1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910782013303321

Autore

Miller Julie <1959->

Titolo

Abandoned [[electronic resource] ] : foundlings in nineteenth-century New York City / / Julie Miller

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : New York University Press, c2008

ISBN

0-8147-6441-X

0-8147-9569-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (333 p.)

Disciplina

362.76

Soggetti

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

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

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

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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