Part 2: The Foundling Hospital
Part 2: Life at the Foundling Hospital
The second part of Coram Boy jumps forward in time. The baby Meshak saved is now a boy called Aaron, growing up at the Foundling Hospital in London. He has no knowledge of his true parents or how he came to be there. Alongside him is his closest friend Toby, a Black child. Gavin uses the Foundling Hospital setting to explore themes of identity, belonging and how institutions shape children’s lives.
At the real Foundling Hospital, children were given new names and identities. Their birth names were never used, and mothers were not told what their child was renamed. Gavin uses this historical detail to develop the theme of lost identity — Aaron does not know who he truly is.
The Foundling Hospital Regime
Life at the Foundling Hospital was structured and disciplined. Children were clothed in a uniform, educated to a basic level and trained in skills that would prepare them for apprenticeship. Boys were typically apprenticed to tradesmen or sent into the navy; girls went into domestic service. The Hospital was a charity, not a family — the children were cared for, but they were not loved in the way a parent loves a child.
Gavin shows both the kindness and the limitations of institutional care. Aaron is safe, fed and educated, but he has no parents, no surname and no knowledge of where he comes from. The Hospital saves his life but cannot give him an identity. This tension between institutional rescue and emotional absence runs through Part 2.
When mothers left their babies at the real Foundling Hospital, they often left a token — a coin, a scrap of fabric, a button or a piece of ribbon. These tokens were recorded in the Hospital’s registers and kept in case a mother ever returned to claim her child. In the novel, the concept of the token symbolises the fragile thread connecting Aaron to his origins. He possesses no token, no clue about who his parents are — this absence drives his search for identity in Part 2 and beyond.
Handel’s Music and Aaron’s Gift
Music is the thread that connects Aaron to his father Alexander, though neither of them knows it. Aaron has an extraordinary musical gift, particularly as a singer. When Handel visits the Foundling Hospital to conduct rehearsals for his annual Messiah performance, he discovers Aaron’s voice and recognises his exceptional talent. This mirrors how, years earlier, Alexander Ashbrook defied his father to pursue music under Handel’s guidance.
Gavin uses music as a motif throughout the novel. For Aaron, music represents the possibility that talent and beauty can transcend the circumstances of birth. His voice is proof that he is more than his status as a foundling — it is the invisible inheritance from his father. For the exam, analysing the motif of music allows you to connect character, theme and structure in a single argument.
Aaron’s musical gift is inherited from Alexander — it is the invisible thread connecting father and son across the novel’s two parts. Gavin uses music to argue that identity is not just about names and paperwork, but about deeper, inherited qualities.
Class and the Foundling Boys
The foundling boys occupy an ambiguous position in the class system. They are not poor street children — the Hospital gives them education and respectability — but they are not gentlemen either. They have no family name, no inheritance and no social connections. In 18th-century England, where your family name determined everything, the foundlings exist in a kind of social limbo.
Aaron’s friend Toby is a Black child at the Foundling Hospital. Gavin includes Toby to highlight that the foundling children came from all backgrounds and that the exploitation of children intersected with the exploitation of enslaved people. Toby’s presence raises questions about race and belonging in 18th-century London, where Black people were present but marginalised. Through Toby, Gavin adds another layer to the novel’s exploration of who society considers worthy of care and protection.
Education and Apprenticeship
The Foundling Hospital gave children a basic education in reading, writing and arithmetic. Boys were typically apprenticed to tradesmen such as weavers, shoemakers or rope-makers at around fourteen. Girls were sent into domestic service. The intention was to produce useful, self-supporting members of society — not scholars or gentlemen. Gavin uses this detail to highlight the ceiling placed on foundling children: they could survive, but they could not rise. Aaron’s musical talent threatens to break this pattern, which is why Handel’s recognition of his voice is so significant — it offers a path that the institution was never designed to provide.
Part 2 deepens the novel’s central questions: can a person find identity without knowing their origins? Can talent and character overcome the limitations of class? And what happens when the truth about someone’s past begins to surface?