It is testament to the versatility of the public toilet that something originally intended simply as a place for members of the public to relieve themselves has long since outgrown its original purpose and can be used today by anyone from a junkie wanting to shoot up his latest fix to somebody just looking for a convenient place to dispose of an unwanted baby, but the way that public toilets have been adapted to multiple uses is something that has often been attributed to Thomas Coram, who established a Foundling Hospital on what is now Coram’s Fields.
Realizing that many mothers were understandably reluctant to deposit their unwanted children in the hospital itself, Coram had some public conveniences built in nearby Guilford Place, knowing that its location was sufficiently far away from the hospital that mothers could abandon their children without being noticed but close enough that the infants could be collected before any harm could come to them, and the original design of the toilet included a hatch and chute into which the newborns could be safely deposited. The hospital left its original site in 1926 but the toilets were kept open for several more decades as a memorial to their visionary founder.
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