In immediate connexion with this establishment is a lying-in hospital, conducted with the same degree of liberality, all that apply being received gratuitously, while the arrangements are so excellent that women far above the lowest classes frequently avail themselves of it. Women may enter the hospital, if they wish it, a full month before the period at which they expect their confinement, and the utmost secrecy is observed, none but those connected with the house being permitted to enter it. Even the emperor, when, on one occasion, he wished to intrude into the place, was stopped, and was prevailed on to respect the asylum. Every other part of the establishment, however, is freely shown, except on Sundays, on which day no strangers are admitted, but the friends and relatives of the foundlings, for many parents continue to watch the progress of their infants, even after having committed them to the care of the great house. Not only poor pedestrians and private soldiers may be seen wending their way to the Vospitatelnoi Dom on a Sunday, but ladies richly clad, and gentlemen bedizened with orders, may be seen stepping from their coaches-and-four.
The first place we visited was the lodge where the children are received on their arrival. It is a small warm room, and the entrance leading to it stands open night and day, all the year round. An inspectress and several servants are at all times in attendance, and a lai'ge book hes open in which the young stranger is forthwith registered. From fifteen to twenty usually arrive in the course of the day, and the only question ever asked is whether the child has been baptized and named. If the answer is in the affirmative, the name is entered in the book ; if not, the child is merely numbered and registered accordingly, like a bale of goods. In the dusk of evening it is that the greatest number are usually brought in. In fine weather there are more arrivals than in bad, and in summer more than in winter. When we entered the room, it was about one o'clock ; and down to that hour, tlie day had abeady increased the great family by seven, whom we found entered in the book under the numbers of 2310 — 2317. Sometimes when the mother unwinds the cloth she will find her infant already dead, in which case it is not received, but the fact is notified to the pohce.
Wlien the poor mother, oft amid sobs and tears, lias imprinted her last kiss upon her infant, the latter is conveyed to the chapel, to be immediately received into the bosom of the orthodox Greek church, and hynms and pious ceremonies of interminable length salute the newly arrived. Many die in the hands of the priests, and some on then way from the receiving lodge to the chapel, in which case there remain but two documents to tell the melancholy tale. In one book will be porhajis the following entry : " No 4512.— A child three weeks old. A giri. Received 6th xVpril, 8 A. M." The corresponding cnlr^' then in another book will be : " No 4512. Die I
6 April, 9 A. M. Handed to the gravedigger to be buried." Those that come alive out of the chapel, are examined by the medical attendant, and if found healthy, ai'e delivered into the care of the inspcctress of wetnui'ses, who delivers for each a certificate something like the following : ' No 4513. Boy. Baptized Ivan Petrovitsh. Received 10 May, 10 A. M. Healthy. Placed among the infants at the breast."
The wards for the sucklings are spacious, warm, well-lighted, and handsomely fitted up. In the anterooms are baths, constantly kept full of warm water, in which the children are frequently washed. The nurses are all neatly dressed in the Russian national costume. Sometimes the mothers will apply to be appointed nurses to their own children ; a wish that is generally complied vnth, when no reason to the contrary presents itself. To prevent the nurses from changing the children confided to them, the cradles are placed alternately, first a boy and then a girl, and then the beds of the nurses two and two, in such a manner that between two infants of the same sex there must always intervene two nurses and another infant. In each ward there are from 40 to 50 beds, and on the occasion of my visit there were 650 sucklings, and an equal number of wetnurses in the house.
Fomor five deaths occur daily in the Vospitatelnoi Dom, or from 1500 to 1800 yearly. A section of the cemetery of Okhta is set apart for the foundQings. They are usually buried several at a time, those that have died dming two or three successive days being committed to the earth at one and the same time. In that cemetery, it is supposed 30,000 of these childi'en have already been deposited.