Abuses of this kind intention soon crept in. Parents too poor to care for their children sent them from the country to London, and they died often on the way thither. One man, who carried five infants in a basket, got drunk on the journey, lay all night on a common, and three out of the five babies were found dead in the morning. Often the carriers stole all the clothing of the little ones, and they were thrown into the basket naked. Within four years about fifteen thousand babies were received, but only forty-four hundred lived to be sent out into homes. The mothers hated to part with their infants, and would often follow them for miles on foot. The poor mother would leave some token by which her child could be identified. Sometimes it was a coin or a ribbon, or possibly the daintiest cap the poverty of the mother would permit her to make. Sometimes a verse of poetry was pinned on the dress:-- "If Fortune should her favors give, That I in better plight might live, I'd try to have my boy again, And train him up the best of men." "The court-room of the Foundling," says a writer in "Chambers's Journal," "has probably witnessed as painful scenes as any chamber in Great Britain; and again, when the children, at five years old, are brought up to London, and separated from their foster-mothers, these scenes are renewed." "The stratagems resorted to by women to identify their children," says "Old and New London," "and to assure themselves of their well-being, are often singularly touching. Sometimes notes are found pinned to the infant's garments, beseeching the nurse to tell the mother her name and residence, that the latter may visit the child during its stay in the country. They will also attend the baptism in the chapel, in the hope of hearing the name conferred upon the infant; for, if they succeed in identifying the child during its stay at nurse, they can always preserve its identification during its subsequent abode in the hospital, since the children appear in chapel twice on Sunday, and dine in public on that day, which gives opportunity of seeing them from time to time, and preserving the recollection of their features." So many children were brought to the hospital after all restrictions were removed, in 1756, the death-roll was so large, and the expenses so great, that after four years different methods were adopted. There are now about five hundred children in the Foundling Hospital, who remain till they are fifteen years old, when they are apprenticed till of age at some kind of labor. None are received at the hospital except when a vacancy occurs, as the size of the buildings and funds will not permit more inmates. Usually about forty are received, one-sixth of those who apply. There is a fund provided to help those in later life who prove idiotic or blind, or unfitted to earn their support.