Letters to the Editor
CAPTAIN CORAM'S GRAVE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The Governors of the Foundling Hospital have given notice that they intend to apply to the Home Secretary for permission to remove what they are pleased to term " the remains " now interred in the vaults under the Chapel.
Let us consider these " remains." We find among their names some of the most honoured citizens of Bloomsbury, who in their life performed their duties according to the law and human kindliness. The suggestion that these men and women, who from the tomb can make no possible appeal for reverence or respect, should be uprooted at the dictates of a company of financiers shocks the very roots of the soul. Poor things ! They lived and died in Bloomsbury and had their being and loved their fellow-men, and now they are to be flung from their rest and taken to the alien suburb of Kensal Green.
But, dreadful as this seems in the case of all these people, there is one among the honoured dead who, it might be thought, would have stayed the hand, even of a financier. Captain Comm is interred in the vaults under the chapel ; the brave old mariner who, two hundred years ago, founded this haven for nameless children, and who, in his simple honour and innocent faith, believed that by the appointment of men of high sounding name and station as the Governors of the Foundling he insured eternal protection, not only for the children, but for his bones.
But what are we to say of this violation, whereby it is proposed to take the remains of one of the best and kindliest men who ever helped a woman or blessed a child from the familiar shelter where he lies buried, and take him to a strange ground that has no possible associations with the Bloomsbury he so loved and worked for ?—I am, Sir, &c., 10 Mecklenburgh Square, W.C. 1.
Previous page
