ABANDONED CHILDREN IN ŠIBENIK FOUNDLING HOUSE AT THE END OF THE 19th CENTURY

Abstract

The Šibenik Foundling House was an institution that cared for abandoned children before their adoption. The paper analysed the accommodation capacities of the foundling house from 1886 to 1900, using registers of baptisms and deaths from the provincial hospital in Šibenik as the basis for the analysis. An analysis of the received children was conducted based on how they arrived at the site and the level of knowledge about their origin or identity. From 1886 to 1900, the Šibenik Foundling House received three hundred and seventy-eight abandoned children with a yearly average of 25.2 children. Two hundred and forty-three children were brought to the hospital by their mothers as newborns, and their identities were recorded in the baptism registers, constituting 60.15% of the total number of residents in the Foundling House. One hundred and six received infants were foundlings—children without known identity—comprising 26.24% of the total number of baptisms in the hospital. Twenty-nine children were born in the hospital and left by unmarried mothers in the care of the Foundling House, making up 7.18% of all entries in the register of baptisms. The monthly distribution of received children shows a balanced distribution. The mortality rate of these children in the Foundling House was 32.80%. Children who did not have names and surnames were given to them by the priest who baptised them.