It's pretty unbelievable that moments became representative of people's entire lives at the London Foundling Hospital. A clear distinction was made by the author of this article which I thought was interesting: these tokens were meant to be identifiers, not gifts given to children. This fact prescribes a new meaning and purpose to these memories.
I believe that this article proves, in an extreme case, that tokens can serve a purpose aside from being memorabilia. This shows how seemingly insignificant objects can come to represent a person, place, or time as a whole. I also was intrigued by the fact that these tokens were often split between mother and child, to be rejoined at a later date. This proves how powerful a souvenir can be, even when it is not in it's most perfect form.
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