This research attempts to evidence an interface between psychology and history, through the analysis of documents from a nineteenth-century child care institution for abandoned children in Salvador, Bahia - Asilo dos Expostos of the Holy House of Mercy - as a way of interpretation of the developmental context of the time. This institution was devised to provide shelter, protection, education, and a social upbringing to abandoned children. The analysis of two statutes of the institution in case (dated 1863 and 1914) - as products constructed by a specific society in order to ascertain socially accepted values - allows for a comprehension about the meaning of the abandoned child and the developmental context in which s/he was involved at the time in question. This analysis elucidates a gradual change of social concern for the abandoned child, from one of providing an immediate means of survival to one of assuring professional education and social reintegration, based on philanthropic and hygienic concepts.
childhood; document analysis; Asilo dos Expostos; social-historical analysis