Educational house

Hall of the Educational House in Florence (1st half of the 15th century, architect F. Brunelleschi ).

An educational home is a charitable institution for the reception and charity of foundlings and homeless babies, the forerunner of modern orphanages .

The idea of ​​educational homes arose with the victory of Christianity , which came out in defense of abandoned children. Even Konstantin the Great tried to organize the maintenance of children whose parents due to their poverty could not raise them at their own expense at the expense of the state treasury. For the first time, foster homes, under the name brefotrophy, appeared in the IV century, during the time of the work of Basil the Great ; the head of such institutions in Byzantium was called the orphanotroph . In 787, the Archbishop Dateite set up a shelter for foundlings in Milan , where they were nurtured and kept until they were eight years old. Only 200 years later, a second educational house was opened in Europe, in Bergamo , also at one of the churches. In 1041, in Laibach, a citizen of this city, Peter Berlach, opened at his own expense an orphanage with the right to take foundlings there. In 1198, Pope Innocent III set up a special unit at the Holy Spirit Hospital for 600 people to receive foundlings. Since the 16th century, the state began to take care of poor children, orphans and foundlings: in Italy, Spain, and France, monasteries and churches, and then municipalities, entrusted this care with special decrees.

In Russia, the first institution for orphans and illegitimate children was an orphanage shelter, opened by Novgorod Metropolitan Job in the Kholmovo-Uspensky Monastery, in 1706 ^[1] . In 1715, a decree of Peter the Great appeared on devices attached to churches of “syringing state hospitals”, which were partially funded by the state. However, under the successors of Peter, they all closed. Finally, in 1763, the manifesto of Catherine II provided for the construction of a "general alms" of an educational home in Moscow. The general plan of the “Imperial Moscow Educational Home” provided for the adoption of children from each with one question, whether and what was given a name. Children could be brought to parish priests, in almshouses and monasteries, from where they were to be sent to an educational home, where two rubles were paid for delivery labor for each baby brought ^[2] . The initiator of the project, I. I. Betskoy , proposed creating the third estate through the education of such children — the middle class between the privileged and the taxable; and it was determined that "all children and their offspring are free forever." An educational house was built to complete this task. An example of a generous donation, Catherine II forced her to participate in its construction and maintenance of many of her dignitaries and wealthy nobles; the list of donors also included many merchants, philistines and peasants; the largest contributor was Procopius Demidov .

In many cities, on a private initiative, branches of the Moscow educational house were opened, including in St. Petersburg. In 1771, the St. Petersburg Educational House was opened at its base.

However, the idea of ​​raising children under the project of Betsky failed. After the death of Empress Maria Fyodorovna , in 1828 it was forbidden to further establish educational homes in the Russian Empire. In those places where provincial educational homes already existed, free admission of infants was stopped, and allowed only in exceptional cases. This was due to huge mortality. Even in Moscow and St. Petersburg educational homes, up to 20 years, out of 100 children, only 10–13 pets survived. Such results primarily came from the mismatch of the number of children and the number of nurse. To reduce the mortality of infants, they began to be distributed in villages, when they reached 5, and then 7 years of age, they returned to the orphanage for further education. At the end of the 19th century, it turned out that about half of the pets were legitimate, whom their parents intentionally sent to foster homes. A variety of measures have been taken to reduce childbearing; from the system of secret and unimpeded reception of children we switched to the explicit reception system - with the demand for documents; To ensure the future of the baby a contribution of at least 10 rubles must be made. Since 1882, maternal feeding of children in the very educational home or at the mother’s home began to be encouraged — with the issuance of a cash allowance to her.

However, the need forced the province to open, mainly through private charity funds, shelters for homeless children in the form of maternity wards in midwives, homes for illegitimate babies, etc.