Hannah Aldworth

From around 1759 to 1768 Aldworth supervised the care of children by nurses in her local area as an inspector, a voluntary yet important role to the Foundling Hospital's operation and the expansion of care for foundling children in the eighteenth century.^[2] A married woman named Naomi Southby, thought to be Hannah's sister,^[3] seems also to have been an inspector, a connection which reflects the shared role of women inspectors amidst familial and social networks.^[4]

Kathleen Palmer asserts that the involvement of women like Aldworth "in the business of an organisation with national reach, on equal terms with their male counterparts, was unprecedented".^[2]

Aldworth's will indicates that she left £800 to endow parish almshouses.^[5][6] She died "greatly and deservedly respected".^[7]

Aldworth's portrait now hangs in the St Nicolas Church in Newbury.^[8]