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THE LONDON BLOG

"there is in London all that life can afford" -
Samuel Johnson, 1777

Gentle reader, as 'blogs are now too fashionable to ignore we've decide to start one ourselves. If no-one reads it we'll stop it. You have been warned.

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October 2nd It appears new museums and attractions are popping up like midnight mushrumps. Latest kid on the block is the Foundling Museum, in Brunswick Square. The square is dominated by brutalist block which is one of those places you either admire or despise - an attempt to make a new type of dwelling place, which resulted in a monstrosity of stained concrete in the heart of Bloomsbury, by Russell Square tube. The idea was a good one - integrate shops and living spaces in a clean, purpose built slab of modernity. The trouble was, Le Corbusier got it right, in his star developments like l'Unite d'Habitation in Marseilles, which were copied, minus the good bits and cheaply (in both senses of the word) by the brutalist developers of post-war London, out to make a quick buck, rather than create enduring monuments to modernity. The reality is dreadful - it's an eyesore. It houses the Univerity's school of pharmacy, a good cinema (the Renoir) and an excellent secondhand bookshop (Skoob). English heritage has afforded it protection as a place of special historic development. Sadly it's more a story of how NOT to do a development.

The story of London's foundlings and their adoption as the first 'cool' charity - stars like Handel were enrolled in Thomas Coram's worthy venture to help abandoned kids (see http://www.coram.org.uk/heritage.htm). Sadly most of the foundlings either went into the army to fight the Empire's wars, or into service, to spawn more foundlings at the hands of their employers!

At the time there was no contraception, and most women who were not independently wealthy or married would be prey to their elders and betters in search of some quick fun. The cage around The Monument at Bank was put up to prevent women throwing themselves off: it had become the top site for pregnant and abandoned serving girls to kill themselves - they had little choice: once pregnant, unless you were admitted to a religious prison/workhouse, where food and shelter was given out only to those who endorsed the foul religion that shored up this sexist society, the choice was starvation or prostitution (if you kept the child) or back street abortion - with its high mortality rate, or abandonment of the child. This is where the foundling charities came in. Marginally less hypocritical then the other 'charities' around (which insisted on espousal of religious beliefs in return for bread) they mopped up the burgeoning population of illegitimate children, and allowed a collective amnesia as to their origins. A good history can be read at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/society/foundling_01.shtml

In the deeply religious and therefore deeply hypocritical London of yore the rich saw women as toys, to be seduced or raped and then abandoned. As is typical of a abrahamically inclined society male infidelity was regarded as fun, their victims as polluted. The church contributed in large part to this: sanctioning horrendous ways of thinking, and holding up chastity as the only virtue in women, and condemning illegitimate children at birth. Of course it was impossible to be chaste when your employer (the vast majority of unmarried women were in service) took advantage of you. This was no excuse: the Church and hypocritical society was ready to condemn you if you were unable to cover it up. The usual choices were suicide or prostitution. This was the society fostered by the Aristocrats whose sugared biographies are poured over by those who imagine that life in a class and religion-based society was fun.

While producing guides to the prostitutes available (see Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, which is well very researched) the same men were publically condemning prostitution - which was, in reality the only choice other than starvation that faced many women (see Palliser's Quincunx for perhaps the best fictional guide to Victorian London: there are no happy endings). Christians, who've largely rewritten their odious 19thC history to make themselves seem anything other than the odious hypocrits they were, behaved in the way that is seen today as a sign of Islam's brutality. Class and sex ruled.

Now as Christianity tries to take on a more modernising role (at least in the UK - the rise of Evangelicalism sees an nasty return to the repressive and hypocritical right-wing religion of the past - we see little hope for human rights in the USA if the evangelical churches hegemony on the collective mores continues) it's Islam that is seen as backward. In Islam we see the past of Christianity: war, torture, repression of women, scant regard for human rights, martyrdom, book burning. The truth is, as Francis Wheen points out in his excellent book 'How Mumbo Jumbo took over the world' that all religions generally support bad behaviour, and Abrahamic ones are some of the worst. Next time you hear a voice telling you to cut your child's throat, see a psychiatrist, don't found a religion: there are too many about already...