ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

     The first Lord Craven made the name illustrious through his military prowess and indomitable loyalty to the Stuart dynasty. Yet it could be argued that his successor, the third Lord (1700-1739) made it no less illustrious through his contribution to one of the great philanthropic foundations of the age, the London Foundling Hospital.       The Foundling Hospital was the brainchild of Thomas Coram, a retired naval officer, who decided to do something about the cruel fate of babies abandoned by mothers who could not care for them. Coram was horrified to see such children left to die on the streets, but the problem was often regarded as a shameful matter that decent people did not want to be associated with.  William 3rd Baron Craven, engraving after a  portrait by John Faber c.1730.      Coram needed the patronage of the rich and powerful, so one of those he approached was the young William, third Lord Craven, who had inherited ...

      We all know that Victorian England was a horrible place, with grim conditions for factory workers and harsh treatment of the poor. But, James Hobson argues, we have a rosy picture of Georgian England because authors such as Jane Austen - and above all the film versions of her novels - portray it as period of elegance and wealth, when people had nice manners, nice morals (on the whole) and delectable costumes. Of course Austen's books never attempted to portray the whole of contemporary society, only those parts of it she felt competent to describe, and she modestly compared her fiction to a miniature painting on a tiny piece of ivory. Without having to quarrel with Jane Austen - who was as acutely aware of the economic motives of human interaction as any Marxist - there is still every good reason to read Hobson's latest book, Dark Days of Georgian Britain: Rethinking the Regency.       Despite laws that provided very minimally for those at the bottom ...