The study is concerned with the changes in social and health care in the Kingdom of Hungary in the first half of the 19th century. In this period social care became more systematic and was gradually separated from health care. Apart from town administrations and religious institutions, charitable societies began to significantly contribute to charitable activities. Under the influence of the central government, local authorities began to devote increased attention to such categories of dependent people as the mentally ill, single mothers and illegitimate children, who had previously been scorned or punished by society. Educational institutions for deaf-mute and blind children were a new element on the regional level.
The aim of the study is to analyse and interpret how the ideas of the Vienna court about the form and aims of institutional care for orphaned children developed in the course of the 18th century under the influence of the theoretical conceptions of the time, and to what degree these ideas were successfully put into practice. At first Maria Theresia preferred the training of orphaned children for manual work, but from the 1770s she began to emphasize their education and military training. Joseph II did not see orphanages as educational, but only as care institutions, and the majority of their inmates were placed with foster parents in return for small payments.
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