In our series on Hutchin’s Extra Illustrated, some stories are so interesting that deserve more attention. In the first of our ‘spin-off’ blogs, we look at philanthropist Thomas Coram…
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Thomas Coram is best known for his role in establishing the Foundling Hospital in London. By itself, this was a great achievement but it was not the only cause that he championed. Instead, it was just one campaign in a life that was devoted to fighting for fair treatment for people of all races, gender and wealth.
Thomas was born around 1668, although no record of his baptism survives. In a letter to the Rev. Benjamin Colman written in 1724 Thomas describes himself as being from Lyme and of ‘vertuous good parentage’ (Wagner, G: Thomas Coram, Gent., p7)
His mother, Spes, died when he was young. Most sources, including Gillian Wagner, in her biography ‘Thomas Coram, Gent’, give the date of her death as 1671, but the parish registers that we hold at Dorset History Centre record her burial as taking place in 1677.
Thomas describes how he was sent to sea aged 11 ½ for 5 years before being apprenticed as a shipwright. This information is given to excuse his poor writing style as he had ‘no learning’. (Wagner, G: Thomas Coram, Gent., p7)
In 1693 he sailed to Boston, where he lived for ten years. It was here that he met his wife Eunice and set up a successful ship building business. Whilst in America he developed strong relations with the Native Americans and pushed hard for them to be educated. Additionally, Coram, unusually for the times, believed that education was as important for girls as for boys.
An Evil amongst us here in England is to think Girls having learning given them is not so very Material as for boys to have it. I think and say it is more Material for Girls, when they come to be Mothers, will have the forming of their Children’s lives and if their Mothers be good or bad the children Generally take after them, so that giving Girls a vertuous Education is a vast Advantage to their Posterity as well as to the Publick.
(Wagner, G: Thomas Coram, Gent., p117)
He was eventually forced to leave America by his puritan neighbours, probably because of his Anglican beliefs. He requested that the land that he left behind should be used to build a church or schoolhouse when the time came that the residents desired an Anglican presence. The church was built in 1724.
Coram never lost his interest in the colonies and even in his eighties still wrote of his desire to return to live there. He believed that the colonies role should be to provide benefit to England and was heavily involved in several projects to establish new colonies. Horace Walpole was to describe him as ‘the honestest… most knowing person about the plantations he had ever talked with’.
By 1732, Coram was appointed as a trustee for the new colony of Georgia, but soon fell out with his fellow trustees, possibly over his belief that women and men should have equal inheritance rights; and this was a pattern repeated throughout Coram’s life. The governors of the Foundling Hospital forced him out soon after it opened. Coram was an experienced, determined and successful petitioner and fundraiser, but his outspokenness, pugnacious attitude and strong beliefs made him difficult to work with.
He also used his own money to fight for the causes that he believed in. One example was that he helped change colonial regulations in favour of British made hats. The English Hatters wanted to give him a financial reward for this, but he refused, so instead they gave him a new hat every year for life.
He fought against the governors of Nova Scotia misusing their fishing rights. He ensured the wages of Samuel Tucker, a carpenter he had never met who had died at sea, were returned to his family and helped injured mariners who had lost their jobs by giving them shelter and setting up a bank for them.
After Coram’s wife Eunice died, he neglected his own affairs and fell into poverty. A subscription was started that gave him a pension, but Coram himself said,
I have not wasted the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence and vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess, that, in this my old age, I am poor.
(Wagner, G: Thomas Coram, Gent., p185)
Thomas Coram died on 29th March 1751 and is buried in the chapel at the Foundling Hospital.
Richard Brocklesby, a physician and friend of Coram’s, describes him as ‘a rather hot-tempered, downright sailorlike man, of unmistakable honesty and sterling goodness of heart.’ He was certainly tenacious and never gave up on an idea that he believed in. He used all his resources to fight for equality and justice for people he didn’t know and without hope of financial reward.
He is a man that we believe deserves to be remembered, not only for his hospital, but for standing up for those who had no voice and fighting to make the world a better place.
I particularly like his idea that an educated woman becomes a better mother than she would otherwise have been. That women should inherit was an idea that unfortunately was not accepted for a long time.