The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames Quotes

“unchanged for over a century, reminded me of an old-fashioned IOU, as if its subject were an inanimate object instead of a living, breathing little girl.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“I felt a familiar wave of anger flash through my veins, but this time it was not directed at my mother. Instead, as I came to fully understand the implications of the decisions of powerful men long since deceased, the full force of my anger shifted course. Channeling my emotions into an internal scream, I hurled invectives their way, accused them of injustice, cruelty, sadism, all the while knowing that my anger was directed into the chasm of history. I heard only the echo of my own voice coming back at me in response.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“epigenetic transmission of trauma.” The article reported research suggesting that trauma might create a chemical coating on a person’s chromosomes, a biological memory that could be passed down to the next generation.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“Men of great learning, stature, and power, the governors simply considered themselves best positioned to raise a child for the benefit of society.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“The cruelty of the Foundling Hospital was tucked away, belied by slick parquet floors and freshly painted walls.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“But it may well have been love that filled each spoonful of warm broth she fed me during those long weeks. Or perhaps the root of her fleeting gentleness came from the sickbeds she had experienced as a child.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“The need for nurturing, for love, trumps the need for food, Harlow’s experiments showed. Without tenderness and security in early childhood, the ability to form meaningful and healthy attachments is irrevocably damaged.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“If a child has a caregiver who is reliable and dependable, Bowlby maintained, the world seems secure, and the child can thrive. Without that security and nurturing, a child cannot grow to trust others or form healthy attachments.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“While the University of London study attributed the lack of friendships to the sameness of the children’s daily lives, research conducted by John Bowlby, a British child psychiatrist, revealed a more consequential explanation for why children raised in institutional settings have difficulty forming attachments with others. His groundbreaking conclusions provide invaluable insights into the workings of the human mind and would lay the groundwork for the sea change that resulted in the Foundling Hospital finally shuttering its doors in 1954.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“Hanway was not alone in his views, but his voice was powerful, and his ideas took hold. He is credited by some for the widespread adoption of solitary confinement in penal settings, and even for bringing the practice to the United States. Ironically, another notable supporter of the Foundling Hospital would be one of the most eloquent critics of the practice. In 1842 Charles Dickens traveled to the United States, visiting a prison just outside of Philadelphia. He walked away appalled at the conditions, describing the “hopeless solitary confinement” as “cruel and wrong,” believing it to be a punishment “which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature,”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“The “idea of being excluded from all human society, to converse with a man’s own heart,” Hanway believed, “will operate potently on the minds and manners of the people of every class.”26 To him, solitary confinement was not cruel but compassionate, a practice that would “restore the prisoner to the world and social life, in the most advantageous manner; and that he may, in due time, teach what he has learnt, and hand down virtue instead of vice to posterity.”27”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“The impact of one of Hanway’s pamphlets is still felt today. In his 1776 Solitude in Imprisonment: With Proper Profitable Labour and a Spare Diet, he advocated for solitary confinement—placing a person alone in a dark room with only bread and water.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“the more you beat a child, the less likely she is able to control her own actions. And so, from the outset, the Foundling Hospital created an exacting, unsparing, rigid environment where infractions and abuse became inevitable, leading to beatings that would make children more likely to act out, leading to yet more beatings, escalating in frequency and intensity.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“In the 1840s Charles Dickens lived just around the corner from the Foundling Hospital, and he took an interest in the institution soon after his arrival in the neighborhood, renting a pew at the hospital’s chapel so he could hear the foundlings sing, or wandering the grounds and watching the children go about their daily chores. Dickens was evidently inspired by what he saw there, making unmarried mothers and children raised without parents frequent themes in his works, most notably in Oliver Twist. Other”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“without the Foundling Hospital, Handel’s Messiah may have been relegated to obscurity instead of becoming acknowledged as the enduring Baroque masterpiece it is today.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“My mother hadn’t raised me in the image of her childhood, but in a warped, dystopian version of what she imagined a proper British upbringing to be.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“Our hair and our foster mothers were not our only losses once the iron gates clanged shut behind us. We lost our individuality, our identity, our freedom, our voice and virtually all contact with the outside world.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“But during most of the Foundling Hospital’s history, a woman who wanted to raise a foundling as her own would face considerable legal obstacles. Britain didn’t recognize adoption until 1926, a legislative change attributed to pressure from child rescue organizations following World War I. Adoption was allowed under ancient Roman law but had all but disappeared in western European systems until the early twentieth century, partly due to the fear that the “bad blood” of an illegitimate child could spoil a family’s pedigree. The Catholic Church opposed adoption, not just for illegitimate children but for orphans as well. One historian offered a particularly nefarious reason for the church’s stance—adoption would have allowed childless couples to designate an heir, removing the opportunity for the church to collect their inheritances upon their deaths.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“Two centuries later, a woman with dark brown hair and a pale complexion would abandon her child at the Foundling Hospital to protect the honor of her family. That child would be scorned and belittled for the shame of her birth, her fate as a servant to society’s elite forever sealed, it seemed. She would not even be allowed to keep her own name. Instead, she was known as Dorothy Soames.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

“Coram’s achievement would secure him a place as one of the greatest philanthropists in England’s history, but his success came with a price, one that would be paid for generations to come. While he’d saved these children, he had made a devil’s bargain, committing them to a hard life of scrubbing floors and changing chamber pots, or being sent to war to defend a nation that viewed foundlings as disposable.”
― Justine Cowan, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames