However, though this suspended, it did not totally defeat this laudable design; some of these worthy persons left large benefactions for the use of such an hospital as soon as it should be erected; which coming to the ears of the humane and generous Mr. Thomas Coram, a commander of a ship in the merchants service, he left the sea to sollicit a charter for the establishment of this charity, and with unwearied assiduity spent all the remainder of his life in promoting this great design; from no other motive than his zeal for the public, and his compassion for the helpless innocents who were frequently dropped in the streets, or murdered to conceal the shame of their parents. Before he presented any petition to his Majesty, he was advised to procure a recommendation of his design from some persons of quality and distinction. This he sollicited with unwearied diligence, by which means he procured the following memorial to be signed by the Ladies whose names are under-written. “Whereas among the many excellent designs and institutions of charity which this nation, and especially the city of London, has hitherto encouraged and established, no expedient has yet been found out for preventing the frequent murders of poor miserable infants at their birth; or for suppressing the inhuman custom of exposing new-born infants to perish in the streets; or the putting out such unhappy foundlings to wicked and barbarous nurses, who, undertaking to bring them up for a small and trifling sum of money, do often suffer them to starve for want of due sustenance or care; or, if permitted to live, either turn them into the streets to beg or steal, or hire them out to loose persons by whom they are trained up in that infamous way of living, and sometimes are blinded, or maimed and distorted in their limbs, in order to move pity and compassion, and thereby become fitter instruments of gain to those vile merciless wretches.