Note 72 — Chapter 6 The Kremlin Department—Moscow University—Our Set—The Chemist—The Malov Affair—The Cholera—Filaret—V. Passek—General Lissovsky—The Sungurov Affair

By the way, here is another of the fatherly measures of the ‘never to be forgotten’ Nicholas. Foundling hospitals and the regulations for their public inspection are among the best monuments of the reign of Catherine. The very idea of maintaining hospitals, almshouses, and orphan asylums on part of the percentage made by the loan banks from the investment of their capital is remarkably intelligent.

These institutions were accepted, the banks and the regulations enriched them, the foundling hospitals and almshouses flourished so far as the universal thievishness of officials permitted them. Of the children brought into the Foundling Hospital some remained in it, while others were put out to be brought up by peasant-women in the country; the latter remained peasants, while the former were brought up in the institution itself. The more gifted among them were picked out to continue the high-school course, while the less promising were taught trades or sent to the Institute of Technology. It was the same with the girls. Some were trained in handicrafts, others as children’s nurses, while the cleverest became schoolmistresses and governesses. But Nicholas dealt a terrible blow to this institution, too. It is said that the Empress on one occasion, meeting in the house of one of her friends the children’s governess, entered into conversation with her and, being very much pleased with her, inquired where she had been brought up, to which the young woman answered, the Foundling Hospital. Any one would suppose that the Empress would be grateful to the government for it. No—it gave her occasion to reflect on the impropriety of giving such an education to abandoned children.

A few months later Nicholas transferred the higher classes of the Foundling Hospital to the Officers’ Institute, i.e. commanded that the foundlings should no longer be put in these classes, but replaced them with the children of officers. He even thought of a more radical measure, he forbade the provincial institutions in their regulations to accept new-born infants. The best commentary on this intelligent measure is to be found in the records of the Minister of Justice under the heading ‘Infanticide.’