ALARMED by the rising number of abandoned newborn babies, Italy is to revive the medieval practice of foundling hospitals, with special depositories where mothers can leave their unwanted children anonymously.

Technicians are designing a high-tech version of the traditional “revolving crib”, or “foundling wheel”. Half of the wheel will be outside the hospital wall and the other half inside. Staff inside the hospital will turn the wheel to collect the infant without seeing who has left it.

Grazia Passeri, the head of the Italian Civil Rights Association, said that the first modern “foundling wheel” would be installed at a leading hospital by Christmas. “We have to face the fact that a lot of women simply cannot cope with being mothers or become pregnant by accident or through rape,” she said.

Many women abandon their babies in rubbish bins. In the past week alone three dead babies have been found in waste bins.Officially only 15 to 20 children are killed each year, but Signora Passeri said that the true figure was at least ten times that number.

The latest cases of abandoned infants — one Chinese, one Ukrainian and one Nigerian — came to light after the mothers arrived at hospital with birth injuries but no baby. Signora Passeri said that, until six years ago, “nearly all” the women abandoning newborn babies were Italian. “Nowadays the majority are immigrants, often illegal immigrants afraid to turn to the authorities .”

Italy’s first high-tech foundling wheel is to be installed at the Hospital of Santo Spirito, on the Tiber embankment near the Vatican.Founded in the 13th century by Pope Innocent III on the site of a hospice for Anglo-Saxon pilgrims, Santo Spirito was one of the first to install a revolving crib, and as late as the 19th century was receiving 3,000 babies a year.

The original wheel has been preserved as a museum piece. Its successor will be heated and equipped with sensors to alert staff inside when a baby is placed in it. Signora Passeri said that local councils had agreed to stick notices on municipal rubbish bins “in several languages” advising women about the scheme.

LOST AND FOUND

• The first recorded foundling hospital was in Milan in the 8th century. The idea spread across Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries
  
• The first foundling hospital in Britain was established in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram on a site next to the present Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. It was demolished in 1926

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