Set into the pavement along Marchmont Street, in a section known as Marchmont Parade, adjacent to the Brunswick Centre, this stainless steel fish swims vainly against a concrete tide. As you stroll along the road you’ll see that other objects have also suffered the same fate, some steel, some bronze, some plastic (I think) .

As I watched and waited for an opportunity to take a picture, most people just hurried by, seemingly oblivious to these totally-out-of-place items embedded in the paving slabs beneath their feet.

So what’s this fish doing, caught forever in its concrete net?

Well, it’s part of a public art installation called TOKENS, created by John Aldus to commemorate the connection between the Foundling Hospital and this part of Bloomsbury: the land on which the Brunswick Centre and the Parade are built was originally part of the Foundling Estate. (See also my post about The Foundling Museum).

The items set into the paving slabs are all copies of real Foundling Tokens. As explained on the Foundling Museum web site:

These were pinned by mothers to their baby’s clothes and upon entry, the Hospital would attach them to the child’s record of admission. As foundling babies were given new names, these tokens helped ensure correct identification, should a parent ever return to claim their child. The children were not allowed to keep their tokens, which were frequently everyday objects, such as a coin or button. The Hospital gradually evolved a more sophisticated administrative system, whereby mothers were issued with receipts. So the practice of leaving tokens died out at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Here are the other items that can be found on the ground in Marchmont Street: