Barbara Brookes
Recently I visited the Foundling Museum, in Coram Fields, Bloomsbury, London. Near there, in 1989, my first son had played happily in Coram Fields, where no adults are allowed unless accompanied by children. Later, when my youngest son was around seven, I discovered Jamila Gavin’s Coram Boy, a gripping tale set in eighteenth century London and Gloucester, centered on the ‘Coram man’ who wanders the countryside glibly and deceivingly promising unwed mothers that he will deliver their babies to the Coram Foundling Hospital.
We read it together, hooked by the dark tale of cruelty to children and the boys that overcame their tragic beginnings.
In 1752, the London-based Gentleman’s Magazine published a review of an essay on sugar. The essay contained reports drawn from the Transactions of the Royal Society, and proved, concluded the reviewer, that sugar is “the most pleasant, salubrious, and useful vegetable to mankind.”
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was born in Taganrog, Russia and entered medical school in Moscow aged nineteen. While he was training as a doctor, he wrote humorous articles for weekly journals so that he could help financially support his parents and younger siblings. Increasingly he was drawn to writing serious drama and fiction. He is renowned as a master short story writer and playwright, whose fiction and drama explored the complexities of character and the often hidden depths of meaning in life. Chekhov practised as a medical doctor throughout his life, dying from tuberculosis aged 44.
