What is it about?
This research examines the role of accounting in supporting the hospital’s efforts to (re)create stigmatized identities. We examine the plethora of records the hospital maintained about every aspect of the children’s lives, which were both mechanisms of surveillance and control and evidence of the hospital’s successful efforts in moulding the foundlings into virtuous and industrious members of society.
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Why is it important?
Accounting history is just starting to investigate the role of accounting in creating and supporting stigma and in constructing and spoiling identity. This research adds to this burgeoning field of research.
Perspectives
The fascinating thing for me in this research was examining how simultaneously accounting can both help create new identities for the foundlings while destroying their previous identities. This role in social engineering is both fascintating and disturbing.
Andrew Farley Read
University of Canberra
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Go gentle babe: Accounting and the London Foundling Hospital, 1757–97, Accounting History, May 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1032373216644259.
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