For instance, the Danish penal laws directed against illegitimacy were barbarous; they called for reform, but Struensee swept them away altogether. He decreed that henceforth illegitimate children should not rest under any stigma; they were in future to be christened in precisely the same way as if they were legitimate, and irregular birth should no longer prevent a man from learning a trade, or carrying on a business. Mothers of illegitimate children were no more to be punished--the fathers had always got off scot free. For a long time, in consequence of these same cruel laws, secret births, child murder, and the desertion and exposure of new-born infants to the cold had been common in Copenhagen. To remedy this evil Struensee and the Queen imitated Catherine of Russia, and established a Foundling Hospital in Copenhagen,[157] but apparently without any safeguards to prevent its abuse. It began in a small way. A drawer containing a mattress was placed outside a window of the lying-in hospital; a notice was affixed that unfortunate mothers who were unable to maintain, from any cause, their children, could leave them there, to be taken care of by the state. This _crêche_ was so eagerly availed of that no less than twenty-four children were found in it during the first four days, and the number increased rapidly. The following Sunday, from almost every pulpit in Copenhagen, came denunciation of the new institution for foundlings. The clergy denounced it root and branch, as putting a premium on illegitimacy and immorality, and as throwing an unjust burden on the virtuous and industrious classes, by compelling them to rear and maintain the deserted offspring of the immoral and the idle. But Struensee did not heed. The old order of things, he maintained, had resulted in infanticide, and wicked waste of human life. And he held that these children, who had no fault but their illegitimacy, which was not their fault, might with proper care be reared into useful citizens. That he might thereby be going against his pet theory of racial perfectionism, and encouraging the multiplication of the unfit, apparently did not occur to him. [157] Catherine the Great established a Foundling Hospital in St. Petersburg in 1763, with the aid of the philanthropist Demidoff. The Empress gave 50,000 roubles towards its maintenance, and granted it privileges and favours such as no benevolent institution had ever received before, including exemption from taxation and the monopoly of the state lottery.