It's a funny old town

I'm just full of linky goodness today, aren't I.

London Oddities is appallingly written (I'm still struggling to work out why a German spy was sent instructions and hair in the post, even if he was a barber) but full of juicy titbits. I love the story about the Southwark miser.

Coram's Fields, by the way, is not still known as Foundlings. It is Coram's Fields. It does have that weird sign, which isn't really so weird, since lone adults aren't generally encouraged to hang around playgrounds, ne c'est pas? It also has sheep, as I've previously mentioned.

There's one other detail about that place. There is a niche in the wall where distressed mothers used to leave their babies, in hopes that they would be taken in (in contrast, one assumes, with the nursery's official, rather strict policy of taking in babies only from mothers of "prior good reputation", etc). This is sad enough when you think of babies abandoned to icy London temperatures. But the numbers are overwhelming — more than a hundred a day at one time.