The last foundling

When she fell pregnant in London in 1938, Jean knew that she couldn't keep her baby. She was unmarried - her sweetheart having departed to set up a home for them both in South Africa - and living alone with no money or family close by. Afraid and desperate, she implored the panel of the Foundling Hospital, the institution set up by philanthropist Thomas Coram in 1739, to give her child the care that she could not. Allowed to nurse her newborn son for nine weeks, Jean was heartbroken when the time came for her to give him away. Little Tommy would know nothing of her love as he grew up alongside the other abandoned and misfortunate children of the Foundling Hospital. The regime during the years of the Second World War was particularly harsh: there were few teachers, strict rules and severe punishments, little food, segregation of the sexes and bullying was rife. A mischievous child, Tom seemed to be always getting himself into trouble. He spent each school holiday with another foster family, never quite finding a place to call home. But as social policy moved away from institutional care, so Tom found his world opening up in the most exciting of ways.