Last week's article involved the creation of an A-Z of family history resources and it got me thinking about what comes after Z.

In the General Register Office (GRO) birth indexes once you get to the end of each quarter you can often find a small separate list of individuals, all alone and unable to be processed in the same manner as the other births because their names are unknown.

These are foundlings. The people who come after Z.

Foundlings listed in December 1881

Input a name like William Young into Ancestry or another website where you can view the original image of the birth index. Keep scrolling through until you get to the last page, where the surnames beginning with Z are indexed.

At the very end you should find a small group of forlorn babies whose parents felt the best option would be for their child to have a better life without them.

They were known as foundlings because they were found most often on the doorsteps of a parish church or somewhere else where they were certain to be found quickly. They were usually named after the place where they were baptised, the street where they were found or sometimes after the person who found them.

Naming foundlings

So children baptised in the parish church of St John were named John, but as shown below others such as Elizabeth Saturday take the name of the day of the week, and I guess that Julia Fawkes was found on 5 November 1881.

Over the past few years I've been asked on several occasions to help with research into foundlings, twice on behalf of foundlings who are desperate to find some biological connection or simply some answers to the daily question of "who am I and where do I come from?"

Each time I find myself hoping that this will be the time where I can actually use my research skills to help. But so far I haven't been able to help at all. Maybe by publishing their stories in this blog I can help in a small way.

Foundling Hospital

Ioma Jones contacted me from her home in Ireland to ask for help tracing further information relating to her great grandmother. Family legend was that she was left on a doorstep in Cwmbach in Glamorgan but unfortunately Ioma has such few details it's hard to even pin down the correct birth entry for her grandmother Eleanor Evans, later the wife of Harry Russell. Ioma knows they were buried in Brithdir so perhaps someone in that area might know more. Do get in touch.

For once it might well have been easier to find Ioma's great-grandmother if she had been born in London as she may well have been one of the 27,000 children who passed through the doors of the Foundling Hospital between 1739 and 1954. Yes, that's not a typo - it does say 1954!

The archives relating to the Foundling Hospital can be searched in the London Metropolitan Archives, although I fear that that is where the family history trail will end for those who have a foundling ancestor.

But what if you were a modern day foundling?

Meet the modern-day foundlings

In 1960 David was found wrapped in a rainbow coloured blanket on the doorstep of a second floor flat in Golders Green. To read more about David's story visit his blog therainbowbaby.blogspot.co.uk.

David and his partner Julie have searched long and hard into every possible lead including testing his DNA. The results pointed to Scottish borders ancestry on the male side, but with no close matches (his DNA analysis is 90% Western European, 10% SE Asian). With time it is possible that someone who knows something about his story will decide to come forward or the DNA database throws up a match.

I was asked to get involved because there was a potential Welsh link, albeit a very tenuous one. A Welsh man, Richard Hamer who was born in Rhayder in 1899, lived in a neighbouring flat to where David was abandoned. The aim was (or is) to trace the descendants of Richard Hamer and ask them to provide a DNA sample. Even if this only results in that family being eliminated from the list of possibles it would mean a great deal to David.

Searching for biological heritage

In April 2011, BBC Three broadcast a documentary about a baby boy found in 1986 at Gatwick airport. Steve Hydes, now 25, was found as a 10-day-old baby on the floor of a ladies toilet in Gatwick airport. I was asked to try and help find his mother. I like a challenge but this task needed a magic wand!

Steve's DNA was compared to a global genetic databank of millions of individuals and from this, a number of individuals who are Steve's seventh or sixth or even, in one case, fifth cousin were identified. For most of us this would be too distant to be of any real interest but if you have no knowledge of your biological heritage then I imagine that a fifth cousin might feel like finding a twin.

In 2000 Germany introduced 'baby-drops' where mothers could anonymously leave babies they were unable to look after themselves in the knowledge that they would be properly cared for. Now a network of some 80 'hatches' exist across Germany and similar schemes exist in Japan, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Clearly having a foundling in your family is not only a thing of the past and is certainly much more that the famous fictional foundling, Oliver Twist.

His name was Josef Herman and he came from Poland. But to the people of Ystradgynlais in the Swansea Valley he was known simply as Joe Bach and accepted as one of them.

Josef Herman (Photo © Bernard Mitchell)

Herman was an artist and regularly used the miners of the village as his subjects. The people of Ystradgynlais understood that he was different from them, that he was a renowned painter who made his living from his brush. It was as if they understood that, through his skill and talent, he was giving them a degree of immortality that was priceless.

Josef Herman was born in Warsaw in January 1911. He came from a Jewish family, the eldest of three children, and like so many others endured the anti-Semitism that was rife in Poland in the years after World War One. The family was poor and Herman had to leave school at the age of 12. He became, at first, an apprentice printer but even at this early age he was displaying a remarkable talent in drawing and painting.

Between 1930 and 1932 he studied at the Warsaw School of Art and achieved his first exhibition in Warsaw in 1932. He worked for a time as a graphic artist, his bold and naive style lending itself to the medium. Even in these early years his reputation was beginning to grow and develop.

In 1938, Herman felt obliged to leave Poland, due to the rabid anti-Semitism he was encountering, and moved to Brussels where he continued to paint and draw. His family remained behind and in due course, once the Germans invaded, were swallowed up by the horrors of the Holocaust. Herman lost his entire family in the genocide of the 1940s.

When World War Two broke out in 1939, Herman saw the likely turn of events and quickly moved, first, to France and then to Britain. Once established in Britain he lived in Glasgow and London for a while, meeting and collaborating with other European artists in exile such as Michael Peto. Then, in 1944, he came to Ystradgynlais.

As Herman himself later said, he went to Ystradgynlais for a two week holiday and ended up staying there for 11 years. His work during this time had a clear political edge, Herman being fascinated by the coal miners and the harsh social conditions he encountered.

In his distinctive, almost one-dimensional style, with detail kept to a minimum and the emphasis focused clearly on shape rather than precision, his paintings gave the men of the valley a dignity that has endured.

All his life Herman was fascinated by workers, by grape pickers and fishermen but by miners in particular. He became friendly with the artist Will Roberts who lived nearby, in Neath, and in 1951 his reputation had grown sufficiently for him to be commissioned to paint a mural for the Festival of Britain. His subject, naturally enough, was coal miners.

Herman always regarded this painting highly. It remains a hugely powerful piece of art and has now found a home in Wales, at the Glyn Vivian Gallery in Swansea.

Unfortunately, Herman's connections with Wales were ended soon after he completed the Festival of Britain mural. His health had become badly affected by the damp conditions in the Swansea valleys and in 1955 he left Ystradgynlais. He lived something of a peripatetic life in places like London and Spain before settling in Suffolk.

In 1961 Herman married his long-time partner Nini Ettinger but tragedy struck the family when their young daughter died. Fame and celebrity continued to follow him with Herman winning the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the 1962 National Eisteddfod. Other honours also came. He was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1990 and nine years previously he had been awarded an OBE for his services to art.

Herman died on 19 February 2000, a venerable and much-respected figure in the world of art. His life had been full and active but, in the minds of many, he produced his best work during the 11 years he lived in Ystradgynlais.

Josef Herman was an artist who produced powerful and dramatic canvasses. His subjects, often labourers and manual workers, are presented honestly with a degree of compassion that appeals to everyone, children and adults alike. As someone once said, there are no frills in Herman's work but his paintings remain hugely powerful.

You can view Herman's works between 1938 and 1944 at the RWA in Bristol. The exhibition is on until 8 July 2012.

Pioneering translator, industrialist, linguist, collector, and mother of nine, Saturday 19 May marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Lady Charlotte Guest.

Born on 19 May 1812, she was christened Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie and grew up in Lincolnshire. Her father Albemarle Bertie, the ninth Earl of Lindsey, died when Charlotte was just six years old, and three years later her mother married a man whom Charlotte disliked.

Although Charlotte had two brothers she had quite a lonely childhood. She was passionate about literature and language, and taught herself Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. From a very early age Charlotte was also fascinated by medieval history and legends.

A lifelong diarist

When Charlotte was 10 years old she began to keep a diary, a practice which she doggedly continued until she was 79, even though she was nearly blind by that time.

Her journals were published after her death in two large, illustrated volumes by her third son, Montague Guest.

Marriage and Merthyr Tydfil

Charlotte left Lincolnshire for London when she was 21. Here she met widower and wealthy ironmaster John Josiah Guest (later Sir John Guest).

The pair were married within three months of their first meeting and settled in Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil. John Guest was 48 years old, and they seemed to belong to two very different worlds.

She was the daughter of an earl and he was a "man with a trade" - even though his enterprise would become one of the largest ironworks in the world.

The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales captures the global importance of John Guest stating that: "His 5,000-strong workforce probably meant that he had more employees than any other individual on earth."

Powerless women

Charlotte lived in a time when women were expected solely to devote their life to the role of wife and mother. Women had no vote, and no right to own their possessions. Generally powerless, they were not expected to hold any aspirations outside of the home.

Charlotte, however, immersed herself in the business of the iron works, as well as practically pursuing methods to improve the education and living standards of the workers and their families.

Although London society remained dismayed that Charlotte would leave the cultured life of the capital for industrialised south Wales, Charlotte embraced living in Merthyr. She had a happy life with John Guest and the couple had nine children - not unusual for the time.

In 1838 Charlotte became a baroness, and in 1846 the Guests bought the Canford estate in Dorset, where they built Canford Manor, a grand, gothic mansion. It was designed by the famous architect Sir Charles Barry, who is probably best known for his role in the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster.

Cymreigyddion y Fenni

Charlotte lived in a time of Romantic revival, when there was a renewed interest in medieval life and Celtic history, and the Guests were founder members of the Society of Welsh Scholars of Abergavenny (Cymreigyddion y Fenni).

She naturally combined her life-long interest in medieval literature with her passion for Wales.

Charlotte had learned Welsh, and combined her love of language with Celtic legends by translating the Mabinogion tales.

The first volume was published in 1838, and by 1845 the tales had appeared in seven parts. She also wrote a Boys' Mabinogion which comprised the earliest Welsh tales of King Arthur, and translated (and often censored) a number of medieval songs and poems.

Charlotte's translations of the Mabinogion tales remained the standard for nearly a century. They were influential enough for Tennyson to base his Geraint and Enid, in The Idylls of the King - the most popular poetic work of the era - on her writings.

Sir John Guest died in 1852, and Charlotte took over the running of the business. She had a clear understanding of the operation of the iron works but it was deeply unconventional for a Victorian woman to hold such power. Ultimately it led to clashes with workers and other foundry owners.

Collector and campaigner

In 1855 Charlotte fell in love with and married her son Ivor's tutor, Cambridge academic and MP Charles Schreiber. She stopped running the iron works, and instead travelled widely and focused her efforts on amassing a world-class ceramics collection.

When she died the collection was bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum. She also donated fans, board games and playing cards that she had collected to the British Museum.

Charles Schreiber died in 1884, when Charlotte was 72 years old. She dedicated her remaining time to cataloguing her collections and putting them on public view.

In 1891 the London Fan Makers awarded Charlotte the freedom of their company. She was, along with Baroness Coutts, one of only two freewomen of Victorian England.

Charlotte remained active and campaigned for diverse causes including Turkish refugees and shelters for London hansom cab drivers. She died on 15 January 1895 aged 83.

During the regeneration of Dowlais in the 1980s, a public house was named the Lady Charlotte in her honour. The Guest Scholarship fund started by Lady Charlotte Guest for the education of the steelworkers, and boosted by money saved by workers, at the Guest Keen Ironwork only closed in spring 2012.

Find out more about the Mabinogion.