Its founder and governors were kindly, god-fearing men; and wealthy women, like Lily’s benefactress, Lady Elizabeth Mortimer, helped to support such benevolent institutions. The plot takes many unexpected turns (on the way to a rather more predictable ending) and the cast of characters are memorable and intriguing. I was pleased to receive a NetGally ARC to review, but I’ll be purchasing the book for another read when it comes out. In that respect it was a success: a story which is great at describing a hopelessly horrible life of a person with no other point.

Bridget is very much a Helen to Lily’s Jane Eyre and Sam is a seemingly important character who ends up being irrelevant; his reaction to Lily’s confession is out of character and disappointing. A turning point of the plot hinges on the idea that someone would receive a potentially life-changing letter, and go to bed with it clutched in their hands without having read it. Lily’s fostered years at Rookery Farm were happy, so it’s not hard to imagine her confusion and sorrow at being parted from kind Nelly. It is nearly three-quarters of the way through the book that we reach the grisly murder scene, though the readers must have guessed, long before that, whom she had killed.Not everyone who works in such places, however, is as good-hearted as their founders, and harsh punishment and cruelty, then as now, were not uncommon.

Subtitled ‘A Tale of Revenge’, t he narrative moves back and forth in time between Lily’s early years spent with a foster family, her time at the London Foundling Hospital and her subsequent employment at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium.

Mothers unable to care for their children would bring them to the hospital, leaving a token as proof of parenthood should they ever be in a position to reclaim their child. Taken to the London Foundling hospital, she experiences abuse and cruelty, leading her to commit an avenging crime years later.

As it transpires, wickedness and degeneracy is the province of others, particularly one especially monstrous character. The only thing I was absolutely certain about from the start was that Lily would be a really robust little spirit, although I wasn’t certain initially how her courage would show itself, or how her relationship with Sam was going to go. Chequered as it was, the history of the Foundling Hospital offers a wealth of extraordinary life stories.Rose Tremain has said that she is drawn to narrators on the margins of life, and Lily is just such a narrator.