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This volume seeks to address the questions of poverty, charity, and public welfare, taking the nineteenth-century London Foundling Hospital as its focus. It delineates the social rules that constructed the gendered world of the Victorian age, and uses ‘respectability’ as a factor for analysis: the women who successfully petitioned the Foundling Hospital for admission of their infants were not East End prostitutes, but rather unmarried women, often domestic servants, determined to maintain social respectability. The administrators of the Foundling Hospital reviewed over two hundred petitions annually; deliberated on about one hundred cases; and accepted not more than 25 per cent of all cases. Using primary material from the Foundling Hospital’s extensive archives, this study moves methodically from the broad social and geographical context of London and the Foundling Hospital itself, to the micro-historical case data of individual mothers and infants.

RésuméDans la ville de Londres à l’époque victorienne, l’hospice des Enfants trouvés (“Foundling Hospital”) servait de modèle de « respectabilité ». Cette riche institution privée, située à Bloomsbury, revendiquait comme mission le salut des enfants illégitimes nés de femmes des classes populaires. Elle s’efforçait en outre de préserver la réputation des femmes qui subissaient une telle infortune. Mais la démarche supposait au préalable que les dirigeants de l’établissement évaluent consciencieusement l’honorabilité de la mère par le biais d’un calcul mesurant sa « respectabilité ». Cette étude éclaire la vie quotidienne – du jour de leur réception jusqu’à la cérémonie de leur confirmation – de ces enfants dont les mères avaient franchi le seuil de la Guildford Street Gate et avaient abandonné toute responsabilité sur leur progéniture en la déposant dans les bras ouverts d’une mère nourricière. L’analyse indique que les enfants qui avaient survécu à la séparation d’avec leur mère étaient correctement éduqués et préparés à affronter l’économie florissante de Londres. Enfin, elle montre la profondeur des plaies émotionnelles laissées chez certaines mères par le traumatisme de l’abandon, éclairant par là même l’ampleur du sacrifice exigé de celles qui avaient fait ce choix difficile mais « respectable ». SummaryThe Foundling Hospital served Victorian London as an icon of “respectability.” A private well-funded institution situated in Bloomsbury presented as its public mission the salvation of out-of-wedlock infants born to working class women. Its private endeavor was to preserve the reputations of the women who bore these unfortunates. But, this could only happen after the governors of this establishment thoroughly assessed the mother’s reputation by a calculus that measured respectability. This study sheds light on the daily lives of those infants, whose mothers crossed the threshold of the Guildford Street Gate and abandoned their responsibilities on the day they handed their baby over to the open arms of the waiting nurse mother, from receiving day until Confirmation day. It shows how infants who survived separation from their mothers were properly educated and prepared for London’s thriving economy. Finally, it explores how the trauma of loss left deep emotional scars on some women and offers insight on the depth of sacrifice demanded of those who made this difficult but “respectable” choice.

Despite the widespread trends of secularization in the 20th century, religion has played an important role in several outbreaks of genocide since the First World War. And yet, not many scholars have looked either at the religious aspects of modern genocide, or at the manner in which religion has taken a position on mass killing. This collection of essays addresses this hiatus by examining the intersection between religion and state-organized murder in the cases of the Armenian, Jewish, Rwandan, and Bosnian genocides. Rather than a comprehensive overview, it offers a series of descrete, yet closely related case studies, that shed light on three fundamental aspects of this issue: the use of religion to legitimize and motivate genocide; the potential of religious faith to encourage physical and spiritual resistance to mass murder; and finally, the role of religion in coming to terms with the legacy of atrocity.

Margit Slachta (1884-1974), Hungarian founder of the Roman Catholic female religious congregation the Society of the Sisters of Social Service, coupled zeal for social justice with religious convictions in rescue and relief efforts between 1939 and 1945 for Jewish families whom she called the “persecuted ones.”¹ She protected Slovakian and Hungarian Jews with the assistance of her religious community and a large network of lay Catholic women spiritually associated with the Sisters of Social Service. She also collaborated with a circle of Jewish women, the Hungarian Jewish Welfare Bureau, and various relief agencies.² In the years immediately following the Second

Margit Slachta (1884-1974), Hungarian founder of the Roman Catholic female religious congregation the Society of the Sisters of Social Service, coupled zeal for social justice with religious convictions in rescue and relief efforts between 1939 and 1945 for Jewish families whom she called the “persecuted ones.”¹ She protected Slovakian and Hungarian Jews with the assistance of her religious community and a large network of lay Catholic women spiritually associated with the Sisters of Social Service. She also collaborated with a circle of Jewish women, the Hungarian Jewish Welfare Bureau, and various relief agencies.² In the years immediately following the Second

Bailey reviews Victorian Women, Unwed Mothers and the London Foundling Hospital by Jessica Sheetz-Nguyen.