Captain Coram and His Children
BY F. YEATS-BROWN.
IF the Foundling Hospital Site is to be preserved -I- as an open space for children, quick action and generous giving will be necessary. If its gates were closed, the children of the neighbourhood would be seen and heard- no more there and the gardens they have planted would be left to wither ; the property would be given over to the builders, and eventually another nine acres of bricks and mortar would arise in Bloomsbury.
That must not happen. In order to save the nine acres which Captain Coram purchased and developed two hundred years ago, Lord Rothermere put down £50,000 and agreed to pay interest at 51- per cent. on the balance of the purchase price of £525,000 until the end of June of this year. He also defrayed the expenses of making a playground out of the dibris on which the hospital stood, and promised a further £50,000 before the option expires : a total of about /130,000. That was two years agO. Now the owners have offered to reduce the price by X50,000, if. the purchase can be negotiated by April 80th, and provided that the site is kept as an open space in perpetuity.
That date is only six weeks away, and this is the last chance that will occur of acquiring such a splendid open space in the centre of the greatest city in the world. The price is 25s. a square foot, which is not much if we think of the visible and invisible benefits that will grow from that ground if it be preserved for children. But the total is huge : would that there were one or two more men of the generosity and the means of Lord Rothermere to come forward. Also the City companies and public bodies of London must do their share. But all of us who live or work in the Metropolis are concerned in seeing that the children of London have places in which to play and grow.
It is wrong that our children should suffer for our housing muddle : the bond we ask is that of Shylock : it is the weakest who are paying most heavily for the quickly won wealth of last century, and they are paying for it in their flesh and blood. To remedy the negligence of which our ancestors were guilty, un- wittingly and even perhaps inevitably, is the duty of all who -have pounds or even pennies to give.
There can be no national life without health.. Our babies,
as Dr. Saleeby said (or, if he didn't, he might have), are as important as battleships for the safety of the realm. The civilization of Babylon is said to have perished of malaria : rickets and rheumatism are working an insidious ruin in London. If we would not go under as a nation we must give our children their birthright of light, and air, and happiness.
" The Foundling " was a very happy place all last summer and autumn. I saw it many tunes under many skies : it was always a beautiful sight. There are other places (the Open Air Nursery School, Deptford, the Ravensdale Park play centre, the sandpits in St. James's Park and Victoria Embankment Gardens) where the passer-by may see London children at play ; but there is no other recreation ground in the West Central district, so far as I know. The Regent's Park is too far off. The " toddlers " cannot get to it. All the Bloomsbury squares are in private hands. Holborn, St. Pancras, Clerkenwell and Finsbury have no park, no playing field, no open-air school except the Foundling Site. An average of two thousand children a day used it all last summer, and during the school holidays even larger numbers were admitted. Since the middle of last August until the weather grew too cold, the swimming bath—the only one in London kept entirely for children—has been a source of fun, inspiration, education and physical culture. Girl Guides and Boy Scouts have pitched their tents under the plane trees. About 120 babies of various ages have been looked after in the day nursery, thus relieving their harassed mothers. The fifteen neighbouring elementary schools have all sent their children here daily for open-air classes, and each of them has had a garden patch which their pupils have been cultivating. Cricket and netball pitches and football grounds have covered the Site. And now all these activities arc threatened.
Saving the Foundling Site is more than a matter of saving children from the terrible diseases of cities, though that were cause enough to appeal for half a million pounds. The money spent will be an investment of incalculable worth in preventing illness ; but it will also be of the greatest use in the study of child-welfare, and educationally it may have a very useful influence on our schools. I am sure that there is too much stuffiness in nearly all schools and that boys and girls are psycho- logically overshadowed and borne down by being surrounded by too much building. I know personally that for one lesson that I learned in a classroom I learned twenty in the fresh air ; and I expect other boys and girls were the same. If the spirit and methods of the Macmillan Open Air School prevailed throughout the country (and what an impetus the establishment of the Foundling Site as a children's school would give them !) I believe that we should improve the minds as well as the bodies of our people out of all recognition within a single generation.
The Lord Lieutenant and Lord Mayor of London and many other distinguished people have recently sent an appeal to the Times for the preservation of the Site and asked that contributions should be sent to Sir E. Hilton Young at the Foundling Site, Guilford Street, W.C. 1. Most of us who read this could buy a square foot or two of England and give it to the 'children of London for ever. What a privilege to be able to do that : to be able to turn back into the land something which is certain, humanly speaking, to bring joy and the strength of the fields in spring to untold generations of children We must raise £425,000 by April 80. It is a staggering sum, but it need not daunt us, for the angels are on our side, including Captain Coram, and the spirits of the children he saved.
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