Table of Contents

Introduction
The making of the man, 1668-1693
Shipbuilding in New England
Trouble in Taunton
A new beginning
A seed is sown
Coram, Francis Grueber and David Dunbar
First success
The lure of America
American correspondence
Triumph
'My darling project'
A shameful episode
Coram in exile
A gift misused
The pensioner
Epilogue: A short history of the Foundling Hospital and successor bodies

Reviews

Provides a valuable insight into society, culture, and the politics of charity. It will be of value to anyone interested in charity or this rich period of British history. [...] Provides a celebration of the man and his achievements and, as such, it is also a testimony to basic human energy and compassion.
*H-NET BOOK REVIEW*

Offers a rich insight into the culture and mental world of Hanoverian England. Handel and Hogarth are among the luminaries who flit across its pages, personalities are given life in engaging pen-portraits, and the evocation of London is by turns charmingly vivid and unsparing in its harrowing detail. [...] It was partly through [Coram's] labours that charitable endeavour became formidably organised, endowed with formal status, and made, above all, fashionable, as an extension of politics and the arts.
*ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW*

An account which is rigorously unsentimental, a measured biography which does much to flesh out Thomas Coram.
*TLS*

A much-needed biography of this early pioneer of children's charity.
*SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEWS*