Posted on by Jemma Jarman
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This article was first published by BBC News.
Paper hearts, scraps of fabric and faded ribbons are some of the mementos that weave together the stories of abandoned babies and children who were taken in by the Bloomsbury Foundling Hospital.
The notes and tokens were part of the admission process at the central London institution, which looked after about 27,000 children who had been abandoned or whose parents were unable to look after them since its inception in 1739 by seafarer and philanthropist Thomas Coram.
For the first time, about 100,000 documents are available for free to the public as they have been uploaded to an online database, external by the charity Coram, which continues the hospital’s work.