption. Every care was taken to ensure proper guardianship for each child. The date of the first recorded placement of a child in a free home, with a view to adoption, was May 1873.
In 1880, one of Sister Irene’s dreams was realized when St. Anne’s Maternity Pavilion was erected, in order to shelter friendless, expectant mothers, whether married or unmarried, and to provide proper confinement care for them. Although originally planned only for mother’s care by the Sisters, St. Anne’s was opened in 1915 to outside physicians who wished to send private patients for confinement. In 1946, St. Anne’s Maternity Pavilion was closed to private cases in order to expand and improve services to the unmarried mothers who were the original objects of Sister Irene’s concern.
In 1881 St. John’s Hospital for Children, and Pediatric Service of the New York Foundling Hospital was erected. In 1944, the Hospital service of St. John’s was discontinued in order to expand and improve services to well children in need of care away from their own homes and thus meet an urgent need in this community.
In 1910, St. Joseph By The Sea, at Huguenot, Staten Island, was opened as an annex to the New York foundling Hospital.
In 1930, a Social Service Department was established in order to provide casework services for unmarried mothers cared for in the Shelter. It was about the same time that professionally trained workers were added to the staff of the Boarding and Adoption Departments.
The Foundling Hospital also has a training school for the training of young ladies as Infant Care Technicians, a Pediatric Clinic for foster children, a Prenatal Clinic, a Development clinic for children being considered for adoptive placement, and –its newest service—a Child Guidance Clinic.
In 1958 in order to carry on the work of the New York foundling Hospital and to give adequate coverage to the number of dependent and neglected children in need of care away from their own homes, the buildings on 68th Street were replaced by the modern fire-proof building equipped with all the facilities necessary to carry out a program according to the highest standards of child care.
As the New York Foundling Hospital enters its 100th year of service, it may be described as a multifunctional social agency providing the following services:
Nursery care on an emergency basis to abandoned and neglected children regardless of creed or color;
Casework services to families requesting placement of children;
Placement and supervision of Catholic children in boarding and adoption homes;
After-Care supervision of children discharged from foster care;
Shelter care and casework services to unmarried mothers.
The unwavering faith, hope, and Christ-like charity with which Sister Irene opened the first Foundling on East 12th Street have characterized the unique dedication of the Sisters of Charity, staff and volunteers who have carried on her work to the present day. It is our prayer that -that unique spirit—the spirit of Christ—will continue to guide those who have dedicated themselves to the work of the New York Foundling Hospital in the years to come.
THE NEW YORK FOUNDLING HOSPITAL
Record Information
590 Avenue of the Americas, New
York City, New York, 10011
Crossroads
December 1982, page 12-13
Professor Follows Trail of Early 20th Century Orphans
by Julie L. Greenberg
"Your agent promised me a nice red haired boy. I have a wife and five red-headed girls, and we want a boy to match."
This was typical of the thousands of requests to the New York Foundling Hospital in a 50-year period ending around 1927.
In response to such letters. thousands of homeless children were sent aboard "orphan trains" bound, their guardians hoped, for better lives in the West and Midwest, said Professor Charlene Letourneau, chairperson of the university’s undergraduate social service program, who has researched the orphan train phenomenon.
The theory was that fresh country air. a healthy environment and a good family upbringing was the answer to the plight of these children, many of whom had been rescued by the Catholic sisters of the Foundling Hospital from lives in the streets of New York City. Other children had been left in baskets on the hospital's porch.
The large numbers of homeless children were caused mostly by immigrants arriving daily in New York City. They had come to the United States hoping to find a "land of milk and honey." Instead, many were unable to secure jobs. and when their funds became depleted, they desperately abandoned their children, or brought them to foundling homes.
How these orphans fared is a subject that has gone unresearched until recently. Three years ago, while teaching at the University of Nebraska, Professor Letourneau learned of a group of approximately 40 former New York Foundling Hospital orphans who were meeting at annual reunions in Nebraska, and she decided to attend one.
The tearful first reunion in 1962 of former orphan train children and meetings that followed forged perhaps the only link possible with the past. 'It helped meet a need." said Professor Letourneau. "They were able to experience the feeling, "I’m not the only one. There are others who went through it, too. "
The researcher, an assistant professor in the university’s National Catholic School of Social Service, hoped that by talking with these people she would learn how their childhood uprootings had affected them. She explored whether the scars they experienced had been temporary or permanent. She was curious about their reflections and feelings about their backgrounds; their feelings toward their natural and foster parents: their attitudes about closed adoption records; and how their upbringings had influenced the raising of their own children.
The people she interviewed had been between infancy and age 11 when placed in permanent homes in the early years of the century. Their foster parents had signed agreements, promising to provide for the children as they would their own natural children. If the Catholic sisters of the New York Foundling Hospital learned that the terms of the agreements were violated, the children could be removed from the homes, which were visited annually by a hospital representative.
In the course of her research, Professor Letourneau discovered two myths. At one extreme, it was thought that "fresh air was the cure-all" for the problems of orphaned children, and at the other extreme it was felt that the placement of homeless children from New York City with families in the West and Mid-West along the Southern Pacific Railroad line "was a bad event in the history of child welfare."
When traveling on the trains. the children were accompanied by two Catholic Sisters and an agent who had helped secure the placement for the children. Officials of the Southern Pacific Railroad ordered that the railroad bells be quieted as the trains passed through the various cities so that the children would not be disturbed.
The children wore numbered tags. Ribbons bearing their names and the identities of their foster parents were sewed into the collars of their clothing. Duplicate identifications had been received by the parents, who waited at the stations on specified arrival days.
Most children were welcomed with open arms. Others were greeted with disappointment when the prospective parents got "cold feet" at the last moment.
One woman interviewed by Professor Letourneau told how she and another child arrived in Nebraska and found nobody waiting for them. "The priest had gotten two families. After the train left New York, the two families told the priest they didn't want us. Both families! The priest didn't know what to do. Finally, a family said they'd take one (child), and the priest's housekeeper, my foster mother, said she'd take care of me until another family was found."
Eventually two families were interested in adopting her at age 13. 'I had to decide on one or the other. But my mind was made up." she told Professor Letourneau. "It would have broken my heart if I couldn't have stayed with my (foster) mother."
When grown, she became curious about her roots and contacted the New York Foundling Hospital about her origins. On her baptismal certificate she found one name but learned later it was not her name. In the New York Bureau of Statistics. there is no record of her birth under any name.
Though this woman's efforts to trace her identity have proved fruitless, she is optimistic. "I always say that I have one friend. one that will never go back on me, and that's God," she has said.
"In general, the foster care system worked," Professor Letourneau said. "Most of the parents saw to it that the children went to school, were brought up as Catholics and were well cared for.
"Most felt strong loyalty to their foster parents, and most felt close to their foster brothers and sisters. However. in some cases, the orphans felt they were treated differently than their siblings, especially in regard to inheritances, which were sometimes divided inequitably favoring the natural children. "For the most part, the orphans continued to get together with their foster siblings even after the deaths of their foster parents.
"Most grew up to be normal, well adjusted people and responsible citizens," she continued. In her research. she found no higher incidence of stress related illnesses or problems among the general population.
"That isn’t to say, that there were no children with scars from their experiences," said Professor Letourneau. A few cases of abuse were reported among those with whom she talked, but they were the exceptions. In some instances, children were kept from going to school so they could work. Others that were neglected sometimes ran away.
One of the difficulties that was commonly expressed among the persons interviewed was, "Most felt it was hard to be accepted by other children." It was often through other children that they learned about their orphan backgrounds, "Most went beyond the name calling, however, and found friends," she said.
The major problem that arose in the experiences of most of the orphans was questions about their original identities. "Many expressed feeling a deep hole inside about their backgrounds," she said. They have searched, usually in vain, to find out who their natural parents were, where their parents came from, and how they came to be separated from them.
But for some, not knowing their original identities "gave them a deeper appreciation of family, made them more sensitive" and nurtured within them strong desires to be good parents, said Professor Letourneau.
Most of those questioned wanted children. "It was very important to them. Some said that having families made them feel complete and biologically connected to the Future."
The orphan train system of foster placement was as successful as it was, Professor Letourneau speculated, because its administrator "believed in the principle of screening." This process was carried out by priests who knew their parishioners well and recommended only couples they felt would live up to the responsibilities of being good foster parents.
"Though the orphan trains were an early experiment in our foster care system, some important concepts have endured," said Professor Letourneau. We still place much importance on the practices of screening and periodic evaluation, and we still strive for permanence and continuity for the homeless child, though today that is done through adoption rather than foster care.