Material History Bulletin Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle 21

NATIONAL MUSEtIM OF MAN
/J.-
MLiSEE NATIONAL DE L'Ht
Material History Bulletin
Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle 21
Ontario Museum Association
Heritage Conference '8 >
"Children and Changing Perspectives of
Childhood in the Nineteenth Century"
Selected Papers/Cornmunicatic~ns choisies
()1"I'AWA . SPRING/PRINTf:MPS 1985

National Museums
T of Canada
MusAes nationaux
du Canada
Board of Trustees/
Conseil d'administration
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L'honorable Gerard Pelletier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . President
M . L6o A . Dorais . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vice-President
Mr . Richard M.H . Alway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
Mr . George K . Campbell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
M . Laurent Cyr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membre
Mrs . G . Joan Goldfarb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
Mme Claudette Hould . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membre
M . Yvon Pageau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membre
Mr . C . Alexander Pincombe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
Mrs . Mira Spivak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
Mrs . Rosita L . Tovell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
M . Rodrigue A . Tremblay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membre
Dr . Larkin Kerwin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member (ex officio)
Mr . Peter Roberts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member (ex officio)
Secretary General/
Secretaire general
Dr . Leo A . Dorais
Director National Museum of Man/
Directeur du Mus6e national de 1'Homme
Dr . George F . MacDonald
Chief History Division/
Chef de la Division de 1'Histoire
Dr . F .J . 7'horpe
EDITORIAL BOARD/COMITE DE REDACTION
Editor/Redactrice
Advisory Board/
Comite consultatif
Barbara Riley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Museum of Man
Associate Editor/
Redacteur adjoint
Robert D . Watt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vancouver Museum
Gerald L . Pocius . . . . . Memorial University of Newfoundland
T.D . MacLean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . College of Cape Breton
Kathleen A . Moggridge-Kuusisto . . . . . . Halifax, Nova Scotia
Sheila Stevenson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nova Scotia Museum
Gary Hughes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Brunswick Muscum
Jean-Pierre Hardy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Musee national de I'Homme
Lyle Dick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prairie Region, Parks Canada
Warren Clubb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Western Development Museum
Frances Roback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Glenhuw Muscum
James Wardrop . . . . . . . British Columbia Provincial Muscum
Cover Illustration/Illustration de la couverture
Portrait of Velyien Ewart Henderson, Toronto, early 1880s .
(Ontario Archives, S .14991 .)
Published by/Publie par
History Division, National Museum of Man
Division de I'Histoire, Musee national de I'Homme
ISSN 0703-489X
National Museums Of Canada/
Mus6es nationaux du Canada 1985
Canad'a

Material History Bulletin
Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle 21
SPRING-PRINTEMPS, 1985
TABLE OF CONTENTS - TABLE DES MATIERES
Foreword - Avant-propos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Introduction - Introduction
Greg Baeker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Articles - Articles
The Material Culture of Childhood : Problems and Potential in Historical Explanation
Thomas J . Schlereth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Feeding the Nineteenth-Century Baby :
Implications for Museum Collections
Felicity Nowell-Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
"Beauty Unadorned" : Dressing Children in Late Nineteenth-Century Ontario
Christina Bates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Training, Restraining, and Sustaining :
Nineteenth Century
Infant and Child Care in the Late
Hilary Russell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5
Economic Choices and Popular Toys in the Nineteenth Century
Janet Holmes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Nineteenth-Century Canadian Children's Games
Mary Tivy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7
Conference Programme - Programme de la conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , 65
Contributors - Collaborateurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Notices - Avis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Avant-propos/Foreword
On trouvera dans ce numero du Bulletin d'histoire de la
culture materielle un choix de communications presentees a
1'Heritage Conference '85, «Children and Changing
Perspectives on Childhood in the Nineteenth Century»,
organisee par 1'Association des musees de 1'Ontario . Cette
conference a eu lieu a Toronto, du 30 janvier au 2 fevrier
1985 . Les communications ont ete choisies en fonction des
temoignagnes materiels qu'ils presentaient concernant les
sujets examines et conformement aux objectifs du
Bulletin, qui vise a publier des recherches interpretant les
rapports des Canadiens avec leur environnement materiel
et a encourager 1'utilisation de temoignages materiels
pour l'analyse du passe . Les directeurs de la publication
desirent remercier 1'Association des musees de 1'Ontario,
et notamment son directeur administratif Greg Baeker, de
1'aide qu'ils leur ont apportee pour organiser et produire ce
numero .
This issue of the Materiai History Bulletin contains a
selection of papers delivered at Heritage Conference '85,
"Children and Changing Perspectives on Childhood in the
Nineteenth Century," organized by the Ontario Museum
Association and held in Toronto January 30 - February 2,
1985 . The papers were selected on the basis of their incorporation
of material evidence for the subjects examined, in
keeping with the Bulletin's a:)jectives to publish research
interpreting Canadians' relationships to their material
environment and to encourag,° the use of material evidence
in analyzing the past . The editors wish to thank the
Ontario Museum Association and particularly Executive
Director Greg Baeker for as .;istance in the organization
and production of this issue .

Introduction/Introduction
Greg Baeker
In January 1985 the Ontario Museum Association,
with support from the Museum Assistance Programmes of
the National Museums of Canada, presented the latest in a
series of biennial heritage conferences entitled "Children
and Changing Perspectives of Childhood in the
Nineteenth Century ." The event was modelled very
closely on the 1983 conference "Industrious in Their
Habits : Rediscovering the World of Work" (select papers
from which appeared in Material History Bulletin 19 and
20) . One of the principal objectives of both conferences
was to bring together representatives from the museum
and academic communities in a forum which we hoped
would result in an instructive exploration of a particular
historical theme while simultaneously encouraging closer
cooperation and better understanding between these two
constituencies . The 1983 event was deemed highly successful
in this regard, leading one delegate to comment
that "the interaction of university and public historians,
and the interplay of visual, oral and artifactual evidence
with new documentary sources have the potential to effect
a revolution in how we interpret the past ." Although
response to the 1985 conference was also highly favourable,
the event succeeded in crystalizing in my own mind
a number of difficulties we must still overcome in the
realization of this noble objective .
Many of the reasons for this conclusion were articulated
with stunning clarity by Gregg Finley in his article
"Material History and Musems : A Curatorial Perspective
in Doctoral Research" (Material History Bulletin 20) .
Finley argues that the use of collections for purposes of research
in both academic and museum circles remains
stymied by an unwillingness to address fundamental
intellectual and methodological questions . "How does
one actually interpret the meaning of an artifact? What
theoretical approaches, methodological procedures, and
creative insights can be brought to bear on the artifact so
that it will reveal its message? . . . In the quest for historical
understanding, what is the relationship between the
archival document - the traditional primary source
material - and the artifactual document?"
The conference, I fear, made only modest progress in
the addressing of these fundamental issues . This failing
resulted from a number of factors beginning with the
structuring of the conference . The principle upon which
both the 1983 and 1985 conferences were organized was
that representatives from the academic community were
assigned to plenary sessions and asked to provide an overview
of important issues and themes . Museum representatives
were then asked to follow up in concurrent sessions
with papers on more narrowly defined topics relating to
En janvier 1985,1'Association des musees de 1'Ontario,
avec le concours des Programmes d'appui aux musees des
Musees nationaux du Canada, a presente la conference
intitulee «Children and Changing Perspectives of Childhood
in the Nineteenth Century», derniere en date d'une
serie de conferences biennales sur le patrimoine . L'organisation
de cette conference etait modelee sur celle de 1983,
intitulee «Industrious in Their Habits : Rediscovering the
World of Work» (dont des textes choisis furent reproduits
dans les no' 19 et 20 du Bulletin d'hi.rtoire de la culture
materielle) . Ces deux conferences visaient, entre autres
grands objectifs, a reunir des representants des
communautes museale et universitaire pour des
discussions qui, esperait-on, conduiraient a un examen
instructif d'un theme historique donne, tout en favorisant
1'instauration d'une cooperation plus etroite et d'une
meilleure comprehension entre les deux secteurs . En
1983, 1'objectif avait ete atteint a telle enseigne que Fun
des participants declarait que: «1'interaction entre les historiens
du milieu universitaire et du secteur public, de
rneme que celle entre les temoignages visuels, oraux et
materiels, et de nouvelles sources de documentation, nous
permettent d'envisager une revolution dans la maniere
d'interpreter le passe» . Meme si la conference de 1985 a
connu elle aussi un franc succes, elle m'a permis de preciser
mes idees a propos d'un certain nombre de difficultes
qui restent a aplanir avant que nous realisions ce noble
objectif.
Bon nombre des motifs m'ayant conduit a une telle conclusion
sont exposes avec une clarte frappante dans 1'article
de Gregg Finley intitule «Material History and Museums :
A Curatorial Perspective in Doctoral Research» (Bulletin
d'histoire de la culture materielle n° 20) . Finley soutient que
1'utilisation des collections aux fins de recherche, tant
dans les universites que dans les musees, se heurte au refus
de trouver les reponses a des questions intellectuelles et
methodologiques fondamentales . «Comment interpretet-on
vraiment un objet fa~onne? Quelles approches
theoriques, quelles methodes et quels instincts creatifs
peut-on appliquer a 1'etude d'un objet fa~onne pour qu'il
revele son message? ( . . .) En cherchant a comprendre
1'histoire, quel rapport s'etablit-II entre les documents
d'archives - traditionnellement les sources primaires de
reference - et les documents materiels? »
Cette conference n'aura permis, je le crains bien, que
d'effleurer ces questions fondamentales . La conjugaison
d'un certain nombre de facteurs, dont, des le depart, la
structure meme de la conference, ont conduit a une telle
absence . De fait, en 1983 comme en 1985, on a demande
aux representants du milieu universitaire de donner leurs
III

the preceding overview . Although organizationally
efficient this strategy served to actually discourage the
interchange between public and university historians . It
also prevented the critical exploration of the relationship
between archival and artifactual evidence noted above .
Finally, it inadvertently conveyed the impression that
museum representatives had intrinsically less important
information and insights to convey due to their relegation
to concurrent sessions .
More germane to Finley's concerns, however, was the
actual content of the papers . With few exceptions papers
delivered by academics dealt only cursorily with collections
and artifactual evidence . This is not to say that
important information was not brought to bear on the
subject at hand . However, if and when collections were
utilized, it was inevitably as a means of demonstrating
conclusions arrived at on the basis of traditional - largely
archival - evidence . In his article Finley distinguishes
between material history research strategies based on
"deductive" reasoning (reading things into objects) and
"inductive" reasoning (reading things out of objects) .
Inevitably remarks by speakers from the academic realm
fell into the former camp . Although museum representatives
attempted to examine collections more directly as a
research resource, no consistency of approach or
methodology was evident . One left many sessions stimulated
by discussions but uncertain as to the basis upon
which many conclusions had been drawn, the representativeness
of specific collections, and a variety of other
unknowns .
All this must appear strikingly pessimistic and critical .
It should not . The conference was tremendously worthwhile
in clarifying many existing difficulties and moving
us forward towards a better understanding of the
challenges which have yet to be overcome in the area of
material history research . Unquestionably the most hopeful
component of the event was the keynote address by
Thomas Schlereth . In the course of his presentation
(reprinted in this issue) Professor Schlereth wove an
extraordinarily rich and complex thesis, integrating
documentary and artifactual evidence in the exploration of
his theme . His address should serve as a model for
subsequent papers of this kind .
The papers that follow go a long way towards enhancing
our understanding of the subject matter at hand - that
of children and changing perspectives of childhood in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . Equally
important, however, is the degree to which they reflect
our need to avoid complacency and to press for higher
standards of intellectual and professional accountability in
the study and understanding of our collections .
I want to thank all those who contributed to the conference,
as speakers and delegates, and to acknowledge the
assistance of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
allocutions sur des sujets et des themes majeurs lors de
seances plenieres . Les programmes prevoyaient ensuite
que les representants des musees presentent leurs
communications, sur des sujers plus precis lies aux expos6s
des universitaires, dans le cadre de seances restreintes
simultanees . Si, du point de vue de l'organisation, cette
maniere de proceder a fait ses preuves, elle a, par contre,
eu pour effet de decourager les echanges entre les historiens
du secteur public et ceux du milieu universitaire .
Elle a aussi rendu impossible 1'examen critique du rapport
deja souligne entre les documents d'archives et les documents
materiels . En outre, comme les representants des
musees devaient presenter leurs exposes dans des seances
simultanees, on pouvait croire, cc qui n'etait evidemment
pas voulu, qu'ils avaient des donnees et des idees essentiellement
moins importantes a communiquer .
Mais le contenu meme des exposes touche de plus pr~s
aux preoccupations de Finley . En effet, a quelques
exceptions pres, les universitaires ne mentionnaient que
superficiellement les collections et les documents
materiels . II ne faudrait pas comprendre ici que rien
d'important n'est ressorti sur les themes abordes . Cependant,
lorsqu'on se servai~: des collections, c'etait
immanquablement pour oorroborer des conclusions
fondees sur des elements de preuve traditionnels - pour
1'essentiel arch ivistiques . Dans son article, Finley 6tablit
Line distinction entre les methodes de recherche sur la culture
materielle fondees sur un raisonnement « deductif»
(qui prennent 1'objet comme point d'arrivee) et les autres,
fondees sur un raisonnement «inductif» (qui prennent
1'objet comme point de depaat) . A tout coup, les universitaires
procedaient par decluction . Par contre, si les
representants des musees tentaient d'aborder les collections
plus directement comme ressources pour la
recherche, on ne pouvait constater chez eux aucune uniformite
d'approche ou de methode. Ainsi, les discussions
quoique stimulantes, pouvaicnt laisser Line impression de
vague quant aux fondements de certaines conclusions, a la
representativite de collections donnees et a bien d'autres
inconnues .
De tels propos semblent peut-etre tres pessimistes et
negatifs, mais ils ne le sor.t pas . La conference a ete
extremement utile en jetant de la lumi6re sur bon nombre
de difficultes et en nous portant plus avant sur la voie de la
comprehension des defis qu'il nous faudra encore relever
dans la recherche en histoire de la culture mat6rielle .
Incontestablement, 1'elemen~: le plus encourageant de la
conference fut le discours d'orientation du professeur
Thomas Schlereth . Dans son expose (repris dans cc
numero), le professeur Schlereth nous presente Line th6se
extraordinairement riche et complexe ou temoignages
documentaires et temoignages materiels viennent servir
l'examen du theme . Cet expcs6 devrait servir de mo&le a
de prochains documents du genre .
iv

in its organization . Very particular thanks are due to the
programme committee and conference coordinators whose
imagination and hard work brought together a rich
variety of perspectives on children in the past .
Conference Chairperson:
Prof. Kenneth McLaughlin,
University of Waterloo
Programme Committee :
Bruce Curtis, Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education
Ruth Freeman, Royal Ontario Museum
Shirley Hartt, Montgomery's Inn
Craig Heron, York University
Susan Houston, Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education
Robert Hume, Parks Canada
Lynne Kurylo, Enoch Turner Schoolhouse
Elizabeth Quance, Heritage consultant
Mary Tivy, Museum and Archive of Games
Greg Baeker (ex-officio), Ontario Museum
Association
Conference Coordinators :
Greg Baeker
Helen Knibb
Jude Scott
Les communications qui suivent nous aideront a nous
former une meilleure idee du sujet, a savoir, 1'enfance et
les nouvelles perceptions de 1'enfance a la fin du XIXe et au
debut du XXe siecle . Cependant, ces textes nous
rappellent aussi qu'il faut eviter toute complaisance et
insister pour une plus grande rigueur intellectuelle et
professionnelle dans 1'etude et la comprehension de nos
collections .
Je tiens en terminant a remercier tous ceux et celles qui
ont pris part a la conference, a titre de conferenciers et de
delegues, et aussi 1'Institut d'etudes pedagogiques de
1'Ontario qui nous a ete d'une aide precieuse . Je desire
aussi remercier tout specialement le comite du
programme et les coordonnateurs de la conference dont
1'imagination et le travail nous ont permis de nous
familiariser avec une tres riche variete d'anciennes perceptions
de 1'enfance .
President de la conference :
Professeur Kenneth McLaughlin,
Universite de Waterloo
Comite du programme :
Bruce Curtis, Institut d'etudes pedagogiques
de 1'Ontario
Ruth Freeman, Musee royal de 1'Ontario
Shirley Hartt, Montgomery's Inn
Craig Heron, Universite York
Susan Houston, Institut d'etudes pedagogiques
de 1'Ontario
Robert Hume, Parcs Canada
Lynne Kurylo, Enoch Turner Schoolhouse
Elizabeth Quance, conseillere en patrimoine
Mary Tivy, Museum and Archives of Games
Greg Baeker (delegue d'office), Association des
musees de 1'Ontario
Coordonnateurs de la conference :
Greg Baeker
Helen Knibb
Jude Scott

The Material Culture of Childhood :
Problems and Potential in Historical Explanation
Thomas J .
Schlereth
ResumelAbstract
La decouverte de la condition de l'enfance au cours des deux derniers siecles, faite d'abord par les educateurs, les membres du clerge, les
specialistes des techniques marchandes et les sociologues pendant tout le XIXe siecle, puis par les psychologues, les antiquaires, les ecrivains et
les historiens sociaux, au cours du XXe siecle, a suscite un interet sans cesse croissant envers le role de l'enfant et le concept de 1'enfance. On s'est
notamment interesse attx choses que possedaient les enfants : aux objets des bambins, des enfants et des adolescents d'autrefois, parvenus jusqu'a
notu .
Cette etude pose deux questions sur l'interet manifeste it propos des objets fafonnes ayant appartenu aux enfants et qui ont ete conserves . On
se denande comment et pourquoi la culture materielle de l'enfance a suscite la curiosite de tant de collectionneurs, de conservateurr et de
specialistes, et on s'interroge aussi sur la nature des problemes et des possibilites qu'entraine l'utilisation de ces temoins dun autre rige pour
expliquer le passe. On explore ces questions en etudiant comment les objets que possedaient les enfants d'autrefois ont ete collectionnes, exposes et
interpretes depuis un siecle . L'etude, dont les raisonnements et les preuves apportees it l'appui sont tires en majeure partie de l'histoire
atrtericaine, vise ei donner provisoirement une vue d'ensemble du sujet.
The discovery of childhood over the past two centuries, initially by educators, clergy, merchandisers, and sociologists throughout the
nineteenth century, and then by child psychologists, antique dealers, writers, and social historians in the twentieth century, has meant an
ever-expanding interest in the role of children and the concept of childhood . Part of this interest has focused on the things of children, on the
surviving artifacts of past infancy, childhood and adolescence .
Two questions are posed about this interest in extant childhood artifacts : How and why has the material culture of childhood intrigued so
many collectors, curators and scholars? What are the problems and possibilities of using such physical evidence in historical explanation?
These questions are explored by reviewing how the objects of the child have been collected, exhibited, and interpreted over the past century . The
essay's argument and supporting data, while largely drawn from the American historical experience, aims at providing a tentative overview
of the topic.
The easiest way of becoming acquainted with the
mode of thinking, the rules of conduct, and the
prevailing manners of any people is to examine
what sort of education they give their children,
how they treat them at home, and what they are
taught in their places of public worship .
Hector St . John Crevecour, Letters from an
American Farmer (1782)
Hector St . John Crevecour's insight - that understanding
how a culture views its children provides a viewpoint
from which to evaluate the culture - serves as a basic
assumption for many contemporary historical studies of
North American childhood . Knowing the child is, in
part, a way of knowing the parent, the family, and the society
.~
The discovery of childhood over the past two centuries,
initially by educators, clergy, merchandisers, and
sociologists throughout the nineteenth century, and then
by child psychologists, antique dealers, writers, and social
historians in the twentieth century, has meant an ever-
expanding interest in the role of children and the concept
of childhood .Z Part of this interest has focused on the
things of children, on the surviving artifacts of past
infancy, childhood, and adolescence .
In this essay, two questions are posed about this interest
in extant childhood artifacts : How and why has the
material culture of childhood intrigued so many collectors,
curators and scholars? What are the problems and
possibilities of using such physical evidence in historical
explanation? These questions are explored by reviewing
how the objects of the child have been collected, exhibited,
and interpreted over the past century . The essay's
argument and supporting data, while largely drawn from
the American historical experience, aims at providing a
tentative overview of the topic . It is hoped that this
perspective will be useful in comparison with parallel
social history research in other countries .
Collecting Childhood
What motivates collectors of childhood artifacts? To
begin with, all the basic impulses of general collecting :

acquisitiveness, an attraction to the past, investment
potential, innate curiosity, historical associationism . Can
we, however, point to any particular reasons why the
artifacts of childhood might be of any special interest to
collectors? No one really can say for sure since no one has
yet systematically explored the ethnography of the collecting
of childhood material culture . In the United States,
we know something about why individuals such as
Margaret Woodbury Strong, Louis Hentz, or Electra
Havermeyer Webb were attracted to childhood artifacts,
but we know very little about the personal motivations
behind collections in thousands of North American local
museums and county historical societies . 3
Perhaps, in addition to the motivations of the general
collecting tendency, we are also attracted to the objects of
the child for specific reasons . These may be partially
gender-related, partially scale-related, and partially timerelated
.
For example, it is statistically true that until our own
time the vast majority of childhood collectors have been
women . The female functions of bearing and (until the
recent past) of raising children is one obvious reason for
this . The injunction to be a "madonna in-the-nursery" as
Harvey Green has characterized this demanding task was
but another of the nineteenth-century American woman's
many roles as the "light of the home ." The Victorian cult
of domesticity underlies, in part, the feminine inclination
to collect the domestic . 4
The human delight in
miniaturization may also
account for why many individuals, men as well as women,
collect the things of the child . A child and a child's things
permit one to invert the average adult's proportion of
scale . Childhood material culture enables us to re-examine
life at a Lilliputian level . For modern adults who live so
much of their lives in physical environments of gargantuan
and grotesque proportions - the world of the
skyscraper and the freeway - the opposite world of the
dirninutive and the dwarf is both cognitively relaxing and
aesthetically pleasing .
Adults are drawn to the doll house or the model train,
perhaps for some of the same reasons they are taken by
material culture exhibits featuring patent models or
dioramas . A child's world, as the Indiana poet James
Whitcomb Riley reflected in his evocation of "A Boy's
World," is a deliberately small world, a manageable
world, a world that we adults can hold in our hands or in
our arms .
The child's world is also a world we have lost . We try to
regain it, in part, as parents and grandparents, as collectors
and curators, but try as we may, it is gone as is all the
past . And yet its artifacts remain, some in memory and
some in museums . In collecting such material culture,
adults may be trying to recollect a universal human
experience, childhood . As acults, endowed with all the
knowledge gained during our own childhood, we cannot
help but often view the childhood of others as a metaphor
for our own previous experience . Childhood is our own
first historical era, an era we know first-hand, not
vicariously, as we know so much of the past . To be sure,
our rememberance of that childhood is extremely fragmentary
and even fearsome, but it is also one of fantasy
and fun .
Twentieth-century childrcn's literature, progressive
education theory, and much child psychology foster the
cultural belief that childhood was, or should be, fun . This
is another way of saying childhood means games and toys
- the largest category of all extant childhood material culture
. Fun is also simply another reason for collecting the
things of the child . The old adage, "The only difference
between men and boys is the size of their toys," has a
corollary that would suggest that many adults, still boys
and girls, take great delight in playing with children's
toys . William Blake put it this way : "The child's toys and
the old man's reasons are {bur} the fruit of two seasons ."
Toys are, without doubt, adults' favourite form of
childhood material culture . Entire private collections are
devoted only to them ; whole museums house their special
genres . 5 This is not surprising since most manufactured
toys are objects made by adults to appeal and to sell to
other adults, ostensibly, of course, for children . Toys are
the artifacts of two cultures . They can reveal as much
about a society's adults as its children . Perhaps more .
Moreover, what individual cDllectors amass of an earlier
childhood era may reveal as much about the collectors
themselves as about the historical period from which they
collect .
Since toys are probably the most exhibited and most
written about of all childhood artifacts, only two observations,
one obvious and one usually ignored, will be made
here about them . 6 The obvious is, that in the selection of
toys, children have often been encouraged to follow the
role models, the occupations, and the technological fads of
their elders . Such toys have usually been advertised as
being more appropriate for one sex than the other . Adult
collectors, male and female, have been similarly attracted
to such toys .'
They have not, however, been as thorough in saving
what Sidney Brower labels "makeshift toys" ; George
Basalla calls "transformed objects" ; Mac Barrick labels
"folk toys" ; Janet Holmes and Loet Vos identify as "found
toys" ; or what might simply be called "kid's toys ."" Such
home-made or modified toys can be any object that a child
continually delights in and uses as a means for deriving
amusement or entertainmenr, rather than as a means for
accomplishing a set task, a specific educational objective,
or a toy manufacturer's advertised goal . "Kid's toys" are
often concrete proof of the material culturist's dictum :

Fig . ( . Dolls, the most popular genre of extant childhood
material culture, displayed in a WPA-sponsored
museum exhibition at the Children's Museum of
Indianapolis in the late 1930s . (The (
"One man's trash is another's treasure . " Of course, anyone
who has ever watched a child (or been one) knows "kid's
toys ." Such artifacts may be among the few distinct
authentic artifacts of childhood in that they are made,
remade, remodelled, or renamed by children themselves .
Take, for example, a typical two- or three-pronged
pitchfork commonly found on many nineteenth-century
North American farmsteads . In a child's imagination, this
agricultural tool cannot only be a device for pitching hay,
but also a horse to ride, a writing or drawing tool for
marking on the ground, a boat to float down a rivulet, a
javelin or spear to throw, or even another person ("a stick
man") to befriend . In the past, as in the present, a plaything
could be and was anything the mind imagined - for
a moment, an hour, for months or years . To the bounty of
nature, the nineteenth-century consumer and industrial
revolutions added a vast material world from which
children might craft their own toys or play objects : pie
plates (probable prototype for the first Frisbee), key rings,
tires, clothespins, coat hangers, metal washers, tin cans,
ball-point pens, bottle tops, rubber bands, and paper
clips, paper cups made into rattles, metal washers used in
tossing games, coins used for tabletop football, clotheslines
cut down for jump ropes, broomsticks modified for
bats in stick ball games .
Some of these items have been modified by children
the course of play, others have not . Some of them resei
chers will be able to decipher and interpret ; others w
remain known and understood only by their origir
creators . We need to collect and study more of this chil
hood material culture . While some of it may prove higl
idiosyncratic, enough of it may reveal patterns that w
tell us as much about creativity, imagination a
aesthetics as any of the manufactured or educational tc
that predominate in most museum collections .`'
Costume, after toys, is probably the second larg(
category of childhood material culture .
The collectors
children's costume have gathered data that help us und(
stand gender, age, class differentiation, rites of passa
and concern for healthy physical development in chi
io
rearing .
Yet many childhood costume collections share tile Sam
evidential biases that costume historians and curator
bemoan for adult clothing : far fewer male costumes thai
female ones ; far more examples of formal clothing thai
work or play clothing ; greater instances of specialty dres
(for example, school uniforms, debutante dresses, an,
sailor suits) than everyday knock-about hand-me-downs
In material culture research, this illustrates the feckless
ness of data survival . ' '

Private collections of childhood artifacts are also
lacking in the material culture of nurture . Convenience
chairs, nursing bottles, feeding trays, eating utensils,
processed baby foods, diapers, chamber pots, potty chairs,
sanitary and toilet artifacts, and medical aids are not often
found in such collections . Underrepresented as well are
the artifacts of child discipline : rulers, whips, belts, rods,
birches, or the infamous paddling "sticks" are found in
few museum collections and fewer museum exhibits . 1'
A third popular medium in the museum collecting of
childhood is grapics, particularly photographs . Postmortem
daguerreotypes as well as Kodak Brownie snapshots
are part of this extensive visual record . So, too, are
the innumerable photographs of rites of passage, kinship
patterns, parent-child relations and school functions . "
While child photography will be analyzed again in the
next section, "Exhibiting Childhood," two observations
about this type of material culture are pertinent here .
First, no child has lived long enough to comprehend fully
the dangers and delights of recorded life . No child's
experience has provided him or her with the time and the
space that gives one a true sense of the past, of moments
lost forever or, antithetically, a developed sense of the
future, of the inevitable process of aging and death .
Therefore, unlike adults, children (until a certain age) face
the camera largely innocent o(all but the present moment
and often with a startling purity of motive . This characteristic
can be very useful in cultural explanation and
historians might explore it more systematically than they
have to date . ' ' The photo, .,rapher (usually an adult)
behind the camera, however, is another case entirely . The
adult photographer invariably brings to his or her task a
fixed set of beliefs, their own and their era's, about the
nature of childhood .
A second point that might be made concerning the relationship
of photography and children is that the century
of the latter's expansion in our consciousness (roughly
1840-1940) coincided with the century of the former's
democratization in our culture . Perhaps this coincidence
is causal . Could it be that the invention of the camera and
its widespread use over the p

stylized icons that became popular decorative elements of
many domestic goods such as napkin rings, trivets,
platters, and postcards . " Perhaps no one exploited this
use of children-as-objects like Currier and Ives did in their
two hundred lithograph images of children, depicting
them on one hand as symbols of lost innocence in a Gilded
Age and on the other, as James Russell Lowell expressed it
in Th.e Changeling, as an active force for godliness and
reform .
Photographic firms and photographers also often exhibited
children in these two ways . The George Eastman
Company, for example, claimed that their cameras were so
simple, even a child could "Push the Button" and they
would do the rest . Brownie Cameras, capitalizing on the
popularity of Palmer Coxe's amusing elves as well its
suggesting the name of the camera's designer Frank
Brownell, were developed largely for a pre-adolescent
market .
As a consequence of the enormous expansion of
photography in the twentieth century, the modern child
may be the target of the camera more than anyone . Almost
every life moment can be captured ; thus we have photos of
children before birth, during birth, at birth, in the
hospital, at home, in school, at play, at work .
Fig . 3 . Toys and books replace candy in a typical middle-class
American Christmas celebration, ca . 1900 . (Greenfield
Village and Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn,
Michikan .)
American photographers such as Jacob Riis and Lewis
Hine worked diligently that we would one day no longer
see children at work in factories, mills, and mines; at
"home" or "piece" work in tenements ; or in selling goods
and services in saloons, shops, and city streets . This child
labour photography formed the core of various exhibitions
during the Progressive era . In recent times, institutions
reinforced so strongly that we began to divide up and also
chronologically expand this pre-adult stage of the life
cycle?
Exhibiting Childhood
Photography has figured extensively in many past
museum exhibitions of childhood . For example, a
selection of artifacts and images of American children
were displayed at the Women's Building at the 1876
Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia . Less than twenty
years later, a separate Children's Building was designed
for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 18)3 . At
such international trade fairs, of course, children were also
on display as advertising icons, as potential consumers for
the numerous child-specific objects (such as miniature
riblewares, children's furniture, or ready-made clothing)
and as culture totems in a highly sentimental age . For
nstance, Bertha L. Corbett's "Sunbonnet Babies" were
one of the numerous generic, turn-of-the-century
Fig . 4 . Reform photography promoting child-labour legislation,
titled "Cranberry Worker, New Jersey," and
photographed by Lewis Hine, 1910 . (Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C .)

1
such as the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Historical
Society, and the Chicago Historical Society have mounted
exhibits, particularly of Hine's work, usually with special
16
emphasis on his labouring children .
In these exhibitions of the child-as-innocent-victim,
early documentary photographers have resorted to an old
documentary ploy : using the child as an instrument to
stimulate adult indignation over social evil . No one used
this reform technique better than the U.S . Government's
Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers of the
Great Depression . This visual material culture has been
used repeatedly since the 1930s to characterize our visions
of that decade . Father may be out of work, out of town,
and out of hope, but mother and child are always together .
This mother and child conceit, an ancient one in iconography,
pervades this enormous corpus of childhood visual
data as well as the museum exhibits, catalogues, and other
publications that have interpreted the FSA data .
Such imagery can be found in two fairly recent American
museum exhibits . Images of Childhood, a 1977 show of
popular daguerreotypes, prints, and photographs prepared
by the Museum of Our National Heritage
(Lexington, Massachusetts) documents the now familiar
nineteenth-century transition of the child from a miniature
adult to an innocent child at play .
Susan Kismaric's
American Children, mounted at the Museum of Modern
Art (New York City, New York) in 1980, is a more
ambitious use of photographs in childhood research and a
more successful one . The photographs included in the
catalogue are presented in reversed chronological
sequence . One sees them, therefore, as a pictorial record,
viewed backward through time, enabling one to understand
both children and photographers, especially how
the latter reveal their own personal and cultural perspectives
in various eras . At the same time the movement from
past to present, an act comparable to looking at one's
family album from the back to the front, evokes the
memories of one's own childhood history and proves
doubly revealing .
American Children emphasizes, as most museum exhibitions
on American childhood do not, the life and times of
twentieth-century children .
The modern photography of
Diane Arbus, Edward Weston, and Helen Levitt also
provides us with valuable counterparts to the nineteenthcentury
work of Francis Benjamin Johnson, John Bullock,
and Timothy O'Sullivan .
Finally, this photographic
exhibit displays an awareness of adolescent sexuality that
is almost always completely ignored by most museums
interested in childhood .
In both Diane Arbus's and
Emmet Gowing's photographs of adolescent couples, we
are shown the beginnings of the male/female bond that
presages their future and reveals the photographer's
acknowledgement of burgeoning sexuality ; in work by
these two photographers the young boys attempt the
postures of grown men, wrapping their arms around the
Fig . 5 . Fathers and sons, a neglected topic in social history,
captured here by Swedish photographer, Sven Joseph,
for the photobook, ChL'clre» and Their Fatherr by Hanns
Reich (New York : Hill and Wang, 19G0) .
girls in possession and prorection .
To make a furthet
point, Godwin posed his couple before an automobile, thc
American symbol of social liberty and, on occasion,
teenage sexual opportunity .
In addition to temporary and permanent museum
exhibitions devoted to children, over a hundred children
and youth museums presently exist in the United States .
From the A .M . Chisholrn Children's Museum in
Minnesota to the Zigler Museum for Children in
Louisiana, there exists a partiCularly American museological
phenomenon worthy of attention in the study of
American childhood . Yet few museum exhibits or
museum historians recogniz= the role that museums in
general, and children's mtuseurns in particular, have
played in social, educational, and cultural history of the
American child . 1"
'
The Brooklyn Children's ~Iuseum, often acrlaitned as
the first in the world, opened its doors on December 16,
6

museum theory and practice : Boston in 1913, Detroit in
1917, Indianapolis in 1925 . Canada's first children's
museum was the London Regional Museum opening in
1975 . The real children's museum boom in America,
however, can be closely correlated with the post-World
War lI baby boom . When Eleanor M . Moore wrote Youth
in Museums, an early classic 1941 study in the otherwise
barren terrain of children's museum history, only eight
children's museums were housed in their own buildings -
those in Boston, Brooklyn, Cambridge, Detroit, Duluth,
Hartford, Indianapolis, and San Francisco . Now that
number is well over fifty . 1'
The first four American children's museums, particularly
their early history, philosophy and exhibition
techniques, reveal much about their use of childhood
material culture and what it suggests about the museum
interpretation of American children in the first quarter of
the twentieth century .
Although most American children's
museums began without professional leadership or
sizeable collections, behind each of these institutions, was
an aggressive, talented, often affluent, woman or cadre of
women . Such women had visions of a children's museum
as a necessary intermediary institution (like the school or
the family) to improve the life of American young people
who lived in a society that was increasingly becoming
. . ., . .. ., .. . . . . . .... , ...... . . .. .~ . .. . . ..~ , u,~, uavn~~~~.~u. i
surprisingly, most of the early children's museums w
(and still are) in urban settings . Among the first four
least two - the Adams House in Brooklyn and the C
Mansion in Indianapolis - were established first in
family homes, quaint domiciles with local history assoc
tions then thought appropriate for childhood nurture .
An interest in child psychology and progressive edu,
tion theory can also be detected among American childi
museum founders, especially among their directors a
curators . For Instance, LouiseCondit, supervisorofedul
tion at the Brooklyn Children's Museum, was an ard(
disciple ofJohn Dewey . The first name of the Indianapc
Children's Museum was the Progressive Educati
Association and a "learning by doing" philosophy gtucl
its early efforts . Close liaison in many children's museui
was often maintained with many city's school systen
with some children's museum curators seeing themseh
as public school faculty and part of departments of pub
instruction .2°
Most of the early collections of children's museums
were the proverbial "cabinets of curiosities," mixtures of
natural history, technological, and historical objects .
However, early curators appear to have been more permissive
in their tolerance of children handling the collections,
Fig . 6 .
True "kid's" toys that children such as Lars Thomas
Schlereth, age one and a half, make for themselves or
appropriate as their own . (Photographer : T .J .
Schlereth, March 198-i)

a pioneering learning approach that we now call
"participatory experience" and an educational philosophy
that one museum (the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia)
incorporates in its name . Unfortunately, to date, we
have only one major institutional history of an American
children's museum, The Children's Museum of
Indianapolis, that explores the role of these early children's
museums and their cultural aspirations .
21 What
were their relationships with each other? What were their
relationships with other contemporary institutions that
also occasionally had museums and organizations such as
settlement houses, boys and girls clubs, historical
societies? In what areas, science, art, history, did they
develop first and best? How did they relate to traditional
museums? In what ways were they influenced, for example,
in formulating their own organization, the American
Association of Young Museums, by the larger museum
community' In what way did they influence (for instance,
with "hands-on exhibits?") mainstream museum practice'
In short, the history of North American childhood would
profit from a systematic examination of the history of
childhood museums in their institutional and cultural
context .
Researching Childhood
In addition to collecting and exhibiting the artifacts of
childhood, a small group of scholars have been at work researching
the history of childhood, particularly in the
nineteenth century, as a subfield of their wider interests in
literary, or psycho-, or social history . This cadre, largely
based in North American universities and, in one sense,
the last to take up the topic of childhood after private
collectors and museum curators, has been principally concerned
with the meaning of the extant documentary and
statistical evidence in the interpretation of past childhood
.-- Only recently have a number of such historians
turned to probing the explanatory potential of the things
of the child .
The relationship of literature and childhood was among
the first to be pursued both by literary scholars interested
in what is written by, for, and about children as well as by
social scientists and historians fascinated by the enormous
outpouring of normative children's literature that the
United States has produced from John Cotton's Spiritual
Alilk for Boston Babies in Either England ( 1656) to the latest
edition of Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book oJ'Baby
and Child Care (1985) .2 ' The research of Ann McLeod,
Margaret Maloney, Mary Rubio, and Barbara Harrison
has greatly expanded our understanding of the special
literary interest group that Virginia Haviland calls "the
,2,1
open-hearted audience . Scholarship on children's
literature now has achieved such an academic visibility in
the United States that at Simmons College in Boston,
there is even a Center for the Study of Children's Literature
leading to an M . A . degree in tile specialty .
Fig . 7 . The Girl Coming Through the Dnorvay painted by
George Washington Mark, ca . 1845, and suggestiveof
the inner psychohistory of childhood that is difficult to
document . (Greenfield Village and Henry Ford
Museum, Dearborn, N-ichiy;an)
Research on children's plavthings and playing has been
organized for the last decad : by the Association for the
Anthropological Study of PI iy (TAASP) . Published proceedings
of these international meetings suggest that
much hard work (or, is it just scholarly play?) is being
done on play in a wide range of disciplines .
The TAASP
lists the research interests of its members as anthropology,
physical education, psychology, recreation,
history,
paediatrics, folklore, dance, the arts, competitive
athletics, ritual, kinesiolo, ;y, learning research and
development, film, political action, urbanization,
archaeology, human kinetics, games, dramaturgy,
fantasy, humour, symbolic flay .
Bernard Mergen's Play a,7d Playthings (19H2), Helen
Schwartzman's Tru»3forntatinn.r : The Anthropology of Play
(1978), Brian Sutton-Smith's Folk-Gantes of Children
( 1972), and Alice Cheska's Play as Context ( 198 1) typify
current American research in the field of children's play,

perhaps the most widely studied area of childhood research
. '5 Mergen's book has a particularly useful chapter
on the material culture of public play, especially on urban
playgrounds and playground equipment .
Parallel with the social scientific studies of American
childhood, an enterprise whose history extends back into
the late nineteenth century in the United States, is the
more recent work of the past two decades in the social history
of childhood, particularly as it is manifested in family
history and to a lesser extent, in women's history . Child
rearing, for example, as studied by Philip Greven, John
Demos, Alice Ryerson, and others, has been a major concern
of historians monitoring the American family .'`'
Those using material culture evidence explored various
forms of child control (toys, chairs, playpens, harnesses,
playgrounds) ; child loodways, and child educational
toys .-- In this context, however, still more research is
needed on child toilet training, on non-parental child care
(nannies, wet nurses, governesses, baby sitters), and the
role of children's pets in child life .
Social historians interested in childhood also need to
research motherhood and fatherhood in more svstematic
but American fatherhood has only begun to be given
historical evaluation . J . Jill Suitor's study, "Husbands'
Participation in Childbirth : A Nineteenth-Century
Phenomenon" and Charles Strikeland's "The Child-
Rearing Practices of Bronson Alcott" are examples of this
type of research .
28 On the topic of fathers, we might ask
what types of artifacts and activities do they choose for
their daughters as opposed to sons? Has this pattern been
true throughout North American history? Do rural fathers
relate differently to sons and daughters than urban
fathers?
Scholars have largely neglected the material culture
history of rural childhood .
Differences as to education,
recreation, and work between rural and urban child life
prompt us to recognize that during the period 1820-192(1
there were various childhoods in North America-various
as to ethnic background, economic class, religious persuasion,
and geographic region .
Such comparative study also
suggests that historians might explore, with a special
research effort devoted to the rural young, whether or not
the currently held hypothesis that sees the adult perception
of North American children as something of a triplestage
metamorphosis (a miniature adult in the eWhteenth
Fig . 8 . Late Victorian fascination with elegant and elaborate Museum's "Centuries of Childhood, 1820-1920"
children's furniture as displayed in the "Baby exhibition . (The Margaret VZ'oodbury Strong

0
Fig . 9 . Nursery in the home of A.C . Cronin,
I
1915 . (Photographer : Joseph Hyron . Source : Museu r of City of New York .)
Fig . 10 . Early example of hands-on learning activities for ca . 1940s . (Children's Museum of Indianapolis,
youngsters at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana)
10

hood - a trend that begins in the nineteenth century in
institutions such as children's aid societies, the YMCA
and the YWCA, the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts and a
social phenomenon that has accelerated throughout the
twentieth century . 35 The material culture record of this
historical trend is abundant : children's kindergartens,
children's museums, children's prisons, asylums, and hospitals,
children's chautauquas, children's beauty
pageants, children's athletic leagues and sports clubs,
children's courts, children's radio, television and film,
and of course, children's playgrounds, soap-box derbies,
photo studios, day-care centres, and camps . 36
In addition to this brief review of the material culture
collection, exhibition, and interpretation of childhood
that has been done and might be done, can we point to any
other reasons in attempting to explain why an increasing
number of researchers are presently intrigued with the
history of North American childhood? Perhaps part of the
answer is personal in that many scholars recognized the insight
of the Dutch historian Johan Huizanga who wrote so
eloquently of the human species as Homo Ludens- man, the
player . Huizanga thought much of human creativity,
society, and history could be viewed as play, and to many
at times, childhood seems to be a time of almost pure
play . 37
Another part of the answer is professional in that many
of us have either been trained in or been seriously
influenced by social history and its interest in the history
of powerless groups . Children have often been such a
group, not only in their physical, economic, and legal dependency
but also in their historical invisibility, that is,
their inability to write or o:ll their own history . Many
scholars seek to rectify this oversight . They wish to make a
research contribution to the history of childhood and to
integrate that story into the larger epic of the history of
society .
Finally, the artifacts of childhood are an especially
problematic type of evidence in general material culture
studies . 33 The physical evidence of past childhood, flawed
as it is by the fecklessness in collection, romanticism in
exhibition, and gender and age bias in generation, offers
material culture researchers a special methodological
challenge in their quest for possibilities and liabilities of
artifacts as resources for culture inquiry .
NOTES
I . For Crevecour's discussion of the interrelation of the study of childhood
and the study of culture, see Letters from an American Farmer
and Sketchet fronr 18th Century America: More Letters from an American
Farmer edited by H .L . Bourding, R .H . Gabriel, and S.T .
Williams (New Haven, Conn . : Yale University Press, 1963),
12 I . Surveys of the subject based, in part, on this methodological
premise include : Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social
History of Family Life (New York : Vintage Books, 1962) ; Anita
Schorsch, Images of Childhood: An Illustrated Social History (New
York : Mayflower Books, 1979) ; Bernard Wishy, The Childandthe
Republic: TheDawn ofA4odernAmerican ChildNrrrture (Philadelphia :
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968) ; Sandra Brant and Elissa
Cullman, Small Folk : A Celebration of Childhood in America (New
York : E . D. Dutton, 1980) ; John Sommerville, The Riseand Fall of
Childhood (Beverly Hills, Calif . : Sage Publications, 1982) .
2 . A distinction is often made between the child (pl . children), a
biological person who has always been part of the human experience,
and childhood, a comparatively recent cultural invention
marked by an increasing preoccupation of adults with special needs
of children, by a growing belief that children were appreciably
different in personality from adults, and by a gradual separation,
temporally and spatially, of the activities and artifacts of childhood
from those of adults . For refinement of the distinction, consult
Michael Kammen, "Changing Perceptions of the Life Cycle in
American Thought and Culture," Massachusetts Historical Society
Proceedings 91 (1979) : 35-66 .
3 . William T. Alderson, "Right from the Start : The Strong Museum
Opens Its Doors," Museum News G I:2 (November/December
1982) : 49-53 ; William C. Ketchum, ed ., The Collections of the
Margaret lYioodbury Strong Museum (Rochester, N.Y . : The Margaret
Woodbury Strong Museum, 1982), 48-53 ; Elaine Heumann
Gurian, "Children's Museums, An Overview," Treatise on Mrueology
I (in press) ; Louis Hertz, The Toy Collector (New York : Funk
and Wagnalls, 1969) .
4 . Harvey Green, The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of Women in
Victorian America (New York : Pantheon, 1983) ; also see Ann
Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York : A .A .
Knopf, 1978) .
5 . Pauline Flick, Discovering Toys and Toy Museums (Tring, England :
Shire Publications, 1971) ; William S . Ayres, The Warner Collector's
Guide to American Toys (New York : Warner Books, 1981) ; I nez
and Marshall McClintoek, Toys in America (Washington, D .C . :
Public Affairs Press, 1961) ; Karen Hewitt and Louise Roomer,
eds., Educational Toys in America .- 1800 to Present (Burlington, Vt . :
Robert Hall Fleming Museum, 1979) .
6 . Useful bibliographies of the enormous literature on toys are
Bernard Mergen, "Games and Toys," in Handbook of Anterican
Popular Culture edited by Thomas Inge (Wesrport, Conn . : Greenwood
Publishers, 1980), 163-190 . Two other studies by Mergen
are valuable in this context : "The Discovery of Children's Play,"
American Quarterly 27 (October 1975) : 399-420 ; and "Toys and
American Culture : Objects as Hypotheses," Journal of American
Culture 3 no . 4 (Winter 1980) : 743-751 .
7 . Carroll Pursell, Jr ., "Toys, Technolgooy, and Sex Roles in
America, 1920-1940," in Dynamos and Virgins Revisited: Women
and Technological Change in Hi.rrory, edited by Martha Trescott
(Metuchen, N.J . : Scarecrow Press, 1979), 252-267 ; Donald W.
Ball, "Toward a Sociology of Toys : Inanimate Objects, Socialization,
and the Demography of' the Doll World," Sociological
Quarterly 8 (1967) : 447-458 . For a discussion of the historical
development of the "Barbie Doll" and its role in socializing children
to certain sex roles, see Ror.ald Marchese, "Material Culture
and Artifact Class ification,"Journal of American Culture 3, no . 4
(Winter 1980) : 605-619 .
8 . Sidney Brower, "Tools, Toys, Masterpieces, Mediums,"
Landscape, 19, no . 2 (January 1975) : 28-32 ; George Basalla,
"Transformed Utilitarian Objects," Winterthur Portfolio 17, no . 4
(Winter 1982) : 183-202 ; Mac E . Barrick, "Folk Toys," Pennsylvania
FolkGfe 29, no . I (Autumn 1979) : 27-34; Janet Holmes and
Loet Vos, "Children's Toys in the Ninteenth Century," Joint
12

session at Ontario Museum Association's "Children and Changing
Perspectives of Childhood in the Nineteenth Century" Conference,
Toronto, Canada, January 30-February 2, 1985 .
9 . Examples of beginning research in the topic include : Mary and
Herbert Knapp, One Potato, Two Potato . . . The Secret Education of
American Children (New York : Norton, 1976), 225-31 ; Fred
Ferretti, The Great American Book ofSidewalk, Stoop, Dirt, Curb, and
Alley Games (New York : Workmann, 1975); Robert Cochran,
"The Interlude of Game : A Study of Washers," Western Folklore 38,
no . 7 (April 1979) : 71-82 ; and Jerome L . Singer, TheChild'r World
of Make-Believe: Experimental Studies of Imaginative Play (New York :
Academic Press, 1973) .
10 . Elizabeth Ewing, History of Children's Costume (New York: Charles
Scribners & Sons, 1977) ; Linda Martin, The Way We Wore : Fashion
Illustrations of Children's Wear, 1870-1970 (New York : Charles
Scribners & Sons, 1978) ; Karin Calvert, "Children in American
Family Portraiture, 1670 to I810," William and Mary Quarterly
39, no . 1 (January 1982) : 87-113 .
11 . On the ramifications of this problem in general material culture
research, see Thomas J . Schlereth, "Material Culture and Cultural
Research" in Material Culture, A Research Guide (Lawrence :
University Press of Kansas, 1985) (in press) .
12 . Scholars interested in these usually neglected artifacts include
Karin Calverr, "Cradle to Crib : The Revolution in Nineteenth-
Century Children's Furniture," in A Century of Childhood, 1820-
1920 (Rochester, N.Y . : The Margaret Woodbury Strong
Museum, 1984), 33-64; Felicity Nowell-Smith, "Feeding the
Nineteenth-Century Baby : Implications for Museum Collections"
and Hilary Russell, "Training, Restraining, and Sustaining :
Infant and Child Care in the Late Nineteenth Century," both in
this issue .
13 . On representative studies of child photography, see Alison Mager,
ed ., Children of the Past in Photographic Portraits : An Album with
165 Prints (New York : Dover, 1982) ; Old Dartmouth Historical
Society, Images of Childhood: An Exhibition of Pictures and Objects
from Nineteenth-Century New Bedford (New Bedford, Mass . : Old
Dartmouth Historical Society, 1977) ; Rosamond O. Humm,
Children in America: A Study of Images and Attitudes (Atlanta : High
Museum of Art, 1978) .
14 . The interrelation of children and photography is tentatively
explored in Josephine Gear, The Preserve of Childhood, Adult Artifice
and Construction : Images of Late-Nineteenth Century American Childhood
(Bingharnton, N.Y . : University Art Gallery-SUNY, 1982),
and Suan Kismaric, American Children (New York and Boston :
New York Graphic Society, 1980), 5-11 .
15 . On the nineteenth-century commercial use of child imagery, see
Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger, "Children, Childhood, and
Change in America, 1820-1920," in A Century of Childhood,
I820-1920 (Rochester, N .Y . : The Margaret Woodbury Strong
Museum, 1984), 23-28 .
16 . Naomi and Walter Rosenblum, America and LetUIJ Hine : Photographs,
1904-1940 (New York : Aperture, 1977) ; Naomi
Rosenblum, The l,eivis W. Hine Document (Brooklyn : The
Brooklyn Museum, 1977) ; Mara Gutman, Lewis W. Hine, 1876-
1940 : Two Perspectives (New York : Grossman Publishers, 1974) .
Dover Publications has reprinted the documentary work of Riis
and Hine as well as other reform photography collections such as
New York Street Kids : Photographs Selected by the Children's Aid
Society .
17 . Susan Kismaric, American Children (New York and Boston : New
York Graphic Society, 1980), 24 and 34 .
18 . Gregory G . Baeker, "The Emergence of Children's Museums in
the United States, 1899-1970," Master of Museum Studies Thesis
(Department of Museum Studies, University of Toronto, 1981)
could serve as a research model to rectify this neglect .
19 . Eleanor M . Moore, Youth in Museums (Philadelphia : University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1941) . For a helpful finding aid on the topic,
see Office of Museum Programs, Children in Museums, A Bibliography
(Washington, D.C . : The Smithsonian Institution, 1979) ;
for an interpretation of the contemporary growth in children's
museums, see Gurian, op . cit . (note 3), 9-12 .
20 . On the interconnection between developments in child psychology,
progressive education, and children's museums, see R .S .
Peter, ed . , John Dewey Reconsidered (London : Routledge and Regan
Paul, 1977) and A . E. Parr, "Why Children's Museums?" Curator
3, no . 3 (1960) : 217-236 .
21 . Nancy Kriplen, Keep an Eye on That Mummy (Indianapolis: The
Children's Museum, 1982) .
22 . Examples of this orientation are found in Robert H . Brenner, ed .,
Children and Youth in America, A Documentary History, 3 vols .
(Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1970-72) and David
Rothman, "Documents in Search of a Historian : Toward a History
of Childhood and Youth in America," in Theodore Raab and
Theodore Rotberg, The Family in History (New York : Harper &
Row, 1978), 179-189 .
23 . R. Gordon Kelly has done the most comprehensive finding aids to
both approaches to American children's literature ; see his chapter,
"Children's Literature," in Handbook of American Popular Culture,
edited by Thomas Inge (Westport, Corm . : Greenwood Press,
1982), 49-76, and his reference work, Children's Periodicals of the
United States (Westport, Conn . : Greenwood Press, 1985) .
24 . Anne Scott McLeod, A Moral Tale: Children's Fiction and American
Culture, 1820-1860 (Hamden, Conn . : Anchor Books, 1975) ;
Barbara Harrison, "Why Study Children's Literature?" Quarterly
Journal of the Library of Congress 38, no . 4 (1981) : 243-253 ;
Margaret Maloney, "Save All Your Rags : Children's Literature in
the Nineteenth Century," and Mary Rubio, "The Child in Literature
: Anne of Green Gables as a Case Study" (Papers delivered at the
Ontario Museum Association Heritage Conference '85 "Children
and Changing Perspectives of Childhood in the Nineteenth
Century," Toronto, Ontario, January 30-February 2, 1985) .
25 . Bernard Mergen, Play and Playthings (Westport, Conn . : Greenwood
Press, 1982) ; Helen Schwartzman, Transformations: nationt: The
Anthropology of Play (New York : Plenum Press, 1977) ; Brian
Sutton-Smith, The Folk-Games of Children (Austin : University of
Texas Press, 1972) ; Alice Cheska's Play As Context (West Point,
N.Y . : Leisure Press, 1981) .
26 . Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-
Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (New
York : Oxford University Press, 1977) ; John Demos, A Little
Commonwealth : Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York : Oxford
University Press, 1976) ; Alice J . Ryerson, "Medical Advice on
Child Rearing, 1550-1900," Harvard Educational Review 31
(1961) : 302-323 . A popular treatment of the topic is Mary Cable,
The Little Darlirtt: A History of Child Rearing in America (New York :
Charles Scribners & Sons, 1975) .
27 . Calvert, "Cradle to Crib," op . cit . (note 12), 33-64 ; Mergen, Play
and Playthings, op . cit . (note 25), 103-124 ; Roy Rosenzweig,
"Middle-Class Parks and Working-Class Play : The Struggle over
Recreational Space in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1870-1910,"
Radical History Review 21 (Winter : 1979-80) : 31-46 ; Hewitt and
Roomer, Educational Toys in America, op . cit . (note 5), 40-60 .
28 . J . Jill Suitor, "Husbands' Participation in Childbirth : A
Nineteenth-Century Phenomenon," Journal of Family History 6,
no . 3 (1981) : 278-293 ; Charles Strickland, "A Transcendentalist
Father : The Child-Rearing Practices of Bronson Alcott," History of
Childhood Quarterly 1 (Summer 1973) : 4-51 .
29 . A popular summary of this interpretive model is found in J .H .
Plumb's overview, "The Great Change in Children," Horizon 13,
no . 1 (Winter 1971) : 6-12 .
30 . David Potter, People of Plenty : Economic Abundance and the American
Character (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1954) ; Peter
Gay, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud: Education of the
Senses (New York : Oxford University Press, 1984) ; Kammen,
"Changing Perceptions of the Cycle," 40-42 . Also of use on the
historical life cycle in the New England context are : Peter Gregg
Slater, Children in the New England Mind in Death and in Life
(Hamden, Conn . : Archon Books, 1977) and Ross W. Beales, Jr .,

"In Search of the Historical Child : Miniature Adulthood and
Youth in Colonial New England," American Quarterly 27 (1975) :
378-398 .
31 . Schlereth, "Material Culture and Cultural Explanation," in
Material Culture, A Research Guide (in press) .
32 . Barbara and Arlan Coffman, "Building by the'Little Folks' : Early
Architectural Construction Toys in America" and James Volkert,
et . al, "Rough Housing" in Home Sweet Home : American Vernacular
Architecture, eds . Charles W. Moore, Kathryn Smith, and Peter
Becker (New York : Rizzoli, 1983), 54-62 ; 63-69 . M. Lynne
Struthers Swanich, Children and Architecture : Play Needs - A
Checklist of Sources, Vance Bibliographies, Architecture Series A
278 (Monticello, Ill . : Vance Bibliographies, n.d .) is a valuable
finding aid for literature on children's uses of space . Also see
Mergen, Play and Playthings, op . cit . (note 25), 81-102 .
33 . Pioneering works on childhood deviancy include : Joseph M.
Hawes, Children in Urban Society : Juvenile Delinquency in 19th
Century America (New York : Oxford University Press, 1971) ;
David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and DisorderintheNewRepublic
(Boston :Little,Brown, 197 1) ; Stanley M.
Schultz, The Culture Factory : Boston Public Schools, 1789-1860
(New York : Oxford University Press, 1973) ; Steven L .
Schlossman, Love and the American Delinquent: The Theory and
Practice of ProgrestiveJuvenileJustice, 1825-1920 (Chicago : University
of Chicago Press, 1977) .
34 . Sharon Ann Burston, "Babies in the Well : An Underground
Insight into Deviant Behavior in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,"
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 106, no . 2
(1982) : 151-186 ; Myra C. Glenn, Campaigns Against Corporal
Punishment : Prisoners, Sailors, Women, and Children in Antebellum
America (Albany : State University of New York Press, 1984) ;
Barbara Finkelstein, "In Fear of Childhood : Relationships
Between Parents and Teachers in Nineteenth-Century America,"
History of Childhood Quarterly 3, no . 3 (Winter 1976) : 321-327 ;
Howard Tolley, Children and War: Political Socialization to International
Conflict (New York : Teachers College Press, 1973) ; Neil
Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York : Dell, 1984) .
35 . A sampling of research on the organization of childhood would
include : David I . Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy :
The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920
(Madison : University of Wisconsin, 1984) ; Martha Saxton, "The
Best Girl Scout of Them All," American Heritage 33, no . 4 (June/
July 1982) : 38-46 ; Dominick Cavallo, Muscles and Morals :
Organized and Urban Refornu, 1800-1920 (Philadelphia : University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1981) .
36 . Mergen, Play and Playthings, op . cit . (note 25), 81-138 ; Patricia
Schaelchin, "'Working for the Good of the Community :' Rest
Haven Preventorium for Children, "Journal of San Diego History 29
(Spring 1983) : 96-114 ; Barbara Finkelstein, "Uncle Sam and the
Children : A History of Government Involvement in Child-
Rearing," Review ofJournal of Philosophy and the Social Sciences 3, no .
2 (1978-79) : 139-153 ; Daniel T. Rodgers, "Socializing Middle-
Class Children : Institutions, Fables, and Work Values in
Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Social History 13 : 354-
367 ; David J . Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum ; Joseph F .
Rett, Rites of Passage : Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present
(New York : Basic Books, 1977); Carol T. Williams, The Dream
Beside Me: The Movies and Children of the Forties (Rutherford, N .J . :
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980) .
37 . Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens : A Study of the Play-Element in
Culture (Boston : Beacon Press, 1955) .
38 . For a review of the general methodological problems in material
culture research see Thomas J . Schlereth, "Errors in Material
Culture Explanation," Material Culture 17, no . 1 (Spring 1985),
(in press) .

Feeding the Nineteenth-Century Baby :
Implications for Museum Collections
Felicity Nowell-Smith
ResumelAbstract
Dans le cadre de l'historiographie des dix dernieres annees, ce document tire des conclusions sur les differentes methodes d'alimentation des
nourrissons en Occident pour la periode couvrant les annees 1700 a 1900 . Une histoire de ces methodes d'alimentation dolt nicessairement
utiliser des sources de documentation ontariennes, it savoir des archives et des temoins materiels . Les objets etttdies et illustres dans cette monographie
proviennent du Museum of the History of Medicine a Toronto .
Les timoins materiels de ces mithodes d'alimentation des nourrissons sont particulierement fragiles : les objets de verre cassent facilement et
la periode de la petite enfance ne dure pas longtemps . Au mieux, on ne ti ent pas compte de ces objets qui, une fois laisses de cote, sont difficiles a
identifier .
Un examen de ces temoins materiels en revele la methode d'utilisation ainsi que les avantages, les problemes et les difficultes probables qui
leur sont lies . Ces observations peuvent servir a verifier les hypotheses sur les conclusions a tirer des methodes d'alimentation des nourrissons,
hypotheses fondees excltesivement ster des documents d'archives .
This paper discusses the implications inherent in different methods of infant feeding in the Western world c . 1700-1900, within the
context of the historiography of the last ten years . An account of how infants were fed in the nineteenth century is interwoven with the evidence
for what occurred in Ontario . This evidence is both archival and artifactual. The objects discussed and illustrated are in the collections of the
Museum of the History of Medicine in Toronto .
Artifactual evidence of infant feeding practices is particularly vulnerable . Objects made of glass break easily, and infancy itself lasts only
a short time . At best, the objects once abandoned are hard to recognize and therefore ignored .
An examination of the artifacts suggests their manner of use and possible difficulties, problems, or advantages associated with them . These
observations can be used to test hypotheses about implications of infant feeding practices based solely on archival evidence .
Infant feeding is a topic that has attracted increasing
interest from scholars and historians of the family and of
medicine over the last ten years . 1 The history and implications
of infant feeding methods are strands in the growing
body of work on the history of the family, which is itself a
multidisciplinary study bringing together psychohistory,
historical sociology and women's studies .
Formerly infant feeding in past times attracted little
attention . Not only was breast-feeding assumed to be the
norm, because how else was the infant to survive? But also
mother-love for the infant was assumed to be a constant in
female psychology .
This paper discusses the implications inherent in
different methods of infant feeding in the Western world
c . 1700-1900, within the context of the historiography of
the last ten years . An account of how infants were fed in
the nineteenth century is interwoven with evidence for
what occurred in Ontario. This evidence is both archival
and artifactual .
Interest in the special nature of childhood among
historians emerges with the publication by Philippe~Aries
of Centuries of Childhood in 1962 .2 He is not particularly
interested in infant feeding practices, but his comments
on the widespread practice of wet-nursing in France from
c . 1700-1900 are worth noting here . He suggests that this
practice originated out of maternal precaution at a time
when clean milk was unobtainable and artificial feeding
was awkward and dangerous, because unhygienic . This
explanation is reinforced by his description of the artifactual
evidence as "peculiar receptacles which are on display
in the Musee de la Faculte de Pharmacie in Paris, . . . must
have called for considerable skill and patience . "3
Edward Shorter is convinced that the high infant
mortality rate pre-1900 in Western Europe resulted from
poor infant care by "indifferent" mothers.4 He suggests
that infants died, not so much from rampant infectious
disease, but from unsuitable food and inappropriate care .
He sees the adoption of maternal breast-feeding, starting
in England in the eighteenth century among the upper

class, as a sign that women were putting their infant's
needs ahead of their own pleasure .
Lawrence Stone 5 explains the changes in child-rearing
practices, particularly the swing to maternal breastfeeding
in England among the upper class, in terms of the
changing attitudes towards children and the general
development of affective relations within the family . In
turn, breast-feeding itself promotes and strengthens
maternal feelings .
The recent writings by historians and others 6 focus on
the implications of particular feeding practices - in
particular that certain practices exemplify a lack of maternal
sentiment . This suggestion that mothering is not an
"eternal instinct slumbering in the female breast"' is
provocative and perhaps accounts for current interest in
feeding practices .
The bulk of the writing on this subject, roughly pre-
1960, was the work of paediatricians with an interest in
the history of their special discipline .8 These writers have
also shown an interest in the mechanics of infant feeding,
in the material history of the subject . By contrast, the
recent work of historians dwells more on the psychological
implications of different methods and sets these feeding
practices into their wider social, economic and cultural
context .
Infant feeding practices are literally a matter of life and
death, and this was particularly clear in the nineteenth
century . In this section I outline the development of
infant feeding as practised in the United States and
Britain, matched against a picture of Canadian practice .
By 1800 it was generally accepted by doctors that,
based on empirical evidence, babies fared best when
breast-fed by their mothers .
Fairly sophisticated manuals
were written for mothers .' ' The upper classes in post-
Rousseauian Europe were receptive to these medical ideas
with the result that maternal breast-feeding became
fashionable (fig . 1) .
The alternatives to maternal breast-feeding were wetnursing,
either in or outside the home, or artificial
feeding .
Alternatives existed because some mothers have
always been unwilling or unable to breast-feed their
infants .
Some were unwilling for reasons of fashion, such
as a fear their breasts would become misshapen and their
beauty would be lost .
At an earlier period there were
ideas, based on the current understanding of the physiology
of lactation, that sexual intercourse harmed the milk .
It was also believed that colostrum, the fluid secreted in
the first days after childbirth, was harmful to the baby and
therefore maternal feeding should wait for about eight
10
days, until the lying-in period was over .
Fig . l .
"The Fashionable Mamma or the Convenience of
Modern Dress ." Coloured etching by James Gillray,
published by H . Humphrey, 1796 . (Dr . T.G.H .
Drake Collection, cat . no . TDPA 58 . ) All illustrations
are from the collections of the Museum of the History
of Medicine, Academy of Medicine, Toronto .
Mothers were unable to feed their babies if they had
died in childbirth, or if they were ill
or were badly
nourished themselves (fig . 2) . Ante-natal care was nonexistent
for most women in the nineteenth century .
However,
doctors were beginning to be aware of the effects of
maternal health . By 1896 A . Jacobi, the American
paediatrician, writes "Mothers who suffered much during
their pregnancies, or were delicate themselves, are liable
to give birth to anaernic and puny infants . "I I
Pap or panada was the food most commonly fed to even
newborn babies who required alternative feedings, from a
pap boat or spoon . These vessels were made in most
materials, e.g ., pewter, porcelain and earthenware (fig .
3) .
Pap was a flour mixture ~)r hrcad cuokcd with water,
with occasional additions Of winc or brcr and swcctcners .

Milk was sometimes added to pap, or used on its own in
"bottles ." However, animal milks were regarded with
some caution because it was believed that the baby imbibed
aspects of the animal's (or indeed the wet-nurse's)
temperament or character with the milk . Goats were
"frisky" and red-headed wet-nurses possessed undesirable
moral characteristics .
Pap was dangerous food because it was nutritionally
inadequate, and it was often prepared with unclean ingredients
. (The cleanliness of milk and water supplies was
uncertain until the twentieth century .) Moreover, pap was
kept warm for long periods of time in a ceramic food
warmer in conditions ideal for the growth of bacteria .
Physicians were aware that artificial hand-feeding was
associated with death and disease . William Buchan points
out that "children may seem to thrive for a few months
without the breast ; but when teething, the small-pox, and
other diseases incident to childhood, come on they
generally perish .
,12 Teething is mentioned in this context
because it coincides with weaning and thus coincides with
illness often resulting from unclean food (gastroenteritis)
or from lack of necessary vitamins in the food (scurvy) .
Fig . 2 . The infant of an ill mother being spoon-fed . "La
Charite Chretienne ." Lithograph, E . Desmaisons,
Paris c . 1885 . (Cat . no . TDPA 17'1 .)
Infant feeding in Upper Canada followed the pattern
established in England . Elizabeth Simcoe, the wife of the
first lieutenant-governor, living in a sparsely populated
area, notes in 1791-96 that she is breast-feeding her infant
and "I hope she will not feel the want of a wetnurse, which
was what I could not secure for her .
paper, "Child Health and Development in
LindaSiegel, in her
English
Fig . 3 . Llnusual handled pap boats, silver . Left, London,
1823, 17 .7 (-in long . Right, silver gilt interior, made
by John Angell, London 1825, 19 .6 cm long . (Dr .
T .G.H . Drake Collection, cat . nos . AD 3~a and AD ?3 .)

.
Canada, 1790-1850,"14 suggests that Mrs . Simcoe's
worry was not so much her inability to obtain a wet-nurse
(servants were notoriously scarce at this period) but a real
fear that she might have insufficient milk for her baby .
Siegel examines the writings of two other women, Mary
O'Brien and Letitia Hargrave for the period 1828-52 and
concludes that both basically breast-fed their babies,
using a wet-nurse when unable to feed the baby and using
a bottle for supplementary feedings . She notes that a fear
of having insufficient milk is implied, a fear still common
among new mothers . References to wet-nurses occur in
other Canadian writings of this period . Anne Langton
writes in 1846 of a baby whose mother died in childbirth
that "My mother paid for a six-months' nursing-out of the
little delicate baby, and it is now a thriving healthy
chil
The artifactual evidence for breast-feeding is the existence
of objects designed to cope with its inconvenience,
that is, nipple shields, nipple shells and breast pumps .
These are objects which, by their very nature, are vulnerable
to destruction and lack of recognition . Nipple shields
were designed for the prevention and care of cracked
nipples, and for the attachment of an artificial nipple
which the baby sucked . T .G.H . Drake remarks that
"wood and lead shields have not been preserved on account
of their low intrinsic value." 16 However, interestingly
enough, it is wooden examples used in Ontario that are in
the collection of the Museum of the History of Medicine,
Toronto (fig . 4) .
Nipple shells (fig . 4) are round glass receptacles, again
their use is not readilv deduced from their form . Thev
Fig . 5 . Ceramic bottle (photographed in a wooden support)
with original wash-leather nipple which is coarsely
stitched round both sides ; the baby sucks through the
stitch holes . Side opening usually plugged with a cork .
Staffordshire, c .1840, 17 .7 cm long (Dr T.G .H .
Drake Collection, cat . no CD 36 .)
Fig . 4 . Breast feeding equipment used in Ontario, 1800-
1900 . Nipple shell, glass, 7 cm diam . (cat . no .
X969 .71 .) Nipple shield, turned wood, 5 .4 cm diam .
(cat . no . X952 .2 . l .) Breast pump, handblown glass,
33 .5 cm long . Designed to be placed on the breast and
sucked bv mouth . (Cat . no . 976 .21 .37 .)
18

were used to catch milk leaking from the breasts between
or just before a feeding so that the mother's clothing
stayed dry . The early breast pump in the collection, of
handblown glass, would be used to draw out retracted
nipples or draw off milk from congested breasts (fig . 4) .
The artifactual evidence for artificial feeding in the pre-
1850 period in Ontario is non-existent, based on the
Museum's collections . Whereas in the Drake collection,
there exists abundant evidence for this practice from most
European and some Asian countries from the ancient
world to the nineteenth century . However, there is some
literary evidence . Mary O'Brien 17 writing in Ontario
1f328-38 used supplementary feedings : "Was preparing
the bottle for baby (I am obliged sometimes to have
recourse to it)." The bottle she would have used was
probably of the submarine-shaped earthenware variety . It
was designed to be plugged with a cork and fitted with a
nipple made of chamois or parchment, stuffed with
sponge or a rag to prevent it collapsing inwards . The baby
sucked through the stitch holes (fig . 5) .
Baby's bottles, along with items such as toothbrushes,
invalid feeders, medicine spoons and eye baths were part
of the apothecary's counter lines .
These "sundries,"
together with the sale of proprietary medicines, helped
supplement the business of dispensing drugs .
By the beginning of the nineteenth century the idea
that a bottle was better than a spoon for feeding a baby had
caught on . Dr . Hugh Smith describes a spouted feeding
pot he designed : "The child is equally satisfied as it would
be with the breast ; he is obliged to labour for every drop he
receives in the same manner as when at the breast ; and,
greatly in recommendation of this contrivance, the nurses
confess it saves a great deal of trouble in the feeding of an
infant" 1" (fig . 6) .
Ironically, however, the technological innovations of
mid-century, rubber nipples and canned and dehydrated
infant foods, which offered greater ease of administration
for the mother, temporarily increased the hazards for the
baby . The rubber nipple, patented by Elijah Pratt in 1845
in the United States freed the mother from the nuisance of
sewing chamois leather teats, or preparing calf s teats in
spirit, or even decalcifying ivory to render it soft .
However, because this invention predated germ theories
of disease, mothers used it freely, not knowing that
nipples had to be sterilized to prevent them from passing
harmful bacteria on to the baby .
The canned and dried infant foods, a product of the
developing prepared-food industry, were heavily advertised
to both mothers and doctors 20 in newspapers,
magazines and medical journals . These foods, which were
easily fed to babies with the new rubber nipples, were
dangerous on two counts . One, these patent or proprietary
infant foods when used as the sole infant food were nutritionally
inadequate . Two, the lack of clean milk and water
supplies ensured that harmful microorganisms would be
passed on if present .
Job Lewis Smith, a founder of paediatics in America,
was pessimistic about artificial feeding . He wrote in 1872
"In the large cities, if I may judge from our New York
experience, this mode of alimentation, for young infants
should always be discouraged . It generally ends in death,
preceded by evidences of faulty nutrition ." ` 1 Contemporary
opinion was unclear why, but knew empirically that
artificial feeding often resulted in death . (The sciences of
It was believed that sucking the food caused it to be
mixed with the saliva in the mouth before being
swallowed ; sucking also restricted the amount of food
taken at a time, thus reducing the infant's chances of overdistending
its stomach .
The mixture in the bottle was usually sweetened cow's
milk (the most readily obtainable milk), which was replacing
"the vile compounds of flour and milk, bread and
water, or oatmeal and water, large quantities of which
under the names of pap, panada, and water-gruel, were
until a very late period forced down an infant's throat ."' 9
Mothers appear always to have needed and sought after
alternative methods of infant feeding . And in the second
half of the nineteenth century technological and scientific
developments helped by leading the way to the safer artificial
feeding methods of the twentieth century .
Fig . 6 . Spouted feeder, designed for the attachment of a
nipple, silver, marked Phipps-Robinson, London,
1790 . 8 .8 cm high . (Dr . T.G .H . Drake Collection,
cat . no . AD 114 .) This style was also produced in
creamware and transfer-printed earthenware .
19

acteriology and nutrition were just developing at midcentury
.)
The chemistry of milk was first mentioned by Michael
Underwood in 1799Z2 and illustrated by two inaccurate
tables comparing the composition of human, cow's,
goat's, ass's and mare's milk . In the nineteenth century
the composition of milk became known with the alliance
of chemistry and microscopy . Philippe Biedert in 1869
developed the idea of a "formula" (note the scientific
word)`' ; for altering cow's milk so that it most closely
resembled human milk . These formulae could be
extremely complex based as they were on the individual
baby's need, requiring a doctor to prescribe them and a
considerable period of time to prepare them . 2' Although
by about 1890 doctors understood that babies needed a
certain number of calories in proportion to their weight
and although they knew how to adjust amounts of
protein, fat and sugar to approximate human milk, they
did not know why bottle-fed babies frequently suffered
from anaemia and infantile scurvy . Vitamins were begin-
ning to be identified ; vitamin C, the anti-scorbutic
known empirically since 1753, was isolated in 1928 . This
realization of the problem without understanding its
cause resulted in patent infant foods, per se, being blamed
for these deficiency diseases rather than the absence of
particular substances .
Bacteriology, through the work of Pasteur and Koch,
explained the role of microorganisms in producing
disease . By the 1880-1900 period the significance of
bacterial action was appreciated by the food, agriculture
and dairying industries . Milk was first commercially
pasteurized in Denmark in 1890 to prevent it going sour
on the train journey from farm to city . And by 1896 it was
realized that this treatment gave protection against milkborne
diseases . 25
Infant feeding in Ontario (as it was known after 1t367),
as far as one can tell, followed the American pattern . `6
The mortality figures for infants were high ; cities such as
Toronto were rapidly industrializing and sanitary condi-
Fig . 7 . Both bottles are handblown, c . 1850 . Side openings
usually plugged with a cork . Submarine-shaped bottle
with integral shield and nipple-shaped end, 22 .3 cm
long . (Cat . no . X934 .24 . 1 .) Upright bottle, 15 c m
high . (Cat . no . X9

tions for the poor were appalling . `' The mortality rates for
Toronto in 1890 are very detailed, giving an age and a
disease breakdown . 2" Although retrospective diagnosis is
notoriously difficult, based on a conservative judgement,
it is estimated that some 58 per cent of the 1,207 infants
under the age of twelve months who died, did so from
feeding-related disease . `"9 Infant deaths made up a third of
all deaths in Toronto in that year .
Babies were fed with glass bottles, first submarineshaped
ones styled after the ceramic bottles from earlier in
the century and later upright, mass-produced bottles (fig .
7) . Only two Ontario bottles exist in the Museum's collection,
reflecting the fragility of such artifacts, the lack of
importance given to infancy, which is after all only a short
period in life, and possibly the fact that not many were in
circulation . Chavasse's insistence "I say bottles, for there
ought to be at least two - must be kept beautifully
clean," ;" Suggests that mothers usually only bought the
one .
Patent foods were also widely used . Dr . Blackader
writing in 1884, though probably about Montreal, says
"of the milk foods Nestles' and Gerbers' are probably most
used . Of those prepared from Liebig's formula, Mellin's is
undoubtedly the best ; and I have occasionally prescribed it
with good results."" Justus von Liebig, the German
chemist classified organic foodstuffs and in 1867 devised
and patented a food advertised as "the most perfect substitute
for mother's milk ." It was the first of an endless
variety of infant foods, composed of dried milk, cereal and
a malt preparation . Mellin's food is one of twelve varieties
of patent infant foods in the Museum collection .'`
The foods divide into three groups based on their
contents : dried cow's milk with some cereal and sugar
(Nestle's Food, Horlick's) ; a malted preparation
(Mellin's) ; pure cereal to be used with fresh cow's milk
(Eskay's Food, Imperial Granum) . They owe their
popularity to their ease of preparation, "just mix a large
teaspoonful of the Patent Food with a little cold water or
milk . . . ." (Dr . Ridge's Food) and the medical and scienrific
seal of approval with which they were advertised (fig .
f3) . Mincasea claimed to "transform cow's milk into
healthy Breast Milk for the successful rearing of Infants as
recommended sit the Meeting of the Harveian Society and
Medical Society by Drs . Routh, Lobb, Brooke and
numerous obstetricians ." Mothers now found themselves
the target of a flourishing advertising industry assisted by
doctors themselves . Physicians were increasingly involved
in giving advice on infant feeding, a difficult position to
be in when there was an absence of unanimity about the
best method .
A most valuable document, in that it gives examples of
all possible methods of infant feeding at the end of the
century, is a notebook kept by a public health nurse in
Toronto, 1H98-1899 . ' { One of the possible sites for
Fig . 8 . Dr . Ridge's Patent Food, c . 1870, 11 cm high .
(Cat . no . 980 . 18 . 3 20 .)
childbirth was the maternity boarding house . The users of
these lying-in homes were unmarried women, equally
divided between working women in the city and women
from outlying villages . Toronto required these homes to
be licensed and inspected and to retain the services of a
medical practitioner . These reports are invaluable for the
word of mouth testimony they provide from tile women
who answered the nurse's questions . Of the ten women
who gave complete answers to the set of questions, three
answered that they were breast-feeding or would breastfeed
their babies, including one woman who ultimately
planned to place her child with the Children's Aid
Society . One unmarried woman stated that the baby's
father would adopt the baby and hire a wet-nurse for it .
Six women were or had been bottle-feeding their infants .
The bottle in figure 9 is typical of those used in the late
nineteenth century . Two of the infants in this group had
died, one, who had been fed on milk and barley water, of
"summer colic" and one, who had been born ten days
earlier weighing ten pounds, "of nothing in particular ."
Of the mothers with living infants, one was using
"Nestles milk food" and another "canned food" which

NO"1'F.S
Fig . 9 .
Molded glass bottle designed to rest flat so that the
mother need not actually hold the bottle herself to feed
the baby . Missing a stopper through which a tube,
ending in a nipple, was attached . 14 .2 cm high .
Embossed lettering reads "The Pet Feeding Bottle ."
(Cat . no . 980 . 1R .73 .) Black rubber seamless nipple,
the type usually used with the kind of bottle shown
here, 4 .2 cm long . (Cat . no . 974 .36 .)
drew this comment on the infant from the nurse - "does
not look thriving ."
In summary, this paper describes the research relationship
between objects and archival material .
An examination of objects, even if only a visual examination
by a museum visitor, can suggest the kinds of skills
needed to use the object, or the problems and difficulties
that might be encountered in its use . This is particularly
apparent when looking at the breast-feeding equipment
illustrated earlier in this paper .
Museum collections of artifacts and graphic material
relating to infant feeding function, as do all material
history collections, as evidence of past practices . The
collections are the link between archival evidence and the
imagination and occasionally the only evidence of past
practice . Observations resulting from a careful and critical
examination of objects can be used to test hypotheses
based on the archival evidence, which is the type most
commonly used by non-museum historians .
:
.
. .
.
:
. . . .
. . .
.
1 . For example, Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies : Child Care from
Locke to Spock (Oxford : Oxford Universirry Press, 19R4) ; Edward
Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York : Basic Books,
Inc ., 1977) ; Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in
England 1500-1800 (Harmondsworth, Eng . : Pelican, 1979) ;
George D. Sussman, Selling Mother's Milk : The Wetnursing Business
in France 1715-1914 (Chicago University of Illinois Press, 1982) .
2 Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Lifie
(New York : Vintage Books, 1962) .
3 . [bid, p . 374 .
4 . Shorter, op cit . (note 1), p . xvi
5 . Stone, op . cit . (note 1)
6 . Shorter, Stone, Sussman, op . cit . (note 1) . See also Elisabeth
Badinter, Mother Love : Myth and Reality (New York : Macmillan,
1981) ; Lloyd de Mause, ed ., The History of Childhood (New York
Harper Torchbook edition, 1975) ; Valerie Fildes, "Weaning the
Elizabethan Child," Nursing Times (July 1980) : 1357-9 ; (August
1980) : 1402-3 .
7 Shorter, op cit (note 1), p . xiii
8 Dr T.G .H Drake (1891-1959), the co-developer of the infant
food Pablum and paediatrician at the Hospital for Sick Children in
Toronto, wrote 36 papers based on his own collection of artifacts,
prints, documents and books . Now held in the Museum of the
History of Medicine, Toronto, this collection of some 9,000
items, with its focus on infant feeding and child-care practices
from the classical civilisations of Egypt, Greece and Rome to
nineteenth-century Europe is unique in North America Although
based in Toronto, Drake concentrated on collecting European
rather than American objects . See also Thomas E . Cone, 2l)0 Years
of Feeding Infants in America (Columbus, Ohio : Ross Laboratories,
:
.
.
:
.
.
:
. :
.
:
1976) for bibliographies .
9 . For example, W. Cadogan, An Essay upon Nursing and the Management
of Children from Their Birth to Three Years of Age (London J .
Roberts, 1772) ; M . Underwood, A Treatise on the Diseases oJ
Children (London : J . Mathews, 17R4) .
10 . These ideas are discussed in pp . 96-1(l0, Audrey Eccles, UhstetricJ
and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England (Kent, Ohio: Kent
State University Press, 1982) .
ll . A .Jacobi,Therapeutics ofInfamy andChildhood (Philadelphia :J .B .
Lippincott, 1896), 91 .
12 William Buchan, Domestic Medicine or the Family Physician (New
York : Richard Scott, 1812)
13 . M .Q . Innes, ed ., Mrs . Simcoe'J Diary (Toronto Macmillan,
1965), 33
14 . In Charles G Roland, ed ., Health . Disease and Medicine Esiays in
Canadian History (Toronto : Hannah Institute for the History of
Medicine, 1984) .
15 . H ./ . Langton, ed ., A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada (Toronto
Clarke, Irwin & Co . Ltd ., 1950), 191 . See also Mary Larratt
Smith, Young Mr. Smith in Upper Canada (Toronto : University of
Toronto Press, 1980), 121-122, 124, 137 .
16 . T.G.H . Drake, "Antiques of Medical Interest : Nipple Shields,"
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 1, no 2 317 .
Drake's collection contains silver examples .
17 . Linda Siegel, "Child Health and Develoliinent in English Canada
1790-1850" in Roland, op ., cit . (note 15), pp . 36(1-38(1 .
18 . Hugh Smith, Letters to Married Women on Nurting and tbe Management
of Cbildren (London : C. and G Kearsley, 1792), 97 .
19 . D.F . Condie, "On Diseases of Children" (Philadelphia Lea and
Blanchard, 1850), 45 .
20 . See Rima D. Apple, "To Be Used Only under the Direction of a
Physician ; Commercial Infant Feeding and Medical Practice
1870-1940," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 54 (1980) : 402-
417 .
21 . J .L. Smith, A Treatise on the Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, 2nd
ed . (Philadelphia : H .C . Lea, 1872) .
2 7

22 . In A Treatise on the Diseases of Children, 4th ed . (London : J .
Mathews, 1799) .
23 . The word formula was used to mean a recipe or prescription from
1706 on . Its use in chemistry to mean the expression of the
constituents of a compound by means of symbols and figures dates
from 1846 . It was in general scientific use from the 1850s.
Philipp Biedert (1846-1916) a Strasbourg paediatrician is considered
to be the first person to make scientific studies of infant
feeding . Advertisers built on the scientific basis of the new artificially
modified milks to sell their products . The scientific word
formula is now used as a generic term in North America for the
infant's milk, unlike in England where the baby if given its
"bottle" not its "formula ."
24 . T.M . Rotch (1848-1914), a Boston paediatrician, developed the
percentage method of milk modification to provide a milk
mixture containing the exact amounts of milk, fat, sugar and ash
capable of digestion by the individual baby . His method required
the prescribing paediatrician to make such complicated
mathematical calculations that a commercial enterprise, the
Walker-Gordon Laboratories, was established in Boston in 1891,
with branches in major North American cities, including
Toronto, to produce the milk mixtures .
25 . Cone, op . cit (note 9), p . 32 .
26 . This assertion is based on an examination of the contents of
Canadian medical journals published c . 1850-1900 . With one
exception articles or their abstracts originated in England or
America ; thus the advice available to medical practitioners in
Ontario was English and American .
27 . Gregory S . Kealey, "Hogtown, Working Class Toronto at the
Turn of the Century" (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1974) for
illuminating illustrations of working-class housing .
28 . Registrar General, Report Relating to the Registration of Births,
Marriages, and Deaths in the Province of Ontario, 1890 (Toronto :
Warwick and Sons, 1892) .
29 . The following disease categories are included here : cholera
infantum, diarrhoeal diseases, anaemia and infantile debility,
enteritis and convulsions .
30 . Pye Henry Chavasse, Counsel to a Mother on the Care and Rearing of
Her Children (London : J . and A. Churchill, 1884), 25 . This copy
is signed and dated by the owner, Annie Dickson, Brockville
1888 .
31 . A.D . Blackader, "On Infant Feeding," Canadian Medical and
Surgical Journal (1884) : 203-211 .
32 . The following products are represented : Eskay's Albumenized
Food, Carnrick's soluble food, Mellin's, Imperial Granum, Dr .
Ridge's Patent Food, Mincasea, Wemalta, Allen & Hanbury's,
Benger's, Nestle's Milk Food, Glaxo . These products span
c . 1870-c. 1930 . They were all collected in Ontario, where they
were presumably available commercially . Allen and Hanbury's
Food and Wemalta were actually produced in Ontario; the rest
were made in England and the United States .
33 . RG 11, F1, City of Toronto Archives, contains reports on four
boarding houses .

"Beauty Unadorned" : Dressing Children in
Late Nineteenth-Century Ontario
Christina Bates
ResumelAbstract
Cotnme toutes le.r manifestations de la culture, la fafon d'habiller les enfants reflete les attitudes sociales d'une epoqtte . L'attention accordee
it l'habillement des enfants it la fin du XIX` .riede s'in.ccrivazt dans un soucz plus general de leur developpement mental et de leur education
morale . Le present document traite de.r attitudes dominantes a d'egard des enfants en Ontario au XIXe .riecle, ainsi que de leurs repercussions
sur le vetement de l'enfant . On y etudie en particulier les questions relatives a l'hygiene des enfant.c, qui avait uate incidence sur leur hahillement,
et les tentatives de definition du rexe et de l'age dun enfant par le vetement .
Like all manifestations of culture, the way in which children are clothed reflects the social attitudes of the time . The concern for proper
practices of dressing children in the late nineteenth century was part of a larger concern for their mental and moral development . This paper
discusses the prevalent attitudes to children in nineteenth-century Ontario, and the influence those attitudes had on children's dress . 1 n
particular, the issues in children's health care affecting the way children were clothed and the attempts at sex and age definition through
children's dress are examined.
Children in Nineteenth-Century Ontario
In the early years of settlement in Ontario and continuing
later in rural areas, attitudes to children were shaped,
to a large degree, by economic exigency . The frontier
family formed an economic unit, with all members
participating in the work of clearing land, farming, or
running small workshops or businesses . Children were
valued as potential contributors to that unit . The childhood
years were not valued as a separate time of life ;
rather, young children were encouraged to move quickly
out of infancy into young adulthood . At an early age,
children participated in the labour-intensive activity of
the family, and their contribution grew in proportion to
their age and physical growth . In this close economic
unit, both parents shared in the child's upbringing . '
By the 1850s Ontario was undergoing a transformation
. While much of the province was still devoted to
agriculture, the trend toward rapid industrial development,
new transportation systems and tremendous urban
growth had begun and was to accelerate in the decades
following .
Compared with rural areas, the city produced new and
visible problems that the moral-conscious middle class
strove to alleviate or reform . One of the major urban
concerns was children without support : the orphaned,
poor, sickly, and abandoned. This focus on children was
an example of the major shift in attitudes to children in
nineteenth-century Ontario . Before 1850 these children
were treated as part of the general pauper population and
were institutionalized along with destitute adults in poor
houses or hospitals . In the second half of the century,
specialized institutions were created to deal with children,
such as the Protestant Orphans' Homes . The creation of
institutions exclusively devoted to the welfare of children
was evidence of the growing recognition of childhood as a
special time of life, requiring protection and segregation .2
Ontario school reform was another result of the
changing perception of childhood . In Ontario's early years
schooling was provided on an informal basis at home, at a
private teacher's residence or the occasional common
school . A child's parents or guardian chose whether a child
would attend school and for how long, which often
depended upon the work demands at home .
After 1840, the school took on more and more of a role
in providing a protective environment in which children
could develop morally and intellectually . School legislation
made this possible by the formation of free public
schools, the expansion and centralization of a school
system, and, by the School Act of 1871, compulsory
education for all Ontario children .3 Schooling prevented
children from being quickly assimilated into adult
activities . Schoolchildren became a breed apart, requiring
their own special equipment, literature, activities and
clothes .
The middle class promoted public institutions, such as
Orphans' Homes and public schools to protect and
provide direction for children . They also believed that the
foundation of society was the family . The "responsible"
family in mid- to late nineteenth-century Ontario was
understood to be from the ranks of the urban Protestant
m I 'ddle class . 4 The urban middle-class family 1 did 1 not form
an economic unit, as did the rural family . Father left home
25

every day for the office, factory or shop . The middle-class
home was seen as a sanctuary, separated from the vices and
clamour of the city, providing peace and support for
father, and protection and guidance for the children .
Unlike the mother of a rural family, who participated in
the economically productive activity of the farm, the
urban middle-class woman was expected to devote her
time to home maintenance, social duties, and management
of children .
A proliferation of child-care guides provided detailed
instruction on the proper care, feeding, clothing and
disciplining of children . Mothers were instructed to
ensure the child formed good habits in work, play and
social activities . The emphasis was on social control ; children,
by virtue of their dependence and vulnerability,
needed special attention and guidance .
Many child-care guides focussed their attention on the
physical well-being of the child, a result of an increasing
interest in the "science" of the body and medicine . The
guides advocated greater involvement of the mother in the
health of her children, for example, by breast-feeding .
They advised that mothers take the time to provide all the
elements of good health for their children : exercise,
outdoor activity, loose clothing to allow freedom of movement,
fresh air, and simple, nourishing food . Management
of children, they believed, was generally either too
lax or too confining ; children should be encouraged to
participate in those pastimes recognized as part of "childhood
. "
As the nineteenth century progressed, the middle-class
family showed greater concern and exerted greater control
over the health, behaviour and appearance of their
children . There was an awareness of the specialness of
children, and a corresponding awareness of the need for
protection and control . Unlike the rural child, valued for
his contribution to domestic labour, the middle-class
child was valued as a representative of the family's station
in society, reflecting the parents' tastes, learning, wealth
and gentility (fig . 1) .5
While some of the new interest in children respected
the child's individuality and need for freedom, it also
spurred an increasing emphasis on the child as an extension
of parental ambitions and status in society . Children's
dress came to play a large part in this new interest .
Issues in Dressing Children
Child-care guides, household manuals, health-care
books, and women's periodicals all had much to say about
children's dress . Literature on child care was popular from
the early nineteenth century, published in Britain and
North America, and written by experienced mothers, and
religious spokesmen and -women through to the end of
the nineteenth century . By the 1870s, however, new
.
.
Fig . 1 . Portrait of the Clarke Family, Toronto, mid- to late
1890s . In this portrait of a shopkeeper's family the
children's grooming, like that of the mother, indicates
the family's success . The younger boy on the right
wears a Zouave suit, while his older brother in the
foreground has on the tailored Norfolk suit of the
school-aged boy The eldest boy is dressed like his
father . The younger child has on fashionable short
clothes, with a cut of sleeve similar to the dresses of the
older girls and mother . (Ontario Archives, acc
111858 .)
types of authors contributed to the literature :
social
reformers and educators who viewed child care as a means
to a better society, and physicians, who explained child
care in scientific terms . By this time, child-care guides
were being published in Canada ."
The child-care literature was aimed at the middle-class
wife and mother who often had the sole responsibility for
the well-being of her children . The literature subjected
traditional practices in dressing children to the scrutiny of
science, while informing the mother about physiology
and hygiene .
The child-care advice was usually vociferous in urging
mothers to dress their children to allow for the growing
body and freedom of movement . The customs and
fashions of the period showed the effects of this advice in
the development of practical and suitable clothing styles .
But the strength of the reformers' pleas is an indication
that they were trying to curb the current trend for dressing
children in clothing that was restrictive, fussy and
impractical .
26

In the dressing of children, the child-care guides
cautioned against several general practices that caused
restriction to movement and bodily processes . For infants,
advice included loosening the restrictive binder or
"flannel band," as it was advertised in the Eaton's
catalogues . The band, a bias strip of cloth, was wound
around the baby's abdomen, to support the back and the
dressing of the umbilical cord, and to supply warmth . The
guides also cautioned that infants' dresses should not be so
long or cumbersome as to prevent the free movement of
the legs and feet . 7
The major issue in the literature was the tightness of
girls' underclothes . This was one issue of many in the
dress-reform movement of the 1870s, and 1880s, which
aimed at changing the damaging effects fashion had on the
health of women and girls . Boys' clothes were considered
sensible and healthy, but the corsetting of young girls
caused lengthy debate and often vehement protest . It was
generally admitted that some corsetting was essential to
the health and comfort of young daughters, whose growing
bones and muscles needed support."
The real problem was the tight lacing of the corset,
which changed the natural, growing proportions of girls
into the desired fashionable silhouettes . Tight lacing was
said to be the cause of a long list of health problems
including weakness of the lungs, poor circulation, displacement
of internal organs, palpitations of the heart and
even consumption .`'
commercial advertisements, and fashion plates showed
children's dresses cut to fit a fashionable figure, made
possible only by tight lacing .
But some corset companies
offered products that gave support, but not constriction,
made of lightweight, more elastic materials, stiffened
with fine flexible whalebone or cotton cording in place of
heavy whalebone or metal . The Eaton's catalogues of the
1880s and 1890s advertised the American-made "Ferris
Good Sense Waists" (fig . 2) . These corsets were clearly
shaped to fit the natural lines of the body, with no
constriction at the waist or bosom .
They also had a ring
buckle at the hip to which was attached a strip of elastic to
support stockings . This was an improvement over garters,
which fastened around the leg, tending to "prevent the
free circulation of the blood, to say nothing of the discomfort
of the poor child ."'' Some corsets had buttons to
which petticoats and drawers were attached, so that these
heavy items were supported by the shoulders, rather than
the waist .
Like the corset, petticoats were not condemned
- just the manner of wearing them .
Another constriction to both boys' and girls' bodi
that child-care guides protested was the wearing of tigh
fashion-conforming footwear, considered very injurious i
growing feet .
Boots were particularly bad, and the guid,
recommended that "shoes are far preferable to boots : boo
weaken instead of strengthen the ankle ." 12 In Ontar
children's portraits, the "dress up" footwear was the tlgl
side-buttoned boot (fig . 7), while ru£i;ed laced boots we
Fashion often turned a deaf ear on this "slaughter
the innocents ."1° Corsets for children were comm
y'EABEB' G00D 61rN0& FEBBI3' Ot00D 8EN3D
U719 2206 66e» style 201 . 65c.
joys or of rle 1 to 4 yean. Boys or dirle. d to E yeart;
BuperOoe material.
BuperRno meterisl.
Buttons the back, Buttons up the baCt
WCttenp d Drab.
Wbits and Drab.
r .~ , FERFi15'
GOOD SENSE
Style ala . lr

practice was a hold-over from the early nineteenth-century
belief in "hardening" or the strengthening of the child's
constitution by exposure . " The fashion was popular
through to the 1870s, and family portraits of this period
show all the women with standing collars, and the children
in decolletage .
By the IRf;Os bare shoulders had disappeared, replaced
by the opposite health craze : wool next to the skin . Childcare
guides advocated that every inch of the child be
covered with woollen undergarments, since it was
believed that wool flannel, being a poor conductor of heat,
protected the body from changes in the weather (fig . 3) . 1 '
The concern for Suitable underclothing for children
extended to outer clothes, as well . Children's fashions
generally paralleled adult fashion, but any style that was
adapted to suit the needs and activity of growing children
was applauded .
An example is the pinafore, an article of clothing
specially designed for children to protect their clothing
from soiling from school, play, work, or outdoor activity .
Pinafores were first worn early in the nineteenth century
and were plain covers with a drawstring at the neck . By
the end of the century there were many styles, usually in
white cotton or linen so they could be bleached clean . 1'
The child-care guides prescribed plenty of outdoor
exercise fur children . Fashion corresponded with garments
especially designed for active outdoor and sports wear . For
example, the bathing costume, properly worn by children
bv the 1870s, consisted of a loose tunic and knicker-
bockers . By the 1880s, a one-piece bathing suit was
introduced, made of stretchy jersey cloth . Jersey became
very I,opular for all children's garments, heinK very comfortable,
practical and warm, but not heavy (fig . 4) .
A new garment was worn for exercise at school . School
planners believed that sitting for long hours in the classroom
was unhealthy, particularly for urban children .
Exercise classes were introduced into the Ontario school
curriculum by the 1860s . '`' Children were trained in
calisthenics, gymnastics, and bar-bell or Indian cluh exercises
. Boys wore their sensible school clothes to class, but a
special dress was designed for girls, consisting of a loose
yoked blouse and skirt, and knickerbocker drawers . 1'
But the movement toward greater freedom in children's
dress did not proceed uninterrupted .
In the late
nineteenth century, there were very divergent trends . On
the one hand, the greater awareness and appreciation of
children led to the adoption of many modes of dressing
and styles of garments of greater simplicity, comfort and
practicality .
On the other hand, the awareness and
appreciation led to the extreme "dressing Up" of children
to please their mothers, their family, and their society,
rather than for the children, themselves .
This "consplcuous
consumption" was made possible by a rising standard
of living for the middle class, and a corresponding rise in
mass production, marketing and advertising . I"
Contrary to the advice about the length of infants'
dresses, the fashionable length as shown in portraits of the
1R)()s was longer than it had been for one hundred years .
The well-dressed baby was an emblern of material pride
THESE ARE TWO AWFULLY
JOLLY CIRLS,
They are both also avPfully jolly
comfortable, for they wear the
celebrated HEALTH BRAND
undervests, Comfort and luzur
combined . Recommended by a~
the leading Doctors in Canada.
For sale bg every first-class Dr
Goods House in THE DOMINION,
,r and by
W. A. Mt7RRAY & CU ., Toronto .
Fig . 3 . Advertisement for Health Brand Undervest, 189 I . It
was believed in the IHR()s and 1 ;19Us, that woollen
28
.
undergarrnents worn next to the skin were necessary for
good health . (l-ctdle.r'_Janriial X1, no -I [April 1firJ1] :
1 1 .)

also the mental and moral development of the child .
Mothers fostered pride and vanity in the impressionable
minds of their children to the horror of the experts :
Dress! dress! dress! is made with them, at a tender
age, and when first impressions are the strongest, .+
most important consideration . Thus they are
rendered vain and frivolous . . . and, if they live to
be women - which the present fashion is likely
frequently to prevent - what are they' Silly,
simpering, delicate,
W
lack-a-daisical nonentities .
Fashion often presented a romantic, rather than realistic,
view of children .
storybook characters,
Little boys were dressed up like
inspired for example, by the
illustrations in the child's story Little Lord F,iuntlero
whose little hero sported a version of cavalier costume of
the seventeenth century . This "antique" fashion persisted
into the twentieth century and was hateful to little boys .
Girls, too, were dressed in fussy garments inspired by
storybooks, such as those illustrated and/or written by
Kate Greenaway .
The Greenaway style was a vague
Regency revival, and the nostalgic old-fashioned style
made girls look feminine, quaint and coy . Unlike earlier
children's books of edification and religious tract many of
the storybooks of this period were written for the delight
of children .
It is perhaps ironic that these books inspired
fashion to design garments for children that were a misery
rather than a delight to wear .
Fig. 4 .
Portrait of the John King Family children, Berlin
(Kitchener), Ontario, about 1882 . The boy standing is
William Lyon Mackenzie King, with sister Jennie in
front, brother Max seated with sister Bella below .
These upper middle-class children are wearing remarkably
simple and comfortable clothes compared with
other portraits of the 1880s . Bella has on a loose dress
with low waist, pleated skirt and Moliere vest . The
others wear plain stretchy jersey suits . Jennie, with
short cropped hair, wears a pleated skirt and the
ubiquitous lace collar . Max with curly locks wears a
short pant suit with Eton collar and silk scarf . (Public
Archives of Canada, C 735? .)
and achievement - "nothing can be considered too elaborate
for our young people," claimed the T . Eaton Company
catalogue of 1888 .
9
1
Children were often dressed in clothes made of fashions
that w~ere completely impractical for any active Child, such
as velvet, plush, and silk, trimmed ,vith embroidery,
lace, and fur, tied around with huge sashes and bows (fig .
1) . On the feet were worn tight-fitting high-buttoned
boots .
Child-care advisors protested this excess of fashion tin
children because it restricted not only the physical, but
Middle-class romantic interest in things military,
folksy and exotic translated into miniature copies of
uniforms and costumes for children . Portraits .abound of
little soldiers, little peasants, little sailors and even little
Turkish odalisques .
So, while mothers were counselled in providing loose,
comfortable clothing for their children, they were also
lured by fashion fads reflecting a sentimentalized view of
children .
Gender, Age, and Dress
Fashion played a large part in indicating the sex and age
of children in the late nineteenth century . There have
always been particular garments and clothing styles
marking the passage from one stage of childhood to the
next . Until the end of the eighteenth century, there were
only three clothing stages : the swaddling clothes of the
baby, the petticoats of infancy and the miniature copies of
adult Clothes fc)r the child . Boys and girls dressed alike,
Until they assumed adult clothes, when their garments
began to represent their sex and role in life . Girls continued
to ,vear female fashions, while boys were breeched,
that is, they gave up petticoats for the adult breeches,
waiscoat, shirt and coat .
As the nineteenth century progressed, more stages
the early years of life were rcro~L~nivckl, in .irkcd b\ part ic
hr o .irninnrc n,l crvlr.c 't'I -- r .r,~l1 .. . ., .,- . . , . . . . . .

accommodate a new concept of childhood as a special and
complex time of life with several recognizable stages, each
stage worthy of its own clothing styles . The consecutive
stages are discussed in detail below .
The garments the baby wore were called long clothes
because they reached below the feet . They included the
flannel binder, for warmth and support, the shirt or waist,
long petticoats, long robe and cloak .-1 Child-care literature
recommended dressing baby in short clothes as soon
as possible, from three to eight months . 2- Short clothes
allowed the crawling infant and early toddler freedom of
movement . Short clothes included petticoats, dresses,
drawers, pinafores, cloaks, hose and buttoned boots or
laced shoes .-' Short clothes took on some of the features of
current adult female fashion . For example, the large puff
sleeve of the early 1890s was copied in the toddlers' dresses
(see figs . I and 5) .
Fig . 7 . Boy in Zouave suit, 1890s . This lad is no doubt the
show piece of his family . The 7.ouave style, similar to
the fauntleroy suit in romance and decoration, was a
very popular Outfit for photographic portraiture in
Ontario . (Collection : Guelph Civic Museum, cat . no .
976.80 . 13 .)
There was little or no differentiation between boys and
girls at these two "petti(oat" stages . Indeed, in photugraphs
of children under three years old, it is difficult to
tell -whether a child is a boy or a girl . Both wore garments
indicating their subordination to their parents : the dresses
trimmed with lace, velvet and ribbon .
Fig . 5 . Portrait of the Kemp family children, St . Thomas,
Ontario, about IH9? . In the 1890s the kilt suit was
losing favour and small boys begged to wear short
pants at an earlier age . Family history relates that
Dick, on the right, refused to wear his kilt suit after the
age of three . No doubt his curly locks also disappeared
at that time . The little boy on the left wears a dress, his
brother behind, a boy's blouse with laced front . The
girl has on a typically dark-coloured dress, with a
simple bodice decorated to simulate the plastron of
women's fashion . (Private collection ; photographer :
A . A . Green, St . Thomas .)
This holding back from sex identification also reflects
the current idealized view of childhood as an age of sexless
innocence . Late nineteenth-century attitudes no longer
invested children with original sin, and they were not yet
influenced by the psychological theories Of" Sigmund
Freud . Sentiment of the time took delight in infant
androgyny . Even deliberate mixing uf-) of sex identification
was popular, such as the vogue for long curls fur boys
and cropped short halt cuts for girls (fig . +) .''
Boys at the age of three to six were ready to wear transition
:.i garments defining them as male, but not yet ready
i(1

to don men's clothing . The kilt suit was one of the most
popular garments to bridge the gap between frocks and
the eventual trousers (fig . 5) . This fashion, starting at the
height of the romantic Highland revival in tile 1850s,
provided an easy transition : being still like a skirt, but
identified with the clothing of the Scotsman . Hdtper'j
13,r~,r.ir of 1893 explains the transition from petticoats to
kilt, :
Up to two years old, and in some cases later, there
is no difference made in the costuming of the little
boy and the little girl . . . . But the small male animal
of the human species will probably be made by his
doting parents to declare his sex by his garments at
as early a period as possible . The first step, of
course, is to put him in kilts .-5
Usually made of -checked woollens, the kilt suit comprised
a kilted skirt, attached to an underbodice, with buttoned
waistcoat and open jacket .
A variety of forms of the knickerbocker suit was worn
by little boys concurrent with the kilt suit . Knickerbocker
suits, so-named after the fanciful seventeenth-century
Dutch settlers in an 1859 Washington Irving burlesque,
were characterized by short pants and fancy top or tunic
(fig . 6) .
Another little boy's fashion was the Zouave suit . When
first introduced in the 1860s, it was more tailored and
truer to the original . In imitation of the Zouave or French
Light Infantry uniform, it was characterized by a short,
rounded and collarless jacket and full breeches closed at
the knee . By the 1890s, it had become a very fancy outfit,
worn with a lace- or ruffle-trimmed puffy shirt and a huge
silk bow at the neck (fig . 7) . The Eaton's catalogue called
this style a fauntleroy or brownie suit . The latter term
probably derives from the extremely popular series ofchildren's
books, starting in 1887, called The Brownies, Their
Book . Whatever term was used to describe it, the small
boy's romantic decorated and fussy suit was the choice of
many a proud Ontario mother for her "darling's" portrait .
By tar the garment most universally worn and lasting in
popularity was the sailor suit, designed for small boys and
even older boys (fig . S) . Worn first by the five-year-old
Prince of Wales in 1R-4G, it had every advantage : it had the
romance of military costume, inspiring pride in the
parents of the "little sailor" ; it delighted rather than, like
the fauntleroy suit, plagued its wearers ; it was very comfortable
; it could be worn tiir casual occasions, or, dressed
up with gold braid, was suitable for parties ; it was simple
to produce for the growing ready-made market . The T .
Eaton Company store had a large trade in sailor or,
Fig . 6. Knickerbocker suit, worn in Ontario, early 1880s, length of tunic 50 cm, length of pants 36 cm . The knickerbocker suit,
consisting of tunic and short trousers, was popular for little boys two to five years of age from the 1860s to the 1880s . This beige
and white stripped cotton suit with sailor collar is one version of the style . The trim, centre front panel and pleated skirt at the
back are remnants of feminine fashion . (Collection : Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, cat . no . 966 . 158 .59 . Gift of Mr .
Harold 13 . Burnham .)
A I

"blouse," suits and claimed : "Nothing is more stylish for a
child than a neat, not too elaborate blouse suit . . . We are
showing, we believe, the largest display of these garments
on the side of the continent ." 26
At five or six years of age, boys began to wear garments
that were tailored like men's clothes (fig . 1) . This coincided
with beginning school : "At six years of age, boys put
on short trousers and wear the plaited Norfolk jacket, a
patrol jacket or a double breasted reefer coat as the coat of
their school suits ."-7 With these school suits, boys often
wore a blouse, or waist, with a sailor or frilled collar and
Cuffs and a large bow tied at the neck -last remnants of the
"girlish" fashions of their earlier years .
At this age, boys were expected to begin taking part in
activities associated with their masculine role . As in the
adage "boys will be boys," they were encouraged to be
rambunctious and even mischievous . The practical clothing
for this age must have helped to make this behaviour
tolerable . Near the age of thirteen, when a boy was ready
to enter an adult world of work or higher education, short
pants were changed for long trousers to be worn with
regular shirts and suspenders .
The age of "breeching,° or transfer from skirts to pants
became progressively younger through the 1880s and
1Hc)Os . At the same time, transition garments such as the
kilt and the knickerbocker suit lost popularity, and boys
were put into adult tailored clothes much sooner (fig . 5) .
This could be because boys at school in the changing
urban, industrial society needed to show aggressiveness,
independence and competitiveness to get ahead .'8
Masculine clothes suited the new schoolboys in a changing
societ~, :
This is a rough world of ours, and they must rough
it ; they must be knocked about a great deal, and
the knocks will do them good . . . . Do not coddle
21)
them .
Girls' garments, after the long and short clothes stages,
took a completely different path from boys .
Centuries
ago, a three-year-old girl was dressed in a style that would
remain unchanged for the rest of her life .
After her
brothers exchanged dresses for breeches, she continued to
wear the same miniature adult gowns .
This could be
because a female's status remained essentially unchanged
from girlhood through her adult life; she was subordinate
and dependent first as a daughter, then as a wife . 'o
Clothing for girls in the nineteenth century did not
follow this pattern completely .
Girls did not have the
distinctive transitional clothes, such as knickerbocker or
kilt suits that boys did, but there were differences between
girls' dresses and those of their mothers .
The differences
became more and more pronounced as the century
progressed .
"The time has gone by," claimed tile Ladio
Journal of 1K1;~, "when the elaborate designs fur grown
Fig . S . Portrait of Velyien Ewart Henderson, Toronto, early
1880s . The sailor suit was extremely popular with both
little boys and their mothers, being comfortable and
romantic . This little sailor wears a wool cloth suits
with military braid, ruffled sailor blouse and straw
sailor hat . (Ontario Archives, S . 1-499 1 ; photographer
Norman and Fraser, Toronto .)
women were reduced in size merely for their young
~~i l
daughters .
The most noticeable difference between women's and
girls' dress was the length of the skirt . The younger the
girl the shorter the skirt, although the exact length of
skirt by age changed with fashion . As skirts lengthened,
girls' hair went up . Up to about the age Of' fourteen,
although there was much variation, girls wore their hair
over their shoulders in the I1ohular manner, whether in
braids, or loose . When ready to enter the adult world,
girls pinned up their hair, like their mothers .
Girls' garments took on the general style of the period .
portraits of children show, for example, all the changes in
the shape of the sleeve and decorative trimming during
the 1880s and 1890s (figs . I and 5) . But girls' clothes
were worn much looser than the adult garments, and in

awllt. -3t.J Wl.ll LI/Llltlultlu 111 It flalllt.lllltl N ~t) tlr 1
young figure . While the 1880s woman's bodice was fit
over an hourglass corsetted figure, a girl's bodice
draped loosely over a sash or belt (fig . 9) .
In the 1890s, a garment was designed that even more
diverged from adult wear : a loose frock falling free from a
yoke or smocked bodice (fig . 10) . These changes in outer
garments corresponded with changes in underclothing .
Corsetting forced the child into the bearing and behaviour
of the adult, but by the 1880s girls were allowed to be
girls for a longer period of time . The practice of tightlacing
girls' corsets was on the way out, and girls began
wearing corsets at a progressively older age .
Fig . I() . Detail advertisement for l.undborg perfume, 1888 .
Mother wears an elaborate and tight fitting gown,
while the little girl wears a loose yoked dress . (GoiJey)
Ladt's Book CXV11, no . 7p() [October 18RH] : ii .)
Attitudes to girls in general were changing, which was
reflected in their clothing . Girls were no longer expected
to be fragile and timid creatures . Rather, they were
encouraged to be active and robust : "She of the sparkling
eye, the strong, round arm, and the deep chest, who can
swim and row and ride horseback, and tramp five milesthis
is the girl the times demand ." '2 Girls' status like
their mothers' was changing, as they began to engage in
new roles in sports, higher education and careers . "
The new, active image of the girl of the 188()s required
loose, practical clothing styles . The sailor suit, which was
popttlar for boys since the ISCOs, was adapted for girls, as
a sailor blouse, worn loosely tucked into a pleated skirt .
Simple outfits made of jersey were also worn by boys and
girls alike, with short trousers and skirts, respectively .
For school and for casual, girls wore practical loose yoked
frocks and pinafore dresses .
By the late nineteenth century, the early years of I
had come to be seen as fundamentally important, and t
upbringing of children, especially the manner of dressi
them, was a grave concern . Young people no longer wc
from the petticoats of infancy straight into ad,
garments . Rather, they were protected from adult socii
for a longer period and wore garments indicating a tran
tional period .
New interest in children's development resulted
both a respect fur the child's individuality and "childis
pursuits, and an emphasis on the child as an extension
family ambitions . Child-care guides advocated ti
"childhood, like 'beauty unadorned,' is adorned t
most,"'' hut the garments chosen by Ontario parents
their children to wear in their photographic portraits vs
from simple and romfortable to elaborate and ostc
Fig . 9 . Child's dress, worn in Guelph, Ontario in 1888,
length 5? cm . This bright blue wool nvill dress is
styled with the plastron and revers of women's fashion
but has the distinctly childish loose cut, low belt and
sailor collar . (Collection : Royal Ontario Museum,
Toronto, Ontario, cat . no . 9G7 .23, a, b. Gift of Mrs .

NOTES
The child-care guides consulted in this paper present the prescribed
view of child rearing . Often written in the language of social reform,
they were trying to change traditional and entrenched practices of
dressing children and represented a new ideological standpoint on
children and health . An examination of other sources by individuals,
such as memoirs, journals and letters, might show if, when and how
the new ideas penetrated family life .
The fashion periodicals consulted also present a prescribed view of
how children should be dressed, whereas the mail-order catalogues,
photographs and original garments show what was actually worn .
These latter, although rich in relevant information, are limited in some
ways . There is little record of what kind of people ordered children's
clothing from, for example, the Eaton's catalogue, and in what quantity,
and for what occasions . While all of the photographs surveyed are
part of larger Ontario collections, few have specific information as to
the identity of the subject or the date . The unidentified photographs
are dated by clues such as the format of the photograph, the adults'
clothing and furnishings in the picture . Therefore it is possible to make
a general judgement about the fashionableness of Ontario children's
clothing, but not about when specific styles were introduced . Sometimes
the fabrics, fit, and trim of the garments can be identified in the
photographs, but it is usually impossible to tell whether the clothes
were tailor, home- or ready-made .
The photographs are more revealing about what children wore for
special occasions than what they wore for every day . Most of the
portraits were taken in a photographer's studio, and the children were
carefully dressed in their best and newest clothes . However, some of
the photographs surveyed were taken by amateur photographers and
provide more candid pictures of children playing and working indoors
and out in their casual clothes .
Children's garments usually have survived one hundred years
because they were worn for special memorable occasions or were particularly
fine . Like studio portraits, they do not often show what was
ordinary wear .
In general, all the sources - child-care guides, fashion magazines,
catalogues, studio and amateur photographs, and original garmentsrepresent
children's dress from middle-class families . It would be
necessary to consult different sources for lower-class children's dress .
.
:
:
.
: .
.
:
.
:
I Chad Gaffield, "Schooling, the Economy, and Rural Society in
Nineteenth Century Ontario" in Joy Parr, ed ., Childhood and
Family in Canadian History (Toronto : McClelland and Stewart,
1982), 73, 74 ; Neil Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian
Society (Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1976), 23 .
2 . Patricia T. Rooke and R .L . Schnell, "Childhood and Charity in
Nineteenth Century British North America," Social History 15,
no . 29 (May 1982) 157-179 .
3 . Alison Prentice, The School Pro»rotors (Toronto McClelland and
Stewart, 1977), 15, 16, 33, 34 .
4 Neil Semple, "The Nurture and Admonition of the Lord,
Nineteenth Century Canadian Methodists' Response to Childhood,"
Social History 14, no . 27 (May 1981) 164
5 Sally Helvenson, "Advice to American Mothers on the Subject of
Children's Dress 1800-1920," Dress, Journal of the Costume Society
of America 7 (198 1) : 46 .
6 . The guides published in Canada consulted in this study are : Pye
Henry Chavasse, Advice to a Mother (Toronto : Willing & Williamson,
1880) ; Dress and Health or Hotu to Be Strong (Montreal : John
Dougal l, 1880) ; Home and Health (London : The Advertiser, 1883) .
7 . Pye Henry Chavasse, op . cit (note 6), pp . 13, 91 . Dress and
Health, op . cit . (note 6), pp . 177, 178 ; Todd S . Goodholme, ed .,
The Domestic Cyclopedia, (Cincinatti Jones Bros ., 1881), 305 .
8 . Anita Rush, "Changing Women's Fashion and Its Social Context,"
Material History Bulletin 14 (Spring 1982) : 44 .
.
. . :
9 . Almost all the child-care books or domestic manuals tackled the
issue of tight lacing . See, for example, Catharine Beecher and
Harriet Beecher Stowe, American Woman's Home (New York : J . B.
Ford & Co ., 1869), 160-166 .
10 . Dress and Health, op . cit (note 6), p . 83 .
11 Godey'r Lady's Book CXIX, no 711 (September 1889) 243 .
.
.
.
.
. .
.
. :
.
.
.
.
12 . Pye Henry Chavasse, op . cit . (note 6), p . 94 .
13 . Catharine Beecher and Harriet BeecherStowe in American Women's
Home, op . cit . (note 9), pp . 165, 166, adhere to virtues of the
hardening . Homearrd Health, op . cit . (note 6), p . 177, presents the
argument against, a decade later .
14 . Dress and Health, op cit . (note 6), p . 86 ; Pye Henry Chavasse, op .
cit . (note 6), p . 93 .
15 . See, forexample, the Eaton's Catalogue 33 (Spring/Summer 1896) :
57, Children's pinafores .
16 . J . George Hodgins, The School House (Toronto : Department of
Public Instruction for U.C ., 1857), 98-127 .
17 . See, for example, Godey's Lady's Book CXIX, no 709 (July 1889) :
l, Girls Gymnastic Costume .
18 . In the 1870s and early 1880s Canada was experiencing an
economic depression, but that was a temporary downward swing
in a steadily growing and prospering continuum . Industrial
growth, a rising standard of living and increasing social mobility
brought a greater materialism to Canadian societies . Neil Sutherland,
op . cit . (note 1), p . 22 . For a discussion of the sources for
fashion information and the promotion, marketing, and distribution
of children's clothing in late nineteenth-century Ontario, see
Christina Bates's manuscript on file, Parks Canada, Ontario
Region, Cornwall, to be published in Manuscript Report Series,
Parks Canada, Ottawa .
19 . Eaton's Catalogue 5 (Fall/Winter 1888-89) : 12 .
20 . Pye Henry Chavasse, op . cit (note 6), pp . 96-97 .
21 . See, for example, "About Babies," The Delineator XXXVI, no . 9
(April 1891) : 250, 319-321 .
22 . Pye Henry Chavasse, op . cit (note 6), p . 16 ; Homeand Health, op .
cit . (note 6), p . 213 .
23 . See, for example, the infants' clothes advertised in the Eaton's
Catalogue (FalllWinter 1890-91) : 15
24 . Jo B . Paoletti, "Clothes Make the Boy 1860-1910," Dress, journal
of the Costume Society of America 9 (1983) : 19 .
25 . Harper's Bazaar, July 1893, p . 553, quoted in Sally Helvenston,
op . cit . (note 5), p 40
26 . Eaton's Catalogue 26 (Fall/Winter 1893-94) : 38 .
27 . Godey's Lady's Book CXXII, no . 728 (February 1891) : 169 .
28 . Jo B . Paoletti, op . cit . (note 24), p . 19 .
29 . Pye Henry Chavasse, op . cit . (note 6), pp 268-269 .
30 Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament (New York Alfred A .
Knopf, 1980), 45, 46 .
31 Ladies'forrrnalIV, no . 1 (September 1884) : 18 .
32 Ibid ., p . 9 .
33 Anita Rush, op . cit . (note 8) .
34 . Annie E . Myers, Home Dressmaking (Chicago : Charles H. Sergel &
Co ., 1892), 149
34

Training, Restraining and Sustaining :
Infant and Child Care in the Late Nineteenth Century
Hilary Russell
ResunzelAb.rtract
Cette etude examine certain.c facteurr qui ont exerce une influence deterniinante sur le.r appareil.r d'apprentissage, de retenue et de support des
nourris.ront et petit.r enfants de moins de deux ans. Parrni ces appareils confru pour faciliter la tache de ceux qui prennent soin des en/ants, on
retrouve notantnTent le.r berceaux, le.r trotte-bebe, le.r ceintrrres et les barriere.r de .recurite, et les biberons a longue titine . En outre, l'etude tire
de.r conclusions sur les attitudes historiques a l'igard de la petite enfance et de l'enfance qui sont itroitentent leee.r aux objets etudiis . Elle ne se
limite pas au X1X` siecle, bien que cette periode en soit le point de mire .
This paper addresses the implications of and some of the factors behind some training, restrainirtg and .ru.rtainirng devices forr babies arrd
small children, up to about two years old. The devices include cribs, baby walkers, safety belts and gates, and long-tube nursing bottles,
along with other artifacts designed to ease the burden of child care . These material objects are connected to historical attitudes towards infancy
and childhood . The discussion is not limited to the late nineteenth century, though the periodprovides a focal point .
Scholars writing about the history of childhood often
speculate on whether or not a child's life over the centuries
has improved . Child labour, routine and harsh corporal,
even capital, punishments, declarations on the urgent
necessity of breaking the child's will and on infant depravity
and damnation - these kinds of things may incline
one to view the modern period as one of great progress in
child nurture . Evidence from the material culture is also
cited . As J . H . Plumb wrote, "Wherever we turn in the
world of children - clothes, pets, toys, education, sport,
music and art, their world was richer, more varied, more
intellectually and emotionally exciting than it had been in
earlier generations ."' Lloyd deMause is a leading exponent
of the Whiggish school, going so far as to state that
"the history of childhood is a nightmare from which we
have only recently begun to awaken ." 2
This is in opposition to Phillippe Aries, whose seminal
work Centuries of Childhood has influenced virtually all
subsequent scholarship on childhood history . 3 Employing
some evidence from iconography, children's clothing,
toys and games, Aries concluded that the Middle Ages did
not know strict divisions between childhood and adulthood
. Children fitted into the whole society, with all its
diversity, and were not isolated from it in the bosom of an
obsessively child-centred nuclear family which imposed
upon them the discipline of long schooling and rigid conformity
to special standards and ideals . There is a certain
loss of freedom for the child in these developments .
Aries' influence can be seen in this statement :
Before the eighteenth century, Anglo-American
children had very few objects designed expressly for
their use . Those artifacts that did exist - cradles,
swaddling clothes, standing stools, leading strings
and walking stools, served two important functions
in the development of the child . They helped
the child approximate adult behavior, and they
aided the rapid assimulation of the child into an
adult society .
This paper will discuss many of the same objects with
the idea that such objects do not just happen - they represent
or embody certain ideologies or beliefs, and they have
certain implications, for adults as well as children .
Research into these objects and their background
indicated that the history of infant and child care is not
one of steady progression or retrogression . Instead, the
line is more like a graph - with ups and downs that sometimes
occur simultaneously .
If there is a constant in this
history, it is that people charged with looking after infants
and toddlers have been very much impressed by how
demanding and troublesome they are and have tried by
various means to reduce these demands throughout
human history .
One way of reducing the demands of an infant is
swaddling clothes, and this solution has been employed
for centuries in practically all civilizations (fig . 1) .
Swaddled infants apparently sleep more and cry less . Their
heartbeats slow down, and they are more passive than
unswaddled, babies . They are thus less trouble for the caregiver,
who has the additional convenience of being able to
hang the baby from a nail or peg, or tuck it out of the way
like a parcel .5 The babies are protected from cold and
drafts, from animals, from injury, and from themselves,
but they aren't likely to have been cuddled either - it
would be kind of like hugging a rolled-up newspaper .
According to family historian Lawrence Stone, the sensory
35

and motor deprivation entailed was one factor in the
"psychic numbing" of so many adults in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century England, and the root cause of the
country being so cold, suspicious and violence-prone . 6
The stated purpose of swaddling was to mould the
infant's head - to train its limbs and back to grow
straight, and to protect it from ripping off its ear, gouging
out its eyes, and whatever other depradations it had in
mind . Notions of infant depravity and original sin may
have had something to do with this treatment, though
obviously swaddling occurs in cultures that believe in
neither . Still, many Christian writers on infancy seem
quite daunted and even frightened by how much an infant
resembles an animal - or perhaps the devil - in lack of
human skills, and selfish and unbridled desires . Swaddling
and moulding its limbs must have made it seem
more human - a step away from brutish existence and
closer to a state of grace.'
Karin Calvert sees swaddling as evidence of adults
imposing standards of upright behaviour on babies .8 The
practice began to lose favour among the upper classes in
England and the colonies in the eighteenth century,
though vestiges remained in the use of stays, corsets and
backboards for children, and in the bellyband still in use
at the end of the nineteenth century .
Clearly, a swaddled baby would be less disruptive to an
adult society that refused to adapt for its benefit .
However,
it is difficult to mourn the loss of freedom of the
modern child caused by the strong division between
adulthood and childhood, when what is gained is the
freedom to move a muscle .
The same could be said of the drugged child - another
ancient and almost universal way of keeping babies quiet
and reducing their demands . A 1472 book on infant
diseases by Paolo Bagellardo stated : "Our common people
give infants a little of the stuff called Quietness, a decoction,
or boiled down extract of poppy seeds ."9
Nineteenth-century writers on infant care railed against
this practice-apparently not limited to "common people"
- and in the face of a variety of commercially produced
"soothing syrups ." A 1912 report on infant mortality in
Ontario listed some of them and their major components :
Mrs . Winslow's soothing syrup - morphine
sulphate, or opium ;
Dr . Fowler's strawberry and peppermint mixture
- morphine ;
Victor Infant Relief-chloroform and cannabis
indica ;
Dr . Jame's Soothing Syrup - heroin . 1°
Many drugged babies died in the attempt to have them
conform to adult standards of behaviour and fit into adult
life .
Another restraining practice was the tying or lacing of
infants into a cradle . Even swaddled infants might be
subjected to this . Once swaddling and lacing were abandoned,
cradles were destined to accommodate a more
active child . This probably affected their design, as did,
I
f
Fig . 1 . A sixteenth-century illustration by Etienne Delaune . Right, the process of swaddling ; left are a go-cart and leading strings
Published in Jacques Gelis et al ., Grtrer duru la In : rrai.ṙ rancec et enlfneer duns la Frcince traclitlornelle (Paris : Gal limard/Julliard
lc)7!i), plate 7 .

Fig . 2 . Hanging cot in a Ruthen ian home, Alberta, no date . (Public Archives Canada C- I
)80
apparently, expert advice on rocking and fresh air .
Karin
Calvert's essay sees the disappearance of the cradle hood or
canopy and its traditional solid construction giving way to
slats or spindles as the result of all the promotion of fresh
air and cool temperatures by such influential writers as
John Locke and Dr . William Cadogan . Similarly, cradles
went .1 off their rockers" because rocking was vehemently
denounced as productive of brain damage and other
derangements by a host of nineteenth-century paediatric
experts .
I I
The cradle lost its raison d'etre and by the end of the
century gave way to the crib . This did not mean that
everyone who had a baby had a crib or that not one cradle
was in use on the face of the earth . Rather, the advice was
probably relevant to a group of middle- or upper-class
people who considered themselves in the know . Among
these were some urban fresh-air enthusiasts, who early in
this century hung baby cots in wire contraptions out of
windows . One of them was Eleanor Roosevelt who was
threatened with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children by agitated neighbours who may well have
kept their babies in hooded, solid-sided cradles with
rockers . '2
Another type of cradle (fig . 2)-swung to quiet a turbulent
infant and perhaps conveniently hanging near its
mother's bed - may not have been widely accepted by the
English-speaking middle classes, given the lack of
evidence concerning its use .
In the United States portable wicker bassinets were less
in vogue than bassinets that hung from a stationary stand
- like display or presentation cases - highly appropriate in
an era of "His Majesty, the baby ."~ ;
The evolution from cradle to crib may not be a glowing
chapter in the history of human progress . Toddlers in
cribs are likely to require less attention and, when they
cannot climb out, can be left in them for a long time . In
spite of the century's poetry and images of idealized babyhood,
' ' day-to-day child care remained a source of fatigue
and bother .
Cribs, especially cast-iron ones with hygienic mattresses,
were a product of a germ- and science-conscious
period . They also served to keep babies away from other
people . A crib, unlike a cradle, is not likely to be moved
around the house or outside it (fig . i) . Cribs are also an
encouragement to have babies sleep alone . While in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries babies apparently
slept in their mothers' beds, and after that with siblings or
someone else, many nineteenth-century baby-care writers
were emphatically against this practice . 15
Catharine Beecher's 1873 Housekeeper and Healihkeepo
states "It is better for both mother and child that it should
not sleep on the mother's arm at night, unless the weather
be extremely cold . This practice keeps the child too warm
and leads it to seek food too frequently ." 16 Isabella
Beeton, however, offered a long list of injunctions and evil
Mid dire effects :
;7

Fig . 3 . This working mother has her baby beside her in an improvised cradle . Taken from "At Home in the Great West," Canadian
Illustrated News, I I September 1880, p . 169 . (Public Archives Canada C-756 11 .)
We must strenuously warn all mothers on no
account to allow the nurse to sleep with the baby,
never herself to lay down with it by her side for a
night's rest, never to let it sleep in the parent's bed
and on no account keep it, longer than absolutely
necessary, confined in an atmosphere loaded with
the breath of many adults . The amount of oxygen
required by an infant is so large, and the quantity
consumed by mid-life and age, and the proportion
of carbonic acid thrown off from both so considerable
that an infant breathing the same air cannot
possibly carry on its healthy existence while deriving
its vitality from so corrupted a medium . . . . In
addition to the impurities expired from the lungs,
we remember in quiescence and in sleep, how large
a portion of mephitic gas is given off from the
skin . 17
Mrs . Beeton continued to warn against the practice by
conjuring up an amazing picture of the consequences of
an infant sucking its sleeping mother- It imbibes "a fluid
sluggishly secreted and deficient in those vital principles
." The mother will wake . . .
languid and unrefreshed, with febrile symptoms
and hectic flushes, caused by her baby vampire,
who, while dragging from her health and strength,
has excited in itself a set of symptoms directly
opposite, but fraught with the same injurious
18
consequence - functional derangement .
Many experts warned of the accidental overlaying, or
Suffocating, of the baby if mother and baby shared a hed .
However, there was some tolerance in the books consulted
for the baby being in the mother's room - in a crib or
cradle beside her bed .
Cottage .
Loudon's 1839 Encyclopedia oJ
Farm and Villa Architecture described cribs as
"generally intended to be placed, during the night, by the
bedside of the mother, and for the purpose, the height of
the crib should correspond with that of a large bed and one
of its sides made to lift out ." He added, "swinging cribs
and cradles are now justly exploded .""
Figure 4 is an advertisement from a 19()3 NeuJotnrdland
Quarterly illustrating the compromise between the infant
sleeping alone and with its mother . One hetby-care writer
would have none of this : she maintained that the baby's
instinctive knowledge that there was a breast in the room
kept it awake . `
>u
According to Karin Calvert, cribs soon acquired a room
of their own, and nineteenth-century middle- and uhperclass
babies were isolated, in an unprecedented way, from
the rest of the family in the house . `1 This is more likely to
have happened in homes following some expert
nineteenth-century advice on how to teach babies that
they cannot get their way by crying .
18

"
THE NEWFOUNDLAND QUARTERLY.
i~i~i~~~~,~ . ..'~~i~~i~~i),tx
°NOthing Succeeds Like---"
Churchill Patent Foldinq Child's Crib
Because it affords ALL the comforts of the household .
\I )1
~ D_ (?)
Protected by l.etters Patent .
Infringements will be
prosecuted . ~x .v ot
C?1.~J
NINETEEN CENTURIES have passed
remainedfor an Inventor in the Twentieth
with a void in human domestic
Century to supply this want .
economy un;ffled, It has
No januly, rich or poor.
A Patent Common Sense Folding Child's Crib
for night or day use. It , Safe, Sanitary, Liffht, Cheap . and can be folded up in a jeur seconds
and hur,,t " up or stouped away out of sikht when not bi use . No more accidents to young children by
su//"ocati:,m . No more getting up for the nurse or mother on cold winter nights . The Crib forms
an exten;lon to an ordinary bed. Unsurpassed jor small houses . Recommended by leading, phvstcta+rs .
Cheap . Ornamental, Useful and health,/iii Only $2.50 .
For Sale by
U . S . PICTURE & PORTRAIT Co ., Water Street .
and W . D . MORISON, Water Street .
Fig . i . The Churchill patent folding crib advertised in the l\

TAKE CARE OF THE BABY
Hl" USIING~
The "Philadelphia" Window Bar and Nursery Gate
~I~
q, ACCIDENTS to CHILDREN .
lt i~ intlitipcu- .a,k " ill 1~1 " ,\'I'~ . 'I'I,\I .\ll \7'
II()Gtil ":;, antl fltt'fF".Lti ill l,tLsitlt (11110 :1 11 ~! " tttnl;
unt ~~f ~l

isolation of the child . Medical experts deplored the genital
stimulation that might occur with more than one in a bed .
So horrendous were the wages of masturbation and sin -
chronic physical and mental disease, even death - that
metal mittens appeared - so did advice to tie the child's
hands to the bed . By comparison, a "pre-modern" child
(when not swaddled) seems to have been freer of such
restrictions and accumulated guilt.-`
parenta
fine lad
My idea of a model nursery is a padded room, witl
barred windows and everything in it, when not it
use, hung out of reach upon the walls . Then, oni
mivhr -it tlnwn in the rlrnwino rnnn, an .I rA,arl
It can be argued that special rooms for children
recognized the importance of the early years of life and the
unique qualities of childhood - the innocence and
vulnerability to which Victorian writers so frequently
attested .
Advice mongers wanted nurseries to be places of edification
and moral training for the little darlings, no longer
considered to be "depraved vipers" but inclined to good
and imbued with visions of heaven . Nursery decoration
should be, then, "an object lesson in simplicity, refinement
and harmony of colour" and pictures hung with a
view to "expand and elevate" the mind .''
But not only the mental and moral well-being of the
child was at stake in these special rooms . Children, the
experts tended to maintain, had different physical
requirements to those of adults . They needed a great deal
of fresh air, cool temperatures, open fireplaces, not stove
or steam heat, and in the germ-conscious 1880s and
1890s, it was particularly crucial for them to live within
walls painted in distemper with minimum of or no carpets
or curtains, no furnishings that would gather dust and
harbour disease . Pye Henry Chavasse, M . D. , advised
mothers in the 1889 edition of his popular manual to use
candles, no gas or paraffin lighting, in the nursery .2 'He
warned against the use of green paper hangings there as
they contained "large quantities of arsenic . . .which flies
about the room in the form of powder ." Further, small
children might put in their mouths any paper that came
loose : "four children in one family have just lost their lives
from sucking green paper hangings .- -'
imagination .
Jources consulted reterred to `windov
guarded without by an iron net-work," "large op(
gratings fixed over the doors" and "wicket gates" on sta
landings (fig . 5) . ~l References to and pictures of fi
guards can also be found (fig . 6) . Chavasse advised th
they be large enough to go all around the hearth, and stiff
ciently high to prevent a child from climbing over . 1
fact, he thought, each room in which a child was allow(
"should be furnished with one on the bars . -211
Did the concept of child-proofing exist el
the eighteenth century' Karin Calvert think
The early home was designed for adult living, and
parents expected children to accommodate themselves
to the family's routine . . . . Parents did not
attemut to make the horne safe for children - lit,
Though the impetus for setting aside rooms as nurseries
may have been a recognition of the special moral status
and innocent characteristics of childhood, it seems that
views of l,aediatric and other authorities on hygiene and
child health must have provided a stimulus as well .
This is not to say that most people followed the advice
in the manuals or that most homes had nurseries, but
there must be some explanation for the existence of any
nursery . Not to be overlooked as a motivating factor is
that parents did not wish to be bothered by their children,
and they could accomplish this free of guilt, in an admittedly
child-centered age, by following such advice and
constructing a special, separate and hygienic world for the
child .
Fig . 6 . Fire guard in a nursery illustrated in Arnold Haskell,
Irrfnntilicc The ArrhaeoloK) of the Nnrrer7 (London :
Dennis Dobson, 1971), endpapers .

screening fireplaces, covering wells, or blocking
stairways - but instead stressed safety through
obedience and self reliance . When necessary they
controlled their children through physical intervention
(holding a baby back from the fire) or
physical punishment . Since households frequently
included servants, apprentices and older siblings,
someone was usually available to keep a watchful
eye on the youngest children . Nonetheless, accidents
were common and stoically accepted as
inevitable . 29
This may be overstated . Simply because it is difficult to
find evidence of such precautions, does not mean that they
did not exist . Further, Peter Gregg Slater in Children in the
New England Mind makes a case that one should not judge
by our or by Victorian standards expressions of grief and
caring by colonial New Englanders . Because they did not
wallow in it or put a premium on self control, does not
mean they did not grieve or care . io
Playpens were marketed to the middle classes in the
1890s as if they were a novelty . An advertisement from an
1891 Ladies Home journal states that the playpen
("Mother's Baby Guard") is "better than a nurse ." The
message implies a shortage of trustworthy and acceptable
domestic servants to mind upper- and middle-class chil-
dren . A cage was more reliable and free of unsavoury
habits and disease . 3 1
One reference to a much earlier version of a playpen is in
a quote from a 1473 book A Regimen for Young Children :
"When children begin to creep around the floor and reach
after things, one should make for them a little pen of
leather so that they do not hurt themselves ." 32 Not only
nineteenth-century children lost their independence for
the sake of safety!
The quote is also interesting for its apparent acceptance
of creeping . It is maintained that before the nineteenth
century most parents did not approve of it . It was too
animal-like, reminded everyone of baser instincts, dirtied
children's clothes, and really, had no redeeming value . 33
This attitude inspired the various devices to teach
children to walk - the standing stool or go cart, as well as
leading strings . Go carts or standing stools have been
around for centuries (see fig . 1) .3`' Unlike modern
walkers, these have no seats and force the baby to remain
standing . Leading strings have some counterpart in
modern harnesses, although the former apparently were
used to compel the child to stand upright rather than just
keep him or her nearby and off the street (see fig . 1) .
111 ille V'CllatCI CU M rrvan aac vit,nr.t- w111uW Tflus or TIISnf,S towc'U'CIs the E'Xtl'('Allltles, aeCollfll~!,9
734 735
737 738
(0-
D
736 739
7-10
to the kind of ch .,ir it n,nv ho wich~~
tn rn-nrb»e(? .
The cover of the vase in the
Fig . 7 . Baby devices : swing (734), walkers (735, 738), and pollard tree trunk (737) from j .C . Loudon, AnEncyclopaedia ofCottat;e, Farnr,
and Villa Architecture and Furniture (London : Longman, 1846), p . 351 .
42

swings be employed for babies too small to go in a
standing stool, but they would have kept children
passively and safel~ confined to one spot, and perhaps out
of adult company . " A child in a swing or jumper required
less attention and probably complained less than one
tottering about in a seatless go cart or on leading strings or
confined in a pollard tree trunk . The measure of entertainment
provided by these devices would have encouraged
parents to feel that they were doing something for the
child, rather than confining and isolating him or her .
Why might late nineteenth-century parents have been
generally keener than some of their predecessors in accomplishing
this? Well, for one thing, demands on middleclass
women are increased during the cult of domesticity
and motherhood, because household cleanliness and
order, along with child-rearing standards, are raised . j`' At
the same time, servants and helping neighbours may be
more difficult to come by, and children of an age to mind
babies and help with domestic work are away at school .
Still, there are a few devices such as the baby and child
bicycle carriers advertised in the 1597 Sears Roebuck
catalogue, that express some parental desire to involve
small children in adult activities .
Fig . 8 . Home-made baby walker from the early 1800s, made
on the principle of animal-powered grinders . From
Chrnrrielc of the Early American Industries Association,
March 1960, pp . 13-14 .
Karin Calvert asserts that go carts and leading strings
show that childhood was not recognized or appreciated
and that children were obliged to approximate adult
behaviour as soon as possible . When attitudes to childhood
changed, and children's stages and limitations were
recognized, Calvert says that walkers gave way to swings
and jumpers.' 5 This must have pleased paediatric experts,
most of whom deplored standing stools and leading
strings as cruel, if not deforming . They may have given
way, but baby walkers and encouragement to walk or
stand early did not disappear . '` Some home-made models
must have been constructed by someone trying to break a
child's will (figs . 7, 8) . The objects illustrated in Loudon's
Encyclopaedia (fig . 7) "are made in England by every
cottager for himself." One he describes as "a hollow cylinder,
nothing more than the section of the trunk of an old
pollard tree . . . . The inside and the upper edge are
smoothed, and a child just able to stand is put in it, while
its mother is at work by its side, or going about the
business of the house ." ;'
Loudon also illustrates a swing chair that could be
adapted for an infant of the "earliest age." Not only could
6
A high chair allowed a child to sit at an adult-size
table and participate in adult life, especially those mode
which were drawn up to the table and had no swingin
tray . Though high chairs have existed in Western cultui
since the sixteenth century, apparently very few coloni ;
children sat in one .4° Instead, they ate standing at ti -
table, or seated on the floor, or on whatever furniture c
adult lap was handy .
Very free and easy and informal, such seating arrangements,
compared with the restrictions of a high chair wit[
a tray and safety straps . Manufactured straps, of course,
are not the only solution to confining a child in a chair,
and such devices do pre-date the Victorian period (fig . 9) .
Safety straps and bars are not bad things . They recognizt
the child's limitations and show concern for his or hei
safety and comfort, as do footrests which became morc
common after the middle of the centurv .
The swinging tray, another late century development,
confined the child, closed access to the family table, and
gave adults better control over what food he or she reached
for .`'1 If adults followed paediatric advice on diet for
children, this as well set them apart from the rest of the
family . In some cases, children up to six or even ten years
old were to live on a very restricted diet of bland, rather
gruesome combinations of broths, cereals, overcooked
vegetables and fruit (only certain ones), and so on .'`
High chairs may be more significant in North America
than in England as apparently middle-class children in the
United States regularly participated in family meals and
English children did not . An English writer on nursery
furniture went so far as to declare :

Very little really fine furniture was made for children
in this country . . . because children were kept
apart in nurseries and schoolrooms . Really fine
pieces of children's furniture of all kinds, however,
can be found in America where the children took
their places within the family . . . i'
The author did not speculate on why this might be so .
F
Fine furniture for American children no doubt was the
exception rather than the rule . Late in the century,
children's furniture makers, like other Victorian manufacturers,
seem to have been conscious of the appeal of
novelty . Perhaps capitalizing on a rage for space saving
and efficiency as well as the popularity of such new items
as swings and jumpers, a high chair that could convert
into a rocker was marketed . Some models also served
triple-duty as a carriage (fig . 10) . Another new item in the
1850s was a combined high chair-jumper, whose seat
could be bounced up and down." Some late nineteenthcentury
high chairs also had built in potties .
In being forced to evacuate in a potty or on a chair, the
nineteenth-century baby, and not its earlier counterpart,
had to imitate adult behaviour to win approval .
While a
swaddled baby had nearly every other movement restricted,
adults probably did not consider trying to
control its bowels .
Not only was it a big bother to keep
binding and unbinding the baby, but public and private
hygiene do not seem to have been a general priority .
But
from about the 1840s very early toilet training, sometimes
as early as two months, was being insisted upon by
some manual writers .
Evidence for this can also be seen in
a chamber pot with a diameter of 1? .5 centimetres (5 inches)
0
.
Behind this, no doubt, were the nineteenth-century
attitudes of a revulsion towards filth and natural urges and
an obsession about hygiene and constipation . The apogee
of this drive to control children's bowel movements must
have been reached when L . Emmett Holt's Care and Feeding
o% Chilclren suggested the introduction just inside the
baby's rectum of an oiled paper cone or a piece of soap . "'
Compared with earlier babies, those born in this period
may have been more physically isolated in playpens,
swings, cribs and so on, and more often ignored, but other
areas of their lives were receiving unprecedented attention
- their bowels, along with their emotional and social
development . In this sense, the late nineteenth-century or
early twentieth-century baby had less privacy ; in general
he or she was under intense scrutiny from scholars in
psychology, early childhood education and paediatrics,
especially during the period of the child-study movement
. `7 Governmental agencies were also focusing on
infant and child welfare . All this attention on special
needs and stages and on the differences between children
and adults set children off from the rest of societv .
Fig . 9 . Vera Swanson in high chair . (Glenbow Archives,
Calgary, Alberta, NA-5?1-35 .)
Another late nineteenth-century development was the
manufactured pram or baby buggy . This caused fundamental
changes in the lives of babies and those who looked
after them . They seem to have been used by all classes in
society, whereas cribs, high chairs, jumpers and so on
were probably quite uncommon below the level of middle
class .
More than other devices and furniture for children,
baby carriages served as indexes, for all to see, of the
stylishness and prosperity (or at least the aspirations) of
late nineteenth-century families . Various models were as
overcdecorated as a Victorian parlour .
Baby carriages are also evidence of a child-centred
culture, displaying to best advantage in so many family
pictures like "a jewel on a velvet tray" the baby, the ultimate
symbol and focus of domesticity and motherhood .""
Before the advent of the mass-produced baby carriage
children who needed to be carried probably did not often
venture far from home, and certainlv not with the elderlv

ui 1111111111 ui yuung siuiinKs, r nere were exceptions, or
course, notably in Amerindian culture . Similar carrying
devices may have been used in France and in Ireland when
Elizabeth Godf-rey's English Children in the Olden Time
testified, "a very queer form of cradle seems to have been
in use . . .a kind of pendulous satchel with a slit for the
child to look out of. . . . -19
English hop pickers were known to have trundled their
children to work in hop wagons . Like these, the earliest
children's carriages were pulled rather than pushed, had
neither upholstery nor springs, and often risked the child
falling out unnoticed .5°
Pram and carriage manufacturers seem to have
responded to a need for safer, more comfortable vehicles .
From about the 1880s suspension springs, adjustable
safety belts, canopies, upholstery (which sometimes
almost swallowed the child) and relatively stable and deep
bodies were quite standard . Automatic brakes, though repeatedly
patented, failed to find favour with consurners . s 1
Some domestic advice books stood solidly against baby
carriages for a reason manufacturers could do nothing
about, short of equipping the vehicle with a sensing
device and the mother with radar .
by the low-class nursemaids in charge .
It was the hazard pose
They could easil
transport the little innocent to the degrading slums an
dens of vice they frequented .
As well, they were likely t
recklessly jolt their charges over bumps and rush ther
down slopes, imperilling spine and brain .
Babies i
buggies might be forgotten or left outside, exposed t
drains and contagious diseases, wind, weather and othc
horrors . 5`
A baby's geographical mobility and the range of visW
and sensory experiences were dramatically increased 6
prams and carriages, and perhaps there were an increasin
number of pleasant places to take babies on wheels - mot
parks, more pavement, more suburban strolls .
However, this also meant that babies and a
held less - all the better, thought soi
authorities, because this ruined women's spit
Baby carriages, therefore, increased the separation
between the adult and the child and reduced the strain ol
bringing up baby . Since the baby is getting fresh air and
stimulation, and in an up-to-date product of a modern
age, the parent could feel virtuous about pacifying the
child with long walks requiring minimum adult involvement
. Often, the adult could not even catch a glimpse ol
the occupant, in carriages pushed from behind and with
obstructing canopies and umbrellas."
The kind of distance and reduction in physical contac
brought about by baby carriages, along with cribs
jumpers and playpens, was seen to be a good thing b
many medical authorities who thought that too mucl
carrying about and attention would ruin the baby'
health, brain and character . An extreme example of thi
attitude was held by L . Emmett Holt, whose Care an
Feeling of Children, first published in 189+, was in it
fifteenth edition in 1937 . These quotes are from a 19L
Canadian edition :
At what age may playing with babies be beKu
Babies under 6 months old should never be pla
with and the less of it at anv time the better for
There are many serious objections . Tuberculo!
diphtheria, syphilis and many other grave disea
may be communicated in this way . Infants shoi
be kissed, if at all, upon the cheek or forehead, I
the less even of this the better .5'
Fig . 10 . High chair-cum-rocker . (Public Archives of Prince
Edward Island, acc . 2320, item 69-6 .')
If they followed this advice, the
parent was more restricted than t
counterparts, who presumably kis
children if or when thev felt like i

Parents in the modern period have to some extent
abrogated their decision-making powers to scientific
experts . The special responsibilities assumed by the medical
profession over the normal care of the healthy child
finds parallel in the history of childbirth and midwifery .
Women and lay people lost control over childbirth and
child care, being supplanted by specialized males and
hospital procedures . This was applauded as early as Dr .
William Cadogan's 1748 Essay on Nursing :
It is with great Pleasure I see at last the Preservation
of children become the care of men of sense . In
my opinion, this Business has too long been fatally
left to the management of women, who cannot be
supposed to have a proper knowledge to fit them
for the task, notwithstanding they look upon it to
be their own province . 55
Cadogan's expertise was derived at London's Foundling
Hospital . His solutions, and those of many paediatric
specialists, were based on institutional experiences, where
a small staff cared for a number of infants . Minimum
attention, a constant spectre of death, antiseptic scrubbing,
food at carefully timed intervals, and the tolerance
of a lot of crying were applicable to such places, but transferred
to the home, such procedures may not have been in
the best interest of one infant . 56
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century babies, whose wills
apparently needed to be crushed and who were candidates
for hell-fire, were fed on demand . As the 1584 poem
recommends :
. . .for suckling, no fix'd hour prescribe
This nature teaches best the nursing tribe .
Let her your mistress be, and when, with cries
The hundry child demands his due supplies
Forbear not you the wish'd relief to bring
But for his use, unlock the sacred spring . . . 57
Some of the most ferocious rigidity in feeding and
sleeping schedules were imposed, not in the "strict"
Victorian period, but in our "permissive" twentieth
century . Such schedules may have been a modern version
of crushing a baby's will .
The training of babies to sleep and eat by the clock may
be another aspect of the kind of time-discipline that is a
feature of modern industrial capitalism . An externally
imposed system of time schedules that have nothing to do
with rhythms of nature drew women and babies out of the
conventions of a pre-industrial society, where time
measurement was not a basis for human activity . Perhaps
babies on such schedules will internalize this discipline
and will follow other people's schedules and for the benefit
of others all their lives and without question . 58
While feeding schedules were probably supposed to
make life easier for the care giver, they probably con-
tributed to some sense of alienation, especially for a
mother whose baby refused to go by the book . Her resentment
must have been compounded by the requirement to
adore the little cherub . Perhaps eighteenth-century
mothers did not feel as guilty when they resented their
little "vipers." 59
There were at least two other artifacts of childhood
relating to feeding that increased the distance between
mother and baby, while restricting its demands and
supposedly rendering its care less burdensome .
One was patented infant formula, whose makers
explicitly challenged women's role as nurturers of babies .
Although many generations ofwomen had fed their babies
"by hand," and wealthy ones had sent them off to wet
nurses, this had not occurred in the face of an organized
commercial campaign to demoralize mothers and discourage
breast-feeding while pretending that this alternative
was "scientific," "modern," and even life saving . The
decline in breast-feeding noticed late in the century was
probably unprecedented, in terms of numbers . Patented
infant formulas, mass-produced baby bottles, and
increased numbers of women working outside the home
are given credit for this . 60
Condensed, evaporated and dried milk, along with
patented formulas, were mass-produced from about midcentury
. By 1883 there were no less than twenty-seven
brands available of these infant foods . They were quite
similar, really, to the cereal-and flour-based paps, caudles
and panadas of ancient vintage . One of the most aggressively
marketed was Mellin's food which managed, somehow,
to get itself recommended by name in child-care
manuals, notwithstanding that it and all other brands
were unsuitable for an infant under six months . 61
These patent infant foods allowed more mothers and
babies to lead separate lives-such Stuff was habitually fed
to foundling babies-and contributed to the rising rate of
infant mortality towards the end of the century, along
with an incidence of infant scurvy and rickets comparable
to that of the beginning of the seventeenth century . 62
Mass-produced baby bottles also contributed to infant
mortality, perhaps none more than this "murder bottle" as
it was called by child-welfare workers (fig . 11 . ) . The longtube
nursing bottle made its appearance in the 1860s in
England and North America, and continued to be sold
until the 1920s . They were especially popular in English
workhouses, though the bottle was mostly marketed for
home use and supposedly lessened the burden of baby care
for the "poor and overworked housewife." Babies could be
fed with this bottle without anyone taking the time and
trouble to hold them . The nipple was popped in, and the
bottle placed anywhere convenient . An additional advantage
was that it supposedly cut down "wind colic." The
long tube was also a fabulous incubator of pernicious
46

NURSING BOTTLES, COMPLETE, WITH VALVE CRYSTAL FITTINGS .
We ask tllo :tttt-nti4 :n ()f thc Trade to our
\'nL~~I~: ( :uvs~r .~I . l'rrrtxc : fllr \ursin ;; Illlttlt~s .
The Vent in Stopper, closed llN . a self-acting
v :tlvv, :Illtlw s tlte o utsiclc :tirto t- nlt- r tllc l1nttle
,is f:lst :Is the milk is t :akcn out, tllerclly insnringa
llcrfectl .y t" :tsy mid steady (low of milk,
mid :it the sanlc tinlc allows no milk to escalic
Joy the valve .
Nttr~in~.; bottles, with the \' :Ilve Crystal Fittings,
can be fillt-tl with milk and carrio(l,
when traveling, withoitt danger of leakage,
and arc always rc ;i(ly for use .
AT NET PRICES .
Per Dozen .
Rlnck Whit'.
Rubber . Rubber.
Tiil: PIII:\IS, Bent Neck, FLINT,
f:aell in 1'aper Box with brushes, '$3 10
Tim, I:>I PI RE, (sanlc shape), 1't .INT, 2 10
Tim I:irrtrtr :, (same Rhape),GItEEV, 1 90
TIu., Ac .irI:, Bent Neck, R'tl Bottom,
FLINT . . . . . . . . . . . 2 10
ORE DOZEN IN BOX .
$3 00
2 00
1 50
2 00
Per Dozen .
111-Ir White
Itubbcr . Itubbcr.
THE AcAtE, Bent Neek, Round Bcit-
tom, GREEN . . . . . . . . . 1 00 1 8Q
TIIE INFANTS, Straight Neck, F LI\T, 2 00 1 90
TIIEINFANTS,Straight Neck .Gttr:EN, 1 80 1 70
TIIE 'M17.7.VILLE, (See Cut) : I'I.1NT, 2 00 1 90
TItE DSILLVILLE, (Sec cut), GREEN, 1 80 1 70
The Acrne .
NURSING BOTTLES, WITHOUT FITTINGS .
THE ACME .
Bent Neck . Round Bottom .
Being without corners, this
bottle is more easily cleansed
and kept sweet than any other .
When laid on the side, tile
mouth is elevated above tile
contents of the bottle .
FLINT . .
GREEN . .
THE EMPIRE .
.
Per Doz .
. . .$ 70
. . . . 50
Bent Neck . Straight Bottom .
The Bent Neck is of great
advantaze in self-feeding .
FLINT . . . . . . . 7 0
GREEN . . . . . " . 50
THE MILLVILLE .
Adapted for Grasping .
FLINT, No . 1, Nar'w
Dioutlt for NiPliles, i
Fm-,T, No . 2, Wide
Mouth for Fittings, j
GREEN, No. l, Nar'w
Mouth for Nipples,
GREEN, 1\o . 2, Wide i
Mouth for Fittings, j
BALTIMORE NURSING
FLASK .
Narrow Month for Nipples .
FLINT . . . . . . . 55
GxI:E-N . . . . . . . 35
Dlillvilln.
IoIIat'a .
THE INFANTS.
Straight Neck and Bottom
FLINT . . . . . . " 60
GREEN . . . . . . " 40
12 OUNCE NURSING
FLASK .
FI.INT . . . . . . . 90
GREEN . . . " " . . 60 Baltlluore .
Fig . 11 . Long-tube nursing bottles . Wheta!!, Tatmu & Co . Catalogue, 1880 (reprint ed ., Princeton : The Pyne Press, 197 1), 53 .
47

toxins, in spite of all efforts to clean it with the tube
brushes offered for sale . 63
Long-tube bottles and patented formulas were devices
that permitted physical distance between mother and
baby . They stand as evidence that progress is not inevitable
and that science and technology do not always bring
incalculable benefits to all .
Was a late nineteenth-century baby better off than ever
before? Probably the answer is yes and no . Middle-class
babies, for example, had more and less privacy . They had
more and less freedom to move around . They were no
longer dunked into cold baths to harden them, but they
were no longer supposed to be fed on demand, cuddled or
carried around too much . They had never been made so
much of, yet perhaps never so physically distanced from
the family, perhaps a separation paralleling that between
work and home and worker and product in an industrial
age .
E.P . Thompson speaks not only for the adult's world,
but also for the child's when he says : "The historical record
is not a simple one of neutral and inevitable historical
change . Values stand to be lost as well as gained
,64
.
NOTES
.
.
.
.
.
l . But he cautioned, "one must not paint too radiant a picture ." J . H .
Plumb, "The New World of Children in Eighteenth Century
England," Part and Present, 67 (May 1975) : 91 . See also Steven
Mintz, A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture
(New York : New York University Press, 1983), 30 ; John Cleverley
and D.C . Phillips, From Locke to Spock: Influential Models of the
Child in Modern Western Thought (Melbourne : Melbourne University
Press, 1976), 22-23 .
2 Lloyd deMause, ed ., The History of Childhood (New York :
Psychohistory Press, 1974), 1 .
3 Phillippe Arii:s, Centuries of Childhood, trans . Robert Baldick
(London : Jonathan Cape, 1962) .
4 . Karin Calvert, "Cradle to Crib : The Revolution in Nineteenth-
Century Children's Furniture," in Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger et
al ., A Century of Childhood, 1820-1920 (Rochester, N.Y . :
Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, 1984), 33 1 do not think
that cradles fit in her list . Nevertheless this is an excellent essay,
discovered after I had formulated a similar approach to my own
topic .
5 . See Lloyd deMause, op . cit . (note 2), pp . 37-38 ; see also Phillis
Cunnington and Catherine Lucas, Cottttme for Births, Marriagetand
Deaths (London : Adam & Charles Black, 1972), 34 ; Elizabeth
Ewing, History of Children's Costume (London : B .T . Batsford,
1977), 20-21 ; Barbara Kaye Greenleaf, Children Through the Ages :
A History of Childhood (New York : McGraw-Hill, 1978), 29-30 .
6 See Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England,
1500-1800 (London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), 116
Others have speculated on national characteristics caused by the
practice : "We can only guess how pervasive an influence infant care
can have upon any social structure . It has recently been suggested
that Russia's expansionist behavior depends upon their custom of
tightly swaddling the newborn and in this respect it may be significant
that our own Empire building was carried out at a time when
the same practice prevailed in England." Ian G. Wickes, "A
History of Infant Feeding, Part I," Archives of Disease in Childhood
28 (April 1953) : 153 .
7 . See Lawrence Stone, op . cit . (note 6), pp . 81, 101, 116, 162 ; see
also Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies : Three Centuries of Good
Advice on Child Care (New York : Harper & Row, 1983), 23 ; Anita
Schorsch, Images of Childhood: An Illustrated Social History (New
York : Mayflower Books, 1979), 30 .
8 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), p . 34 .
9 . Quoted in Daniel Beekman, The Mechanical Baby: A Popular
History of the Theory and Practice of Child Raising (Westport, Conn . :
Lawrence Hill, 1977), 17 . See also Issac A. Abt, ed ., Abt-Garrison
History ofPediatrics (Philadelphia:W .B .Saunders, 1965), IO ;Ann
Oakley, Woman's Work : The Housewife, Past and Present (New York :
Vintage Books, 1976), 48 .
10 . Ontario Department of the Provincial Secretary, Infant Mortality .
Third Report by Dr . Helen MacMurchy (Toronto : King's Printer,
1912), 43 .
I1 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), pp . 47-52 ; see also Christina
Hardyment, op . cit . (note 7), p . 24 .
.
:
.
. .
.
:
12 . Joseph P . Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (New York : W. W. Norton,
1971), 160 .
13 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), pp . 55-56 .
14 . See Anthony and Peter Miall, The Victorian Nursery Book (London :
Dent, 1980), 22 . Mrs . Child wrote in her 1831 book on babies :
"They come to us from heaven, with their little souls full of
innocence and peace ; and, as far as possible, a mother's influence
should not interfere with the influence of angels ." Lydia Maria
Child, The Mother's Book (New York : Arno Press, 1972), 2 .
Reprint of 1831 edition .
15 . See Christina Hardyment, op . cit . (note 7), pp . 187, 249;
Theodore K Rabb and Robert L . Rotberg, eds., The Family in
History ; Interdisciplinary Essays (New York : Harper, 1971), 132 ;
Janice G. Conrad-Bury and Marc Lebel, Children of Yesterday
(Ottawa Public Archives of Canada, 1979), 9 .
16 . Catharine Beecher, Mist Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper (New
York : Harper, 1873), 395-396 .
17 . Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management (London : S.O .
Beeton, 1861), 1033 .
18 . Ibid ., p. 1034 .
19 . Quoted in Anthony and Peter Miall, op . cit . (note 14), pp . 48 .
50 .
20 . Quoted in Christina Hardyment, op . cit . (note 7), p 53~
21 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4),1) . 53 ; see also Anita Schorsch, op .
cit . (note 7), p . 39 ; Clifford E . Clark, Jr ., "Domestic Architecture
as an Index to Social History : The Romantic Revival and the Cult
of Domesticity in America, 1840-1870," Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 7, no . 1 (Summer 1976) : 49-50 ; Susan Lasdun,
Victorians at Home (New York : Viking, 1981), 44 .
22 . See Lawrence Stone, op . cit (note 7), p . 160 ; J . H. Plumb, op
cit (note 1), p . 92 ; Elizabeth M .R . Lomax et al ., Science and
Patterns ofChild Care (San Francisco W . H . Freeman, 1978), 122 ;
Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New
York : Pantheon, 1982), 233 .
23 . See Anthony and Peter Miall, op . cit . (note 14), pp . 43-44 ; also
Christina Hardyment, op . cit . (note 7), pp . 63-65 ; Dr . Lyman
Abbott et al ., The House and Home : A Practical Book, vol . I (New
48

.
.
:
. :
. .
York : Scribners, 1896), 283-284 ; Cecil Aldrin and John Hassall,
"Art in the Nursery," The Art Journal, 1900, 1 : 247-252, 262-
266 .
24 . Pye Henry Chavasse, Advice to a Wife and Advice to a Mother (2 vol .
in 1), Canadian copyright edition (Toronto : Rose, 1889), 118 .
See also John M. Keating, The Mother's Guide in the Management
and Feeding of Infants (Philadelphia : Henry C Lea's, 1881), 49-50,
53 .
25 . Pye Henry Chavasse, op . cit . (note 24), pp . 116-117 .
26 . Susan Anna Brown, Home Topics: A Book of Practical Papers on House
and Home Matters (New York : Century, 1881), 524 .
27 . Ibid ., pp. 525-526 ; Anthony and Peter Miall, op . cit . (note 14),
pp . 14, 37, 44, 45 ; Bea Howe, Antiques from the Victorian Home
(London : Batsford, 1973), 112, 113 .
28 . Pye Henry Chavasse, op . cit . (note 24), p . 115 . I found a reference
in an 1838 Quebec inventory to a "nursery stove" though I have
not been able to discover what one looked like . (Archives
Nationales du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres, Inventory of the Estate of
the Late A.D . Borthwick, esq ., 23 January 1838 ; Greffe Joseph-
Michel Badeaux, no . 2660 .)
29 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), p 35 .
30 . Peter Gregg Slater, Children in the New England Mind: in Death and
in Life (Hamden, Conn . : Archon, 1977), 18, 19, 167-168 .
31 . Ladies Hornefournal, February 189 1 . There is evidence of a kind of
playpen dating from early in the nineteenth century - see the
illustration in Shirley Glubok, ed ., Home and Child Life in Colonial
Days (New York Macmillan, 1969), 103 . See also a home-made
Canadian model, from the Hutterite colony in Magrath, Alberta .
Hugh A Dempsey, Ethnic Furniture (Calgary Glenbow, 1970),
11 .
32 . Quoted in Daniel Beekman, op . cit . (note 9), p 19
:
.
.
.
.
. .
.
.
.
33 . See Christina Hardyment, op . cit . (note 7), p . 7 ; Karin Calvert,
op . cit . (note 4), pp . 35, 44 ; Anita Schorsch, op . cit . (note 7), p .
30 .
34 . Baby walkers were recorded in Europe in the fifteenth century,
and in China in the ninth . James Mackay, Childhood Antiques
(Toronto Fitzhenry Li Whiteside, 1976), 11 .
35 . See Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), pp . 35, 44 .
36 . Edward Durell, "Baby Walkers," Chronicle of the Early American
Industries Association 13, no I (March 1960) : 13-14 . See also
walkers advertised in Eaton's, Sears Roebuck and Montgomery
Ward catalogues of the period .
37 . Quoted in Anthony and Peter Miall, op . cit . (note 14), pp 44-45 .
38 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), pp . 42-44
39 . See Susan Strasser, op . cit (note 22), pp . 228-241 ; see also Ruth
Sehwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household
Technology fro»e the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York : Basic
Books, 1983), 178-180 .
40 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), p . 45 .
41 . Ibid ., pp 46-47
42 . See Christina Hardyment, op . cit (note 7), pp . 51-52 ; see also
John Keating, op . cit . (note 24), p . 113; L. Emmett Holt, The
Care and Feeding of Children : A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and
Children's Nurses 1894 )Toronto : McClelland, Goodchild and
Stewart, 1918), 105-136 .
43 . June Toller, "Nursery Furniture," Antique Dealer's and Collector's
Guide (November 1973) : 85 .
44 See the illustration in Katharine Morrison McCIinton, Antiques of
American Childhood (New York : Clarkson Potter, 1970), 144-145
45 . See Harvey Green, The Light of the Home : An Intimate View of the
Lives of Women in Victorian America (New York : Pantheon, 1983),
46 . There were pre-nineteenth-century precedents for the potty
chair . Anita Schorsch illustrates a seventeenth-century Dutch
model that could accommodate a heater when the potty was not in
use . See Schorsch, op . cit . (note 7) .
46 . L . Emmett Holt, op . cit . (note 42), p . 159 .
47 . See, for example, Louise E . Hogan, A Study ofa Child (New York :
Arno, 1975), reprint of 1898 ed ., or Bernard Perez, The First
Three Years Of Childhood (New York : E . L . Kellogg, 1975), reprint
of 1885 ed .
48 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), p . 48 .
49 . Elizabeth Godfrey, English Children in the Olden Time (Folcroft
Library ed ., 1977), 8-9, original edition 1907 . See also illustration
8 in Jacques Gelis, Mireille Lager and Marie-France Morel,
Entrer datu la vie : naistancet et enfances dans la France traditiorrnelle
(Paris : Gallimard/Julliard, 1978), plate 8 .
.
.
:
.
.
.
50 . Samuel J . Sewell, "TheHistory of Children's and Invalid's
Carriages," Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 71 (7 September
1923) : 7 16 .
51 . Ibid ., pp . 724, 725
52 . John Keating, op . cit . (note 24), pp . 58-59, 92-93 ; see also Julia
McNair Wright, The Complete Home: An Encyclopaedia of Domestic
Life and Affairs (Philadelphia : Bradley Garretson, 1879), 91-92 .
53 . Karin Calvert, op . cit . (note 4), p . 60 ; see also Christina Hardyment,
op . cit . (note 7), p . 97 .
54 . L . Emmett Holt, op . cit . (note 42), pp 172-173, 175 .
55 . Quoted in Christina Hardyment, op . cit . (note 7), p . 10 .
56 . See Daniel Rodgers, "Socializing Middle-class Children Institutions,
Fables, and Work Values in Nineteenth Century America,"
Journal of Social History 13, no . 3 (Spring 1980) : 362 .
57 . Quoted in Ian G . Wickes, "A History of Infant Feeding, Part V,-
Archives of Disease in Childhood 28 (December 1953) : 50 1 . See also
Mrs . Child, op cit . (note 14), p. 23 : "An infant's wants should be
attended to without waiting for him to cry . . . . Food, sleep, and
necessary comforts should be supplied to him at such times as the
experience of his mother may dictate ."
58 . This statement is made as an incentive to read E .P . Thompson's
brilliant essay, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial
Capitalism," Past & Present 38 (December 1967) : 56-97 .
59 . See Peter Gregg Slater, op . cit . (note 30), pp . 50-51 .
60 . See Christina Hardyment, op . cit . (note 7), pp . 49, 95 ; Ian G.
Wickes, "A History of Infant Feeding, Part 111," Archives ofDirease
in Childhood 28 (August 1953) : 337 ; Margot Edwards and Mary
Waldorf, Reclaiming Birth: History and Heroines of American
Childbirth Reform (Trumansburg, N.Y . : Crossing Press, 1984),
69-71
61 . Isabella Beeton, op . cit . (note 17), pp 1042-1043 ;John Keating,
op . cit . (note 24), p . 41 ; Ian G. Wickes, "A History of Infant
Feeding, Part IV," Archives of Disease in Childhood 28 (October
1953) : 421-422 ; John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (New
York : Macmillan, 1905), 28, 245-246 ; Carole Dyhouse, "Working-class
Mothers and Infant Mortality in England, 1895-1914,"
Journal of Social History 12, no . 2 (Winter 1978) : 255 .
62 . Ian G. Wickes, "A History of Infant Feeding, Part I1," Archives of
Disease in Childhood 28 (June 1953) : 238 .
63 . Ian G. Wickes, "A History of Infant Feeding, Part IV," op . cit .
(note 61), p . 421 ; Arnold Haskell, lnfantilia: TheArchaeology ofthe
Nursery (London : Dennis Dobson, 1971), 45 ; Ernest Wende,
"The Death-dealing Long-tube Nursing Bottle," Journal of the
American Medical Association 18 (5 August 1899) : 319; Christina
Hardyment, op . cit . (note 4), p . 5 l .
64 . E.P . Thompson, op .cit . (note 58), pp . 93-94 .
49

Economic Choices and Popular Toys
in the Nineteenth Century
Janet Holmes
ResumelAbstract
Les fabriques de jouets d'Angleterre, d'Allemagne et des Etats-Unis approvisionnaient une bonne part du ntarche canadien a la fin du
XIX` siecle . En 1871, la valeur des importations de jouets s'ilevait a 27 000$, soit un volume d'environ 300 000 objets pour trois
millions et demi de Canadien .r . On trouvait de tout, it tous les prix, la gamme allant des animaux en bois ou en materiel synthetique et des
jottets amiricains en fonte pour un sou, au cheval a bascule le plus couteux a 15$ . La plupart des jouets etaient vendus aux membres de la
classe moyenne grandissante du Canada, mais de petits jouet.r simples itaient vraisemblablement assez bon marche pour etre achetes, en milieu
urbain, par les salaries des usines et, en milieu rural, par les petits proprietaires terriens qui pratiquaient tene economie d'ichanges et qtti
possidaient un peu d'argent liquide . Les jouets les plus populaires etaient fabriques a la maison ou achetis en magasin; ils refletaient le monde
des adultes vu par un enfant . Ils constituaient probablement les premiers jouets offerts a l'enfant . 11 s'agissait de chevaux a bascule en bois,
chevaux sur roulettes, poupies, traineaux, meubles d'enfant et poupees en chiffons .
The commercial toy industries of England, Germany and the United States supplied much of the Canadian market in the late nineteenth
century . By 1871 the value of imported toys had grown to $'27,000, representing a volume of about 300,000 items for 3 .5 million
Canadians . In variety and price toys ranged from simple wooden and composition animals and American cast iron toys for a penny to the most
expensive rocking horse for fifteen dollars . Most toys were marketed to a growing Canadian middle class, but the small, sintple toys were
likely cheap enough to be bought by city factory wage earners and small farm owners who worked in a self-sufficient barter economy with little
surplus cash . Popular toys, available in homemade and commercial versions, reflected a child's view of the adult world and were likely the
first toys owned by a child; these are identified as wooden rocking horses, horses on wheels, dolls, sledges, children's furniture, and rag dolls
made from scraps of material.
First-generation research in the material history of a
country usually involves an attempt to focus on what was
being made in that country . The preliminary survey that I
made on toys some ten years ago was this type of analysis,
based on a reading of the Montreal Gazette from September
to December at ten-year-intervals to see what was being
advertised in Montreal, Canada's major importing centre ;
on a check of Canadian directories from 1851 to 1900, and
of some Montreal and Toronto directories to see what
Canadian-made toys were being advertised ; and on a look
at several public and private collections of toys . Such a
general survey allows one to extract a skeleton framework
for understanding what toys might have been available,
and what kinds of toys were being made by Canadian toy
makers .
I
With the broader conference topic of "Children and
Changing Perspectives of Childhood in the Nineteenth
Century" in mind, it seemed more useful to look at several
other aspects of toys in Canada, such as the value and
volume of imported toys being sold commercially in
Canada ; the relation of toy prices to wage figures for
salaried workers to determine what types of toys a family
could afford for its children ; and the identification of
"universal" toys, that is, those made by individual toy
makers, by factory workshops and by adults and children
in the home, and those first owned by a child from a much
wider possible selection .
In England and continental Europe the early years of
the Industrial Revolution created a new and affluent
middle class whose view of children and education was
changing . No longer were children seen simply as small
adults . They were treated as a special group who needed
recreation and play, along with affection and a firm religious
and moral training . A growing market, the new
attitude toward children, and the acceleration of industrial
inventiveness in mass production methods spurred the
growth of a commercial toy industry . Toy manufacturers
in England, Germany, France and the United States, particularly
after 1850, supplied not only their own market
but also exported toys to Canada, as is shown in Table 1 .
TABLE 1
Value of Toys Imported to Canada
1866 1871 1881 1901
Germany $ 3,128 $ 4,428 $10,116 $135,788
Great Britain 5,983 17,235 10,227 10,470
United States 4,271 5,410 15,010 69,161
Other 193 948 1,092 14,950
Total $14,575 $27,128 $36,445 $230,369
Source : Canada . Sessional Papers, "Tables of Trade and Navigation
for 1866, 1871, 1881, 1901 ."
51

Those figures, although they convey the value of toy
imports, do not indicate either the variety or extent of toys
being brought into Canada . In 1874, the Merchantman, a
Toronto wholesale trade review, published a review and
price list of toys . Z The following rearrangement (Table 2)
of that extensive list shows more clearly the wholesale
price ranges . The most expensive toys were :
Speaking dolls, "papa and mama"
Large show window dolls
Rocking horses, wooden
$1 .60-$ 2 .40 each
$2 .00-$ 4 .50 each
$2 .25-$15 .00 each
Other toys were sold by the dozen or by the gross (twelve
dozen, or 144 items) .
TABLE 2
Price List of Toys (from Merchantman 1874)
Animals
Cost per doz .
)
Cost per gross
($)
Horses & wagons, wood
Horses on wheels, wood
Serpents
Alligators
Turtles, moving legs and heads
0.70- 4 .20
1 .00- 8.40
1.00- 2 .75
1 .50- 2 .40
2 .50- 6.00
Monkeys on stick
Horses on wheels, composition
Animals on bellows, sheep, lions, birds
1 .00- 8.40
1 .00- 8.40
3 .60-21 .00
Dolls
China-headed dolls, Nankeen bodies
Large china doll heads
Parian doll heads
Dressed dolls, comic with cymbals, &c .
China bathing doll
Crying dolls, wax heads, arms, legs,
movable eyes, with shoes and stockings
0 .75- 6.00
1 .00- 5 .40
1 .25- 6.00
1 .40- 8.40
1 .50-15 .00
9 .50-27 .00
Small china doll heads
Kidd dolls
Crying dolls
4 .00-10 .80
4 .00-12 .00
6.00-11 .40
Wooden toys
Acrobats, windmills
Tea sets
Whistles
Noah's arks
Villages & farmyards
0 .60- 2 .75
0.70- 1 .80
1 .25- 6 .00
1 .25-21 .00
2 .50-15 .00
Soldiers on shears
Pails
Humming tops
Trumpets
_
1 .20- 3 .60
1 .25- 3 .65
3 .85-18 .00
12 .00-15 .00
Tin toys
Gigs
Horses in hoops
Dump carts
Horses on wheels, with rider
Fancy carriages
Meat carts
Horses on wheels, with boy & dog
Open wagons
Express wagons
Locomotives
Express wagons with horse
City cars
Fire engines & men, fancy coloured
Locomotives with trains
Farms, fancy coloured
Hose carriages
1 .50- 2 .50
1 .60- 1 .75
1 .60- 3 .25
2 .00- 2 .50
2 .50- 3 .00
2 .50- 3 .00
2 .75- 3 .00
2 .75- 3 .00
2.75-12 .60
3 .50-15 .00
3 .50-15 .00
8 .00-12 .00
8 .40
8 .40-12 .00
9 .00
12 .00-24 .00
Buggy, with horse & driver
Cups, painted
Banks
Covered pails
Buckets
Animals, assorted
Rocking horses
Horses on wheels
Dogs in hoops
Wagons
3.75- 4 .50
5 .00-60 .00
6.00-18 .00
8 .40-10 .00
9 .60-10 .80
10 .50-15 .00
10 .50-16 .80
15 .00-33 .00
15 .00-21 .00
15 .00-24 .00

American iron toys
Wheelbarrows 2 .00- 2 .25
Banks 2 .00- 4 .00
Fire-cracker pistols 4 .00- 4 .50
Knives, forks, spoons ; penny toys, assorted 1 .20- 1 .50
Hammers 3 .69- 4 .00
Sadirons 8 .00-24 .00
Furniture
Parloursets 3 .50-18 .00
Kitchen sets 5 .00-19 .20
In the wholesale prices quoted :
$ 1 .44- 7 .20 per gross = $0 .01-0.05 each
0.60- 1 . 20 per doz . or
7 .20-14 .40 per gross = 0.05-0.10 each
1. . 20- 2.40 per doz . or
14 .40-28 .80 per gross = 0.10-0 . 20 each
2 .40- 4 .80 per doz . = 0 . 20-0 .40 each
4 .80- 9 . 60 per doz . = 0 .40-0 .80 each
9 .60- 19 . 20 per doz . = 0 . 80-1 .60 each
In all cases retail prices would be about 40 per cent higher .
In the same 1874 article, retailers were advised to order
cases of assorted toys :
$12 .83 for a case of a 250-item
assortment, which would give an average wholesale price
per item of 5 cents ; $18.25 for a 200-piece assortment, an
average of 9 cents per item ;
$29.00 for the 120-piece
assortment, an average of 26 cents per item ; and, $40 .50
per case of 100 pieces of higher quality, or 41 cents per
item . For the 1871 value of $27,000 worth of toys being
imported into Canada if we assume the $18 .25, 200-piece
assortment price as an average one, that import figure
represents about 300,000 toys for a population of a little
over 3 .5 million people . 3
All the different types of toys were made in a variety of
sizes, with care and in a wide range of prices to suit different
pocketbooks . For one cent one could buy a monkey on
a stick, a composition horse on wheels, wooden soldiers on
shears, wooden pails, and the American cast iron knife,
fork, spoon and penny toys such as cast iron trivets and
miniature guns . For five cents one could buy wooden
animals on bellows, such as sheep, lions and birds, small
china doll heads to make into dolls at home, kid dolls and
crying dolls, wooden humming tops, tin buggy with
horse and driver, tin banks, and painted tin cups . The
most expensive toys were the speaking dolls that said
"mama" and "papa" selling for $1 .60 to $2 .40 each and
the wooden rocking horses for $2 .25 to $15 .00 each .
Although a great variety of toys was available, the
number and source of toys that any particular child might
have would depend on the economic circumstances of the
family .
For adult workers in manufacturing industries in
Nova Scotia in 1878, wages varied from about $5 .00 to
$11 .00 a week . Although there may be some regional
variations, wages were similar for workers in other
provinces . An unskilled labourer might earn $1 .00 a day .
Skilled workers, such as furniture makers, foundrymen,
forge workers, upholsterers, clothiers, carriage makers,
boot and shoe makers, contractors, builders and woodworkers
might earn $7 .50 to $8 .00 a week . Stove makers
and machinists could earn $10 .80 a week .' For these
wage-earning parents it is doubtful that they could spend
a day's or even a half day's wages for a toy . Money for toys,
if any were available after buying necessities, would
probably be for the simple penny or 5 cents variety . In
many of these families the children themselves might also
be wage-earners . Up to 1880 in some city factories children
as young as ten worked ten-hour days to supplement
their family's income . There would be little time or
energy left for play . Toys for these children might also be
homemade or improvised by the children themselves .
On some small farms or in areas of Ontario where land
was still being opened for settlement in the 1870s and
1880s, the family might be self-sufficient in supplying its
own food, but might not be producing enough of a surplus
to generate a cash income . Children on most farms would
be expected to help with chores . In this situation again
there would be little carefree time for play and toys would
likely be homemade .
The middle and higher priced toys in the 1874 list
would have found their way to the homes of a growing
Canadian middle class of wholesale and retail merchants,
importers and shippers, factory owners and prosperous
farmers, and into the homes of the professional engineers,
doctors, lawyers and government officials .
The kinds of toys found in both homemade and
manufactured versions would be in use by children across
the economic spectrum . Such toys, including special
furniture for children, made in simple versions by hand,
were also the staple products of early Canadian toy
manufacturers . In their efforts to compete with an already
established toy trade from Germany, Great Britain, and
53

the United States, Canadian companies made those items
that were most saleable ; these same toys remained bestsellers
well into the twentieth century . The most widely
produced and most enduring in popularity were toys
mimicking the visible physical activities of the adult
world : taking produce to market with a horse and cart ;
riding a horse to visit neighbours ; clothing, feeding, and
bathing young children ; and preparing and serving meals .
They reflected what children saw of adult work and it was
natural for children to learn by imitating that work, with
or without the assistance of toys . The most common toys
seem to have been wooden ones, such as hobby horses,
rocking horses, horses on wheels, horse or ox and cart,
wooden dolls and furniture, sledges and sleighs, and children's
chairs . Of a much wider selection, these would be
the first toys a child might be expected to have, whether
roughly executed and homemade or the most finished and
expensive that money could buy .
NOTES
I . See Janet Holmes, "Toys and Games" in D.B . Webster, ed ., The
Boak of Canadian Antiques (Toronto : McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974) .
? . The Merchantman, Toronto, vol . 2, no . 4, 1 October 1874, 9-10 .
This was the only issue the author was able to locate at the time of
research .
S . The Enryclopaedia Canadiana's article on "Population" gives the
1871 Canadian census figure as 3,689,0()0 .
i . Canada, Sesrional Paper no . 37, "Reports Relative to Manufacturing
Industries in Existence in Canada, 1885 .° 62-63 .
Fig . 2 .
a#_
.!l7I1 .01Lf
..
In this watercolour Boyt on Coasters, painted about
1H35-1840 by James Duncan, a Montreal artist, the
boys' sleds look like roughly made, scaled-down
versions of the sledges that were commonly used to
carry produce, such as hay or pigs, to winter market .
These sleds are likely homemade, and the scene is
similar to one described by Catharine Parr Traill in her
description of Christmas in 1838 : "A merry day it was
for them {our little ones], for our boy Martin had made
them a little sledge, and there was a famous snow drift
against the garden fence, which was hard packed and
frozen smooth and glare - up and down this frozen heap
did James and Katie with their playmates glide and
roll . It was a Christmas treat to watch those joyous
faces, buoyant with mirth, and brightened by the air,
through the frosty panes ." Taken from "Pioneer Celebrations"
in Mary Barber and Flora McPherson, Christmw
in Canada (Toronto : J . M . Dent, 1971), 17-18 .
Ht : 23 .2 cm . (Sigmund Samuel Collection, cat . no .
951 . 158.33 ; neg . no . (4CAN75 .)
R
Fig . 1 . Three children's chairs from Quebec . The commode
chair of butternut and pine was made about 1790-
1810, and the two ladder-back rocking chairs about
the mid-nineteenth century . Hr. (left) 62 cm, (middle)
75 cm, (right) 66 cm . (Cat . no . 971 .25 .2 ; cat . no .
970 .374 . 15, gift of the Laidlaw Foundation ; cat . no .
971 .25 .3 ; neg . no . 78CAN275 .) All artifacts in illustrations,
except for those in Figure 7, are from the
collections of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto,
Ontario .
Fig . 3 . Pine sled with elm runners reinforced with iron bands,
c . 1860 . Signed on the bottom in black crayon : -C . M .
Faulkenham/Lunenburg, N .S ." It is likely the work of
a craft workshop, making sleds for sale to customers .
Later factory-made versions were advertised by the T .
Eaton Co ., Toronto, in their 19()1 catalogue, at prices
from 20¢ to 654 each . Ht . 21 cm . (Cat . no . 98~4 .1i8 . I ;
neg . no . 85CAN65 .)
S-ti

horse . This one, in pine, was made in Quebec in the
late nineteenth century . Ht : 52 .5 cm . (Cat . no
970 .374 .9 ; neg . no . 78CAN274 ; gift of the Laidlam
Foundation .)
Left : The swinging hobby horse gave a forward anc
back motion but since it remained stationary, it savec
the wear and tear on carpets that regular rocking horse
were likely to inflict . The- body has been piecec
together from odd bits of wood and originally woulc
have been painted or covered with leather . Thest
beautifully carved swinging hobby horses were factor)
products and in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue for 191 e
cost from $2 .25 to $10 .50 each . Ht : 72 cm (approx .) .
(Cat . no . 963 .28 ; neg . no . 7RCAN274 .)
Fig . 4 . Child's sleigh with original black paint and thin red
decorative lines . The seat is upholstered in black wool
plush edged with black braid . This sleigh was made in
Quebec province about 1860, by a craftsman specializing
in carriages and sleighs . This sleigh would likely
belong to a child whose parents owned a full-size sleigh
for their own transportation . Ht : 90 cm . (Cat . no .
97 2.429 . 1 ; neg . no . 7RCAN276 .)
Fig . 5 . Centre : The black butternut rocking horse with maple
rockers made in the mid-nineteenth century in Quebec
is likely homemade . Its body has been carved from a
single block of wood and it has simple stick legs . Ht:
48 cm . (Cat . no . 971 .97 .7 ; neg . no . 78CAN274 .)
Right : The "shoo-fly" rocker was first made by an
American toy-maker, Jesse Crandall, in 1859 . It
quickly became popular in both factory and home
copies for children too young to balance on a rocking
Fig. 6 .
Left to right : The platform pull-toy horses vary greatly
in style, detail and price .
The plush-covered horse pull-toy is described in an
1895 Butler Bros . catalogue as "well made, natural
appearance, mane and tail, complete with saddle and
harness with stirrups, saddle, blanket and bridle, all on
4-iron-wheel axle platform" at $4 . 10 per dozen . It
might retail for about 45Q . It is likely German . Ht : 25
cm . (Cat . no . 973 .220 .5 ; neg . no . 78CAN259 .)
The realistically carved tall wooden horse might have
sold at the same price as a similar size plush horse,
which was advertised in the same catalogue at $1 . 12
each . It was probably made in Germany or the United
States . Ht : 42 cm . (Cat . no . 976-339 .2 ; neg . no .
78CAN259 ; gift of Dr . Michael Pflug .)
A pasteboard horse with wood legs, and a mane and
tail, was intended to retail for 54 . Probably German .
Hr: 14 cm . (Cat . no . 973 .220 .3 ; neg . no .
78CAN259 . )
The painted blue and white dapple horse with horsehair
mane and tail, and platform with wooden wheels
came from Quebec, and may have been made there
about the 1870s or 1880s . Its eccentric rear axle made
the horse dip up and down as he was pulled along . Ht :
29 cm . (Cat . no . 973 .64 . 1 : nee . no . 78CAN259 .)
55

Fig . 7 . Several examples of this rather simpler horse and cart,
c . 1880, with a plywood platform, painted red/brown,
have turned up in Quebec, and may be the work of a
toymaker there . Ht : 18 cm (approx.) . (Private collection
.)
Fig . 8 . Simple Dutch dolls that sold for a penny were made in a
single piece with unmovable arms and legs . Others
were jointed, and might also be attached to sticks or
platforms, as this one is, to make a dancing doll . Most
of these simple wooden jointed dolls likely came from
Sonneberg, Germany, the centre for the manufacture
of many varieties of woocden toys . It is a type of doll that
was also often whittled out in homemade versions .
This doll may have been made in Quebec in the late
nineteenth century . Ht of doll : 24 cm . (Cat . no .
972 .411 .2 ; neg . no . 06 .26 .72/i .)
Fig . 10 . Left: Some American factories imported doll parts ;
the china heads, arms and legs made in Germany were
assembled in their own factories . This doll is an early
mechanical doll, called the "Autoperipatetikos"
(automatic walking doll) by her inventor, Enoch Rice
Morrison . The doll was patented in July 1862 in the
United States . It works with a simple gear and windup
spring and uses an imported German china head .
Ht : 2i cm . (Cat . no 961 .71a&b ; neg . no .
78CANl3G ; gift of Mr . F R Jeffrey .)
Right: This blonde mechanical doll with small baby
also works with a wind-up gear mechanism and was
made by Armand Marseilles, Germany, about 1920 .
(Cat . no . 977 .204 ; neg . no 78CAN86 ; gift of Miss
Margaret Bruce .)
Fig . 9 .
o1
Rag dolls, like this black rag doll, c . 1870, from the
Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, were made at home
from available scraps of material . Machine-stitched
black twill weave body with persian lamb hair, white
wool dress with crotcheted edging . Ht : 44 .5 cm . (Cat .
no . 977 . 29 2 . 2a&b ; neg . no . HOCAN 34 . )
5 (,

Nineteenth-Century Canadian Children's Games
Mary Tivy
ResumelAbstract
Jusqu'au X I X` siecle, les activites et les objets traditionnels etaient a l'origine de la plupart des jeux et dtt materiel de jeux a la disposition
des enfants d'Occident . Ces jeux seculaires ont traverse les dges jusqu'au XX` siecle grace aux enfants qui se sont relayes pour en transmettre la
connaissance . On retrouve, sous une forme ou sous une autre, ces jeux traditionnels dans le repertoire des activites ludiques des enfants
d'aujourd'hui . Pendant le XIX` siecle, une gamme sans precedent de jeux et de materiel de jeux confus expressement pour les enfants a ete
fabriquee industriellement . Produits en Europe et aux Etats-Unis, ces articles ont ete importes au Canada en nombre toujours croissant tout
au long du siecle . L'ampleur des modifications qu'ils ont fait subir aux jeux traditionnels reste a preciser, tout comme l'inflttence qu'ils ont
exercee sur la periode de loisir des enfants et leur conception du monde.
In the Western world, tip until the nineteenth century, the range of children's games and game materials were largely made tip of
traditional activities and objects . Many of these games had been played for centuries and knowledge of them was passed from one child to
another, right into the twentieth century . Forms of most of these traditional games can be found within the repertoire of children's play
activities today . During the 1800s, an unprecedented array of games and game materials designed specifically for children were snanttfactured
commercially . These items were produced in Europe and the United States and imported into Canada in increasing numbers over the
century . To what degree they altered the play of traditional games remains to be determined, as does the effect they had on the child's leisure
time and world view .
In the Western world, up until the nineteenth century,
the range of children's games and game materials were
largely made up of traditional activities and objects . Many
of these games had been played for centuries and
knowledge of them was passed from one child to another,
right into the twentieth century . Forms of most of these
traditional games can be found within the repertoire of
children's play activities today . During the 1800s, an unprecedented
array of games and game materials designed
specifically for children were manufactured commercially .
These items were produced in Europe and the United
States and imported into Canada in increasing numbers
over the century . To what degree they altered the play of
traditional games remains to be determined, as does the
effect they had on the child's leisure time and world view .
Games Defined
A game is usually defined as a contest, in which all
players initially have the same capability to win . 1 Games
end when play determines a winner or loser . Game play
may appear spontaneous and unsupervised, but is in fact
guided by rigid rules . We say "play by the rules or you're
out" and use symbols like "times out" to temporarily
release us from the rules of play . Sociologists view games
as "structured systems of behaviour," separate from the
"real world . "Z Games can be played without objects,
although we often associate the term game with a visible
item . Games differ from pastimes and toys because these
activities do not contain the element of competition nor
organized rules of play . Some items that are used in
57
pastime play, such as tops or kites, can become game
items when play turns competitive, such as in duelling
tops or kite contests . Games can be played by one player
alone, as in card games such as solitaire, where the opposition
lies in the difficulty built into the rules of the game,
or puzzles, where the real opponent is the design of the
game device . j
Game behaviour is culturally based and tends to be conservative,
that is, it changes much slower than the rate of
change of game objects . Design of game items, especially
design elements necessary for proper functioning of the
game (as in the cubic shape of a die) also change slower
than the substance of these materials, which may not be
critical, and is influenced by technological innovation .
For instance, chess is an ancient East Indian war game that
was adopted by the Persians and subsequently diffused
through Europe at the time of the Crusades . The European
form of chess has not changed substantially in the last
eight hundred years, nor has the design of the chess board
or playing pieces . The manufacture of these game
materials certainly has, and we can now play chess on a
computer . Nevertheless, we are still playing the same
eight hundred-year-old game, following the same rules,
and using a simulation of a very traditional playing surface
with traditional playing pieces .
Research on Children's Games
Games and game playing are the subject of study of
several disciplines, but most research on traditional chil-

dren's games has been conducted by folklorists . This is
due largely to the oral nature of children's game play and
the method of game transmission, which is usually
demonstratively from child to child, with rules fixed only
by custom and tradition. 4 Hide and seek is an example of
this type of game . Nineteenth-century folklorists such as
Gomme (Traditional Games of England, Scotland and
Ireland)5 and Newell (Games and Songs of American
Children) 6 focussed not only on the words, tune, materials
and method of play of children's games, but also on their
symbolic roots . Games like London Bridge is Falling
Down were thought to reflect ancient beliefs about spirits
of a river sabotaging manmade objects (bridges) designed
to control them . 7 These extrapolations were sometimes
highly speculative and have become traditional beliefs on
their own . Today, researchers are more concerned with
game forms and variations, game preferences and cultural
attitudes toward game play .
Little study of children's games and game play in
Canada during the nineteenth century has been conducted
. Canada did not have folklore scholars during this
period like Newell (United States) and Gomme (Britain)
conducting systematic collecting and analysis of traditional
children's games . Primary and secondary sources
that mention or describe games are generally limited to
children's literature published during the 1800s outside
Canada . Occasionally, items like children's diaries
containing entries about game play or paintings and
photographs of children playing games surface ; these are
scarce but invaluable records .
Comparative analysis of game materials from the 1800s
is difficult because both traditional and popular commercial
game objects from the nineteenth century are poorly
represented in museum and private collections . This is
attributable in part to the ephemeral nature of some game
items, such as homemade tops . Like toys, favourite game
materials were often played with until they fell apart .
Unlike toys, sentimental care rarely extended to preserving
game materials in the home . Game objects have
been largely undervalued as cultural objects by history
museums partly because they lack the artifact qualities
traditionally cherished : they are rarely valuable in a
monetary sense, have little of the sentimental value
attached to dolls and other toys, and are often visually
modest . In addition, our own cultural traditions and
beliefs about pioneer life in Canada as a hard working,
puritanical period have swayed our understanding and
collecting of games and leisure materials . Recent interest
by history museums in games and pastimes has been fostered
not so much by a perceived need to understand
games and their place in Canadian culture, but by a need
to produce a variety of dynamic programmes for school
groups, including playing traditional games . Current
collecting of nineteenth-century handmade games and
game boards has been precipitated by the folk art movement,
which focusses on the design and form of these
boards as aesthetic objects . Little attention is paid to the
function of the board as a game . Because research
materials are limited, children's games and game materials
in Canada during the nineteenth century can only be
discussed in general terms .
Traditional Children's Games
Traditional, or "folk, ,8 games played in Canada during
the nineteenth century encompass games without objects,
including rhyming and chasing games, and games with
objects, such as hoop rolling . Many of these games were
culturally widespread and their long and poorly
documented use makes it difficult to determine a place or
time of origin for them . As with other aspects of folk
culture, basic play of these games has tended to remain
stable over time with some development of regional variations.9
Although there is little documentation of
nineteenth-century Canadian children playing these
games, we can deduce that their contemporary presence in
our school yards and playgrounds is a function of cultural
tradition, based on British, American and European
antecedents that have been illustrated and described (see
figs . 1 and 2) . Outdoor activities during the nineteenth
century included many of the games children still play
today, such as tag, skipping, hopscotch, hide and seek,
leap frog, crack the whip, etc . Church picnics and civic
celebrations advertised a number of organized events for
children, including race competitions such as sack races
and wheelbarrow races .
Singing games show a strong adherence to structure
and cadence with variation in verse . Edith Fowke's collection
of Canadian children's singing games made during
the 1960s show antecedents in both Newell and Gomme .
Counting out rhymes like :
Onery, twoery, ickery Ann
Fillisy, Follisy, Nicholas, John
Beaver, weaver, stingelum, steever,
O-U-T- spells, "out" 1°
which was reportedly used in Peterborough in 1875, show
up in Fowke's collection as
Onery, twoery, ickery Ann
Fillicy, fallacy my son John
Quebum quavum English knavum
Stringle-um, strangle-um, BUCK! I I
Her source dated its use to 1900 in Tintern, Ontario .
Newell includes the following version used in New
England about 1820 :
Onery uery, hickory, Ann
Filisy, folasy, Nicholas John
Queevy, quavy, Irish Mary
Stingalum, stangalum, buck . 12
58

form and use . " These game materials include tops, and
during the nineteenth century tops were sometimes
handmade by children using an old spool and a sharp
dowel . A boy's diary dated 1866 from Wellington Count~
in Ontario notes the purchase of two tops from a store . ~ '
Judging by the number of illustrations of children with
hoops, hoop rolling appears to have been a popular
activity . Hoops were made of metal or wood . Barrels were
the source of free hoops, but were difficult to roll because
one edge of the hoop had a greater circumference than the
other . Blacksmiths produced tine metal hoops with
accompanying rods called "girs ." Hoops provided a cornpanion
to the child enroute, and were rolled to school, on
shopping trips and in hoop races with other children . The
demise of the hoop seems to correlate with the introduction
of the bicycle .
The bilboque, also known as ring and pin, or cup and
ball, is an old gaming device that was present in Canada
during the nineteenth century although its distribution is
unknown . This manipulative device requires the child to
hold onto the handle, swing the attached ring or ball up,
and catch it onto the point or in the cup of the handle .
Figs . 1, 2 . Details of a Painting Children's Game_r (15G0) by
Flemish painter, Pieter Brueghel . The painting
illustrates scores of children's games, many of
which, like leap frog and hoop rolling, continued
to be played in the nineteenth century . The hoops
are barrel hoops from large barrels like the one
illustrated .
Other singing games, such as London Bridge, I Sent A
Letter to My Love, A Tisket A Tasket, In and Out the
Windows, etc ., which many of us know from our own
youth, are recorded in both Newell and Gomme . Forms of
these games and skipping rhymes were probably part of
the repertoire of many nineteenth-century Englishspeaking
Canadian children . Observation of recent
changes in these types of rhymes may provide us with
insight into how these changed and developed with
modification of words contrasting with permanence of
structure and tune . A skipping rhyme that I knew as a
child had a very old cadence but a contemporary popular
theme : "Hopalong Cassidy How About a Date?" Today
children sing "Hey Fonzy!, How About A Date?" 1 ' Many
of the words of the original have been maintained, and the
skipping game is still the same . The best sources on
singing, rhyming and outdoor games in the nineteenth
century are Fowke, Gomme, Newell and Brewster . ''
Traditional children's games often use found,
handmade, or locally made objects in the play, although a
handmade game item does not necessarily mean that it is
traditional . The corollary of this is also true : commercially,
mass-produced game items may be traditional in
Traditional puzzles seem to have been favourite game
items throughout the nineteenth century . Children's
books and journals often contained instructions for
making puzzles, magic tricks and conjuring .
Traditional puzzle materials included topological
puzzles, in which one tried to separate intertwined parts .
Instructions for the handwrought metal reproduction
puzzle (fig . 3) and the wooden heart puzzle (fig . 4) are
found in Games and Diversions of Argy1e.rhire, published in
1900 . 1' However, tile reproduction is of an eighteenthcentury
piece in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution,
while the heart puzzle is actually a contemporary
piece made by a Waterloo County Old Order Mennonite
craftsman in the traditional style lie knows . Identical
forms of these traditional puzzles were created in ivory by
Chinese artisans in the mid-nineteenth century for a
wealthy Western market . The knowledge of these puzzle
forms seems to have been widespread, and they have been
documented for centuries in the Orient and Europe .
Shuttle puzzles, in which the numbered or lettered
squares must be aligned chronologically within a frame,
were also handmade out of wood for children . Plastic
versions are popular today .
Other traditional game items would have included
skipping ropes, strings for cat's cradle, stilts, kites,
knuckle-bones and marbles .
Clay marbles were available early in the nineteenth century
and were by far the cheapest marble type . Children
often made their own, called "marrididdles" in Gomme's
publication . Hand-blown glass marbles were exported
59

from Germany by the 1840s, and although these were
much more expensive than the clay versions, they show up
in large quantities in collections . This is probably an indication
of contemporary collecting preferences as much as
use and distribution of glass marbles during the
nineteenth century. The 1866 boy's diary from
Wellington County mentioned previously has the entry
"Washy Shepherd gave me 30 glass allies today ." Glass
marbles were handmade throughout the century and it
was not until the 1900s that machine-made marbles were
produced . Porcelain marbles were also available . These
appear in lesser quantities in contemporary collections,
due to either lower demand and production volumes,
greater fragility, or lack of collecting interest . Although
these latter objects were not necessarily handmade or
locally made, they were used in traditional marble games,
such as Ring-Taw and Nine-holes .
With the exception of biloque, most of these games are
recognized by twentieth-century school-aged children
who visit the Museum and Archive of Games, University
of Waterloo, because the games formed part of the traditions
carried by most eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and
twentieth-century immigrants to Canada .
Traditional board games were carved and painted by
hand throughout the 1 HOOs and to a lesser degree into the
1900s . While these games were likely fashioned by adults
and may have been intended for adult play, we know that
18
children also played them . Handmade boards not only
expressed individual craftsmanship, but often reflected
cultural tradition in manufacture, design and play of the
game . A special form of checkers was, and still is, played
in Quebec . Jeu de danie.r uses a checkerboard of twelve by
twelve squares rather than the standard chess/checker
board of eight by eight squares . Other boards were
designed for games of backgammon, Parcheesi, Fox and
Geese, and Mill, also called Nine-Men's Morris . Fox and
Fig . 4 . This puzzle type is very old and has several names ; this
particular one is called "Lover's Yoke" bqcause of the
heart-shaped pieces . Length : 9 cm The object of the
puzzles is to get both hearts onto one loop Made in the
1970s by a Waterloo County Old Order Mennonite
craftsman . (Private collection .)
Geese is a game in which one player has one piece, the fox,
which has great mobility to "capture" the many geese
trying to surround and immobilize the fox .
This game is
played on the same board as solitaire (today known by the
brand name High Q) . Mill, or Nine Men's Morris, is an
ancient game which had widespread play throughout the
Middle East and Europe . The game board is a series of concentric
squares joined by intersecting lines, and the object
of the game is for players to get as many three-in-a-row
combinations as possible . Why these last two traditional
games seem to have declined in popularity through the
twentieth century may be explained in part by the lack of
commercial adoption and promotion of these games .
Older visitors to the Museum and Archive of Games sometimes
recognize these games, while younger visitors
.enerallv t, do not .
Commercially Manufactured Games
Fig . 3 .
A reproduction of a traditional puzzle made in the
eighteenth century in the United States . Length : 35 .5
cm . Original in the Smithsonian Institution .
Manipulative puzzles like this one were known for centuries
across Europe and Asia . (Collection : Museum
and Archive of Games, cat . no . 982 .()15 .(12 .03 .)
The nineteenth century witnessed the rapid growth and
development of an educated middle class, which for the
first time provided a market for the establishment of a
strong game industry . This industry not only produced
copies of traditional and classic games, but developed new
games and game materials for a growing children's
market . These materials permeated an area of material
culture previously dominated by locally made or
handmade items designed for games traditional to the
population they served .
Throughout the nineteenth century imported commercially
manufactured games were available to those who
could afford them . The influx of manufactured goods
seems to have been well underway by the 1850s and continued
progressively through the century to the present .
60

i
;
!,.,)10 ~' of
: .. .;y .
Fig . 5 . The Mansion of Bliss was a children's board game published in 1810 by W . Darton, a London map maker Dimensions : 57 .3 4
by 45 cm . The game was etched and hand painted on paper and mounted on linen . Games of this vintage had strong moral
educational themes ; this one represented the journey to heaven . (Collection : Museum and Archive of (james, cat . r
984 .027 .03 .03 .)
61

Major sources of these goods were Britain, the United
States, Germany and France . American mail-order
catalogues were established by the 1870s and Eaton's
produced its first catalogues in the 1880s . However, it
was not until the latter part of the century that game companies
began manufacturing in Canada . This delay was
probably due to the lack of a strong, year-round market
(games were mainly advertised and bought at Christmas)
and the earlier development of established firms in Britain
and the United States . 1`' The major changes in commercially
produced games over the century were in game
themes, game design and method of construction, the last
two factors resulting in cheaper production, lowered unit
prices and greater market penetration .
Manufactured boards in published form and specifically
for children first appear in 1759 in Britain . 2° The original
producers of these games were map makers and book
publishers, and these early games, etched, hand painted
and mounted on linen, folded up just like maps and fitted
into map folders . The game boards, like children's literature
of the period, initially had predominately educational
or moral themes . No doubt the instructional and moral
nature of these items increased their attractiveness to the
parents, since games such as the Mansion of Bliss (fig . 5)
retailed for nine shillings each in 1810 . Games were often
played with a teetotum, a sort of top-die considered more
suitable for children than dice, which were often
associated with gambling . Playing pieces for these games
were wood, bone and ivory and these materials continued
to be used until the end of the century when they were
replaced with plastics .
These games were expensive, and to what extent they
were available to those in Canada who could afford them is
unknown, but a few are found in Canadian collections .
Fig . 6. Game boards published in the United States in the 1880s and designed to resemble books . These games frequently appear in
Canadian museum collections . The game on the left is Fox and Geese, a classic strategy game that developed in northern Europe .
Dimensions : 15 .5 cm by 18 .5 cm (closed) . Backgammon is a -racing" game that originates from the ancient Roman game of
tabula and the Arabic game of Nard . Dimensions : 4? ., (m b) ? i cm (cluscd) . Both games were known thruughuut Eurohr prior
to the colonization of North America . (Collection : Muscum .uul Archivc of Gamcs, (at . nus . 98 I .()70 . j5 .43, 98 1 .070 .3 I .1)G .)

Fig . 7 . Bilboquet, eighteenth-century, reproduction from
Colonial Williamsburg . Length : 13 .5 cm . Like many
other ephemeral game items, bilboquets were used in
the nineteenth century, but seldom survive in collections
. (Collection : Museum and Archive of Games,
cat . no . 979 .16 .01 .02 .)
for board games . Examples include "The Comic Game of
the Great Exhibition of 1851" (English, 1851) and Russia
Versus Turkey, a game concerning the Crimean War
(English, late 1850s) . The Game of Robinson Crusoe
(English 1850s) and The Game of Innocence Abroad
(American, 1880s) were board games based on popular
books of the period . Games based on other products of
popular culture have continued to the present . By the turn
of the twentieth century, these types of games reflected
not only items of a political nature, such as the Suffragette
Game, and current events, as in The Klondike Game, but
also social attitudes toward ethnic groups, especially
Blacks, Jews and Chinese, as in the game of Alabama
Coon . Games continued to be designed based on books
and later in the twentieth century on radio and television
shows and movies . At the same time manufacturers incorporated
traditional storylines into new games, such as
Who Killed Cock Robin? They also produced commercial
versions of traditional board games and from the mid- to
the end of the nineteenth century these games were available
in a manufactured format in leather or simulated
leather, often designed to look like books . There is some
thought that these games were disguised as books to hide
their frivolous nature . Z' This was probably not the case,
and certainly the widespread advertising and availability
of the games would have blown the "cover"! It was probably
just a convenient and neat way to package game
boards, allowing for a different game on each side and
storage on a book shelf.
By the 1880s, many card games were available for children
and like those today were often designed for playing
games of matching sets .
In addition to the games mentioned, manufacturers
offered games of physical dexterity, such as parlour (table)
versions of tennis, croquet, and tiddly-winks . Fort and
bagatelle were wooden board games that incorporated
marbles as projectiles to hit targets . Fort stopped being
manufactured and has never been revived, while bagatelle
eventually evolved into pinball .
Fig. 8 .
Top, eighteenth-century, reproduction from Colonial
Williamsburg . Length : 15 cm . Like bilboquets, tops
can have many shapes and designs although the action
remains the same . (Collection : Museum and Archive of
Games, cat . no . 979 .16 .03 .01 .)
By the 1840s, games were lithographed on paper and
mounted onto cardboard . Boxes were used for packaging,
and this format has remained the same since . By the 1850s
themes from popular culture and current events had
largely replaced the earlier instructional and moral themes
So then, what would one expect to find in a child's
collection of games from the nineteenth century? It would
depend very much on the time period and the child's
ethnic traditions, social class, location (rural or urban) and
to some degree religious affiliation . Handmade or locally
made materials would likely be found in greater abundance
in homes earlier in the century and would probably
have persisted later in rural or poor urban homes, along
with cheap manufactured materials .
There appears to be a dramatic change in children's
game materials over the nineteenth century from the use
of traditional simple and classic materials, often
handmade or locally made, to widespread adoption of
imported commercially manufactured games with new
forms of play and themes based on popular culture . The
63

Fig . 9 . Handmade checkerboard, pine, provenance unknown, probably nineteenth-century Quebec . Dimensions : 64 .5 cm by 43 .5 cm .
This type of checkerboard features 12 squares x 12 squares and is known as jeu declatne.e because of its use in French-speaking areas
of Canada . (Private collection .)
presence of these materials confirms the development and
recognition for the first time of a child leisure culture . By
the last half oftile nineteenth century the products for this
culture were designed chiefly to entertain rather than act
as media for moral or educational instruction . Children's
exposure to these products through catalogues, store
advertisements and displays probably led to their participation
in deciding which games to buy .
There are many questions about the incorporation of
commercially manufactured games in nineteenth-century
child's play that remain to be investigated .
These games
were available to a segment of the population that grew
proportionately over the century with the growth of an
educated middle class . How widespread were these
games' What proportion of child's play did they occupy?
How did they affect the creation and play of traditional
games .' Did time spent playing games with popular
themes alter the child's world view? Finally, did the
nature of play of these games affect traditional interactive
patterns in child's gatne play'
Unfortunately, these questions will have to wait while
researchers gather basic and fundamental information on
just what manufactured games were played and to what
degree traditional games remained represented in the
child's leisure time .
Nt )'l Fa
I . E .M . Aec(1on and B . Sutton-Smith, Vre Sttrdi a% Games (New
York : john Wiley and Sons, 1971 ; Huntinkton, N .Y . : Robert E .
Kriel;er Publishing Company, 1979), see Introduction .
= . Ibid .
i, J.H . Brunvard, The Stud) of Aruerirzrn Folklore (New York : W.W .
.
.
.
.
. .
.
:
Norton K Company, 1978), 285 .
l . Ibid ., p 283 .
5 . A .B . Gotnme, The Traditional Garnet oj England, Scotland and
Ireland, 2 vols (New York : Dover Publications, 196~+) ; Repuhlieution
of The niitinnary of E3rili.rh Folklore (London : D. Nutt, 1894,
vol . I, and 1898, vol . 2) .
6 W.W . Newell, Games and Songs oJ Amerhan Children (1883 ;
reprint, New York : Dover Publications, 1903, 1963) .
7 . Ibid ., p . 211 .
R . The term jolk is used according to definitions in J H. f3runvard,
op cit ., note i, chap I .
9 . This is discussed in Henry Glassie, Folk Housing in Al irldleVirwinia :
A Structural Analysis rf Historic Artifm'ts (Knoxville : University of
Tennessee Press, 1975), chap. I especially .
I(l A .F . Chamberlain, "Folklore of Canadian Children," journal of
Arneriean Folklore 8 ( 1R95) .
11 . E . Fowke, Sa1l1 Go Round the Sun (Toronto McClelland and
Stewart, 1969), 111 .
. .
.
:
.
:
.
. .
.
.
.
.
:
12 . Newell, Games ' and Songs ofArnernun Children, op cit ., note 6, p
197
11 . Recorded in Oh Canada 2, a bilingual kit for Canadian children,
produced by the Commissioner of Official Ianl;uages, Government
of Canada, 1980, p . 25 .
14 . P .G . Brewster, ed ., Children's Garner and Rhymes ( 1952 ; reprint,
New York Arno Press, 1976) .
15 . This is discussed by G .L Pocius in "Material Folk Culture
Research in English Canada : Antiques, Aficionados, and
Beyond, " Canadian Folklore Canadierr ~1, nus . l-2 27-41 .
16 From the diary of Charles Kirk Clarke, aged R in 1866,
Wellington County Archives, Wellington County Museum,
Ferl;us, Ontario .
17 R.C Mac la);an, Garner and I)iterrionJ of ArAyle.thire ( 1900 ; reprint,
New York : Arno Press, 1976) .
I}i Clarke diary .
19 . l) . R . Richeson, Commercial Top and Games in Canada, Canadian
Studies Report, no 12 (Ottawa : National Museum of Man,
History Division, 19f31) .
20 . F . R . B V(rhitehouse, Table Games ofGeorl;ian and Vinrnrian Days,
rev . ed . (Roysron, England : Priory Press, 1971)
21 . R .t : . Bell . The 13~~~rrrle~nur 13 1 .E (Los Anvcles Kna(,(, Press, 1979),

Conference Programme
Children and Changing Perspectives of Childhood in the Nineteenth Century
January 30 - February 2, 1985
Keynote Address :
"The Material Culture ofChildhood : Problems and Potential
in Historical Explanation ." Thomas J . Schlereth,
Department of American Studies, University of Notre
Dame .
THE CHILD IN THE FAMILY
Plenary Session :
"Staking a Claim in the Territory of Childhood : Schools,
Families and Children in Nineteenth-Century Ontario ."
John Abbott, Department of History, Algoma University
.
Concurrent Sessions :
a) "Childhood in Nineteenth-Century Ontario : A High-
Risk Occupation" (Children's Health Care) . Charles
Roland, Department of History, McMaster University
.
b) "Feeding the Nineteenth-Century Baby : Implications
for Collections Use." Felicity Nowell-Smith, Curator,
Museum of the History of Medicine .
c) "Children's Work in and Around the Home ." Professor
John Bullen, Department of History, University of
Ottawa .
Concurrent Sessions :
a) "Beauty Unadorned : Dressing Children in Late
Nineteenth Century Ontario ." Christina Bates, Historian,
Parks Canada (Ontario Region) .
b) "Training, Restraining and Sustaining : Infant and
Child Care in the Late Nineteenth Century ." Hilary
Russell, Historian, Parks Canada (Ottawa) .
Plenary Session :
"Changing Perspectives on Childhood and Sexuality ."
John Theis, Family Life Studies, University of Waterloo .
THE CHILD IN SOCIETY
Plenary Session :
Wesley Turner, Department of History, Brock University
.
Concurrent Sessions :
a) "The Little Workers : Child Labour in Ontario ." Craig
Heron, Department of History, York University .
b) "Housing the Common Family : North American
Material Culture and an Agenda for Local Research ."
John Weaver, Department of History, McMaster
University .
LEISURE AND CHILDHOOD
Plenary Session :
"'Waste Not, Want Not'-responding to the Challenge of
Childhood Leisure ." Patricia Dirks, Department of
History, Brock University .
Concurrent Sessions :
a) "Children's Toys in the Nineteenth Century." Janet
Holmes, Canadiana Department, Royal Ontario
Museum ; Loet Vos, Museum of the History of Childhood
.
b) "'Save All Your Rags' : Children's Literature in the
Nineteenth Century ." Margaret Maloney, Curator,
Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books,
Toronto Public Library .
Concurrent Sessions :
a) "Children's Pastimes and Games in the Nineteenth
Century : Museum Applications ." Mary Tivy, Curator,
Museum and Archive of Games ; Victoria Marchant,
Curator, Bradley House Museum .
b) "The Child in Literature . Anne of Green Gables as a
Case Study." Mary Rubio, Department of English,
University of Guelph and Co-editor, Canadian
Children's Literature .
65

Concluding Sessions :
"Civilizing and Cultivating Childhood : Schooling Before
and After 1850 ." Bruce Curtis, Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education .
"Changing Views of Childhood : A Museological Perspective
." Greg Baeker, Executive Director, Ontario Museum
Association ; Lynne Kurylo, Manager/Curator, Enoch
Turner Schoolhouse ; Ruth Freeman, Coordinator,
Discovery Gallery, Royal Ontario Museum .

Contributors/Collaborateurs
Greg Baeker is Executive Director of the Ontario Museum Association .
Christina Bates is a historian specializing in material and social history with Parks Canada, Ontario
Region . She is currently researching nineteenth-century leisure and dance .
Janet Holmes is a curatorial assistant in the Canadiana Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto .
Felicity Nowell-Smith is Curator of the Museum of the History of Medicine, Toronto .
Hilary Russell has researched various aspects of nineteenth-century life for the Historical Research
Division of Parks Canada, Ottawa .
Thomas J . Schlereth, Director of Graduate Studies in American Studies at the University of Notre
Dame in Indiana, has published extensively on American material culture .
Mary Tivy is Assistant Curator of the Museum and Archive of Games, University of Waterloo,
Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario .
67

Notice/Avis
Conference
La recherche sur la culture materielle en Amerique du Nord :
nouveaux objectifs, nouvelles theories
Dans 1'attente d'un financement, le Winterthur Museum et la Memorial University of Newfoundland
vont coparrainer une conference internationale intitulee : «La recherche sur la culture materielle
en Amerique du Nord : nouveaux objectifs, nouvelles theories» . Cette rencontre se deroulera a St
John's (Terre-Neuve) du 19 au 21 juin 1986, et rassemblera les plus grands specialistes du Canada et
des Etats-Unis . Voici quelques-uns des themes qui seront traites en comite :
Theories de la culture materielle : emprunt ou nouveaute?
L'objet fa~onne : structure et communication
Les dimensions politiques et economiques de 1'objet
L'objet fa~onne nous apprend-11 quelque chose de nouveau?
La signification des objets aux yeux du public : musees, collectionneurs, organismes
gouvernementaux
Objets de travail, objets au travail
Perspectives d'avenir de la recherche en culture materielle
Les personnes suivantes participeront a la conference : Kenneth Ames, Winterthur Museum ; Jeanne
Cannizzo, University of Western Ontario ; Ann Gorman Condon, University of New Brunswick ;
Jean-Claude Dupont, Universite Laval ; Michael Ettema, Smithsonian Institution ; Henry Glassie,
University of Pennsylvania ;
Alan Gowans, University of Victoria ; Bernard Herman, University of
Delaware ; Deryck Holdsworth, University of Toronto ; Adrienne Hood, Musee royal de I'Ontario ;
Michael Owen Jones, UCLA ; George MacDonald, Musee national de l'Homme ; Eugene Metcalf,
Miami University ; Del Muise, Carleton University ; Jules Prown, Yale University ; D.-T . Ruddel,
Musee national de 1'Homme ; Brian Rusted, Memorial University ; Robert St . George, Boston University
; Thomas Schlereth, Notre Dame University ; Edwina Taborsky, York University ; Lynn Teather,
University of Toronto ;
University .
Dell Upton, University of California ; John Vlach, George Washington
Pour obtenir de plus amples renseignements a ce sujet, veuillez vous adresser A :
Gerald L . Pocius
Department of Folklore
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St John's (Terre-Neuve)
AlC 5S7
Canada
68

Conference Announcement
North American Material Culture Research : New Objectives, New Theories
Pending funding, Winterthur Museum and Memorial University of Newfoundland will be cosponsoring
an international conference on "North American Material Culture Research : New Objectives,
New Theories ." This gathering will be held in St . John's, Newfoundland, June 19-21, 1986,
and will bring together leading material culture researchers from Canada and the United States . Panel
topics will include :
Theories of Material Culture : Something Borrowed or Something New?
The Artifact : Structure and Communication
The Political and Economic Dimensions of the Object
Does the Artifact Reveal Anything New?
The Meaning of Objects to the Public : Museums, Collectors, Government Agencies
Working Objects, Objects at Work
The Future of Material Culture Research
Participants include : Kenneth Ames, Winterthur Museum ; Jeanne Cannizzo, University of
Western Ontario; Ann Gorman Condon, University of New Brunswick ; Jean-Claude Dupont, Univ
ers I t& ' Laval, - Michael Ettema, Smithsonian Institution- I Henry Glassie, University of Pennsylvania ;
Alan Gowans, University of Victoria ; Bernard Herman, University of Delaware ; Deryck Holdsworth,
University of Toronto ; Adrienne Hood, Royal Ontario Museum ; Michael Owen Jones, UCLA ;
George MacDonald, National Museum of Man ; Eugene Metcalf, Miami University ;
Del Muise,
Carleton University ; Jules Prown, Yale University ; D.-T . Ruddel, National Museum of Man ; Brian
Rusted, Memorial University ; Robert St . George, Boston University ; Thomas Schlereth, Notre
Dame University ; Edwina Taborsky, York University ; Lynn Teather, University of Toronto ; Dell
Upton, University of California ; John Vlach, George Washington University .
To receive further information about the conference contact :
Gerald L . Pocius
Department of Folklore
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St . John's, Newfoundland
A IC 5S7
Canada
69

The New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, New
Brunswick, is preparing a travelling exhibition of ship
portraits depicting vessels built in the province or those
that sailed under the house flags of New Brunswick firms .
We would like to know the whereabouts of such portraits
as we are developing an index of such and are always
interested in purchasing works of good artistic quality .
The museum also seeks papers, logs, diaries and other
manuscript material relating to shipbuilding and shipping
in New Brunswick . Contact :
Robert S . Elliot
Department of Canadian History
The New Brunswick Museum
277 Douglas Ave .
Saint John, N . B .
E2K lE5
Canada
La Musee du Nouveau-Brunswick a Saint John
(Nouveau-Brunswick) organise une exposition itinerante
de tableaux representant des bateaux qui ont ete construits
dans la province ou qui ont navigue sous le pavillon
d'armateurs du Nouveau-Brunswick. Nous recherchons
des toiles de cc genre, car nous en dressons presentement
un repertoire et nous avons toujours ete disposes a acheter
des oeuvres de bonne qualite artistique . Le mus6e recherche
egalement des pii:ces, des journaux de bord, des
carnets personnels et d'autres documents manuscrits
touchant a la construction navale et a la navigation au
Nouveau-Brunswick . Veuillez critter en communication
avec
Robert S. Elliot
Department of Canadian History
Le Musee du Nouveau-Brunswick
227, av . Douglas,
Saint John (Nouveau-Brunswick)
E2K lE5
Canada
70

Material History Bulletin
Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle
ISSUES PUBLISHED/NUMEROS PUBLIES
No . 1
No . 2
No . 3
(Mercury Series/Collection Mercure, History/
Histoire, No . 15, 1976) . Out of print/epuise .
(Mercury Series/Collection Mercure, History/
Histoire, No . 21, 1977) . Out of print/epuise .
(Spring/Printemps 1977) .
Articles : Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Christina
Morris : Micmac Artist and Artist's Model; David
Newlands, A Catalogue of Sprig Moulds from Two
Huron County, Ontario, Earthenware Potteries ;
Charles Foss, John Warren Moore: Cabinetmaker,
1812-1893 ; Marie Elwood, The State Dinner Service
of Canada, 1898 .
No . 5
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Jeanne
Arseneault, fl la recherche du costume acadien ;
Robert D. Watt, The Documentation of a Rare
Piece of British Columbiana : The Helmcken Presentation
Silver ; Gerald L . Pocius, Material Culture
Research in the Folklore Programme, Memorial University
of Newfoundland; R .G . Patterson, Recent
Research on a Victoria, B.C ., Silversmith : William
Maurice Carmichael (1892-1954) .
(Spring/Printemps 1978) .
Articles : Stephen Archibald, Civic Ornaments:
Ironwork in Halifax Parks; David L. Newlands,
A Toronto Pottery Company Catalogue .
No . 4
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Lise Boily et Jean-
Fran~ois Blanchette, Les fours a pain au Quebec
par Pierre Rastoul ; Vancouver Centennial
Museumn, "Milltown Gallery" by Nicholas
Dykes ; Musee du Quebec, La fabrication
artisanale des tissus; appareils et techniques by
Adrienne Hood ; A. Gregg Finley, ed ., Heritage
Furniture/Le mobilier tranditionnel by Elizabeth
Ingolfsrud ; Virginia Careless, Bibliography for
the Study of British Columbia's Domestic Material
History by Jim Wardrop .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Norman
R. Ball, Comments on the Burrard Inlet Sawmill
Inventory : 1869 ; Bernard Genest, Recherches
ethnographiques au Ministere des Affaires culturelles
du Quebec; Adrienne Hood, Research into the Technical
Aspect of Reproducing 19th Century Canadian
Handwoven Fabrics; History Section, Nova Scotia
Museum .
(Fall/Automne 1977) .
Article : George N. Horvath, The Newfoundland
Cooper Trade .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : D . Pennington and
M. Taylor, A Pictorial Guide to American Spinning
Wheels by Judy Keenlyside ; Carol Priamo, Mills
of Canada and William Fox et al ., The Mill by
Felicity Leung ; Lise Boily et Jean-Fran~ois
Blanchette, Les fours a pain au Quebec (Replique
des auteurs) .
No .
G
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Woodward's Catalogue
1898-1953 and The Autumn and Winter
Catalogue 1910-1911 of the Hudson's Bay Company
by David Richeson ; Valerie Simpson, ed .,
Women's AttirelLes vetements feminins by Ivan
Sayers ; Jacques Bernier, Quelques boutiques de
menuisiers et charpentiers au tournant du XIX` siecle
par Serge Saint-Pierre ; Charles H . Foss, Cabinetmakers
of the Eastern Seaboard: A Study of Early
Canadian Furniture by John McIntyre ; National
Museum of Man "A Few Acres of Snow/
Quelques arpents de neige" by Jean Friesen .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Jim
Wardrop, Modern History Division, British
Columbia Provincial Museum ; Joyce Taylor
Dawson, The Needlework of the Ursulines of Early
Quebec.
(Fall/Automne 1978) .
Articles : C. Peter Kaellgren, Glass Used in
Canada : A Survey from the Early Nineteenth Century
to 1940 (Ontario) ; John Sheeler, Factors
Affecting Attribution : The Burlington Glass Works;
Paul Hanrahan, Bottles in the Place Royal Collection
; Robert D . Watt, Art Glass Windown Design
in Vancouver .
Review/Compte rendu : Janet Holmes and Olive
Jones, Glass in Canada : An Annotated Bibliography
.
71

No . 7
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Carol
Sheedy, Les vitraux de.r maisons de la Cote-de-Sable
d'Ottawa ; Deborah Trask, The Nova Scotia Glass
Company ; Peggy Booker, Ontario's Victorian
Stained Glass Windows ; Peter Rider, Dominion
Glass Company Records .
(Spring/Printemps 1979) .
Articles : R. Bruce Shepard, The Mechanized
Agricultural Frontier of the Canadian Plains ; John
Adams, A Review of Clayburn Manufacturing and
Products, 1905 to 1918 .
No . 9
Alexander Fenton, Material History in Great
Britain ; Joseph Goy, L'histoire de la culture
matirielle en France ; Thomas J . Schlereth,
Material Culture Studies in America ; Marie
Elwood, A Museum Approach to Material History
Studies ; Paul-Louis Martin, Un passi en quite
d'avenir.
(Fall/Automne 1979) .
Articles : Anita Campbell, An Evaluation of
Iconographic and Written Sources in the Study of a
Traditional Technology : Maple Sugar Making .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Marylu Antonelli
and Jack Forbes, Pottery in Alberta : The Long
Tradition by David Richeson ; Eileen Collard,
publications on clothing in Canada by
Katharine B . Brett ; Mary Conroy, 300 Years of
Canada's Quilts by Leslie Maitland ; Alexander
Fenton, Scottish Country Life by J . Lynton
Martin ; Ellen J . Gehret, Rural Pennsylvania
Clothing by Adrienne Hood ; Jean-Pierre Hardy,
Le forgeron et le ferblantier par Jean-Claude
Dupont ; Howard Pain, The Heritage of Upper
Canadian Furniture by Donald Blake Webster ;
Mary Shakespeare and Rodney H . Pain, West
Coast Logging : 1840-1910 by Warren F .
Sommer ; Deborah Trask, Life How Short, Eternity
How Long : Gravestone Carving and Carvers in
Nova Scotia by Gerald L . Pocius .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Patricia Baines, Spinning
Wheels, Spinners and Spinning by Judy
Keenlyside ; Bus Griffiths, Now You're Logging
by Robert Griffin ; David L . Newlands and
Claus Breede, An Introduction to Canadian
Archaeology by Dianne Newell ; D . R . Richeson,
ed ., Western Canadian History : Museum Interpretations
by Alan F.J . Artibise ; Vancouver Centennial
Museum, "The World of Children : Toys
and Memories of Childhood" by Zane Lewis ;
Musee du Quebec, "Cordonnerie traditionnelle"
par Yvan Chouinard .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles brc'ves : Robert
Shiplay, War Memorials in Canadian Communities
; Peter Priess and Richard Stuart, Parks
Canada, Prairie Region .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Glass
Collections in Canada/Les collections de verre au
Canada ; F .J . Thorpe, Eighteenth-Century Land-
Surveying Equipment and Supplies .
No . 10
(Spring/Printemps 1980) .
Articles : Martha Eckmann Brent, A Stich in
Time: Sewing Machine Industry of Ontario, 18G0-
1897 .
No . 8
(Special Issue/Numero special, 1979) . Canada's
Material History : A Forum/Colloque sur 1'histoire
de la culture materielle au Canada .
Special Report/Rapport special : Victoria
Dickenson and Valerie Kolonel, Computer-Based
Archival Research Project: A Preliminary Report .
Papers/Communications : F .J . Thorpe, Remarks
at theOpening Session ; Jean-Pierre Wallot, Culture
materielle et histoire ; John J . Mannion, Multidisciplinary
Dimensions in Material History ;
Robert D. Watt, Toward a Three-Dimensional
View of the Canadian Past ; Elizabeth Ingolfsrud,
Tangible Social History : The Ontario Furniture
Collection of the National Museum of Man ; Jean-
Pierre Hardy et Thiery Ruddel, Un projet sur
l'histoire de la culture et de la societe quebecoises ;
David J . Goa, The Incarnation of Meaning:
Approaching the Material Culture of Religious
Traditions ; Luce Vermette, Sources archivistiques
concernant la culture materielle ; Lilly Koltun,
Seeing is Believing? -A Critique of Archival Visual
Sources ; Gerald L. Pocius, Oral History and the
Study of Material Culture ; W. John McIntyre,
Artifacts as Sources for Material History Research ;
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Clement W .
Crowell, The Novascotiaman by Rosemary E .
Ommer; Jean-Claude Dupont, Hi.ctoire populaire
de l'Acadie par Clarence LeBreton ; Michel
Gaumond et Paul-Louis Martin, Les maitrespotiers
du bourg Saint-Denis, 1785-1888 par
Corneliu Kirjan ; Bernard Genest et al ., Les artisans
traditionnelr de Pest du Quebec par Jean-Pierre
Hardy ; Paul B . Kebabian and Dudley Whitney,
American Woodworking Tools by Martin E .
Weaver ; Ray MacKean and Robert Percival, The
Little Boats : Inshore Fishing Craft of Atlantic
Canada by David A . Taylor ; Ruth McKendry,
Quilts and Other Bed Coverings in the Canadian
Tradition by Leslie Maitland ; Marcel Moussette,
La piche sur le Saint-Laurent; Ripertoire des
methodes et de.r engins de capture par Corneliu
Kirjan ; David L . Newlands, Early Ontario
72

No . 11
No . 12
Potters : Their Craft and Trade by Elizabeth
Collard; Loris S.Russell, Handy Things to Have
Around the House by Hilary Abrahamson ; Jeffrey
J. Spalding, Silversmithing in Canadian History
by Tara Nanavati ; Sheila Stevenson, Colchester
Furniture Makers by David L . Myles ; Donald
Blake Webster, English-Canadian Furniture of
the Georgian Period by Benno Forman .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Marie
Elwood, The Weldon and Trumball-Prime China
Collections ; David Skene-Melvin, Historical Planning
and Research Branch, Ontario Ministry of
Culture and Recreation ; Corneliu Kirjan, Le.r
publications de la Direction generale du patrimoine,
Ministere des Affaires culturelle.r, Quebec .
(Fall/Automne 1980) Furniture in Canada - Le
mobilier au Canada .
Articles : Yvan Fortier et Marcel Gauthier, Les
meubles meublants dans le repertoire du mobilier
ancien au Quebec; Walter W . Peddle, Newfoundland
Outport Furniture : An Interpretation . .
Review/Compte rendu : W . John McIntyre and
Janet Houghton McIntyre, Canadian Furniture :
An Annotated Bibliography . .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Furniture
in Public Collections in Canada/Les collections de
meuble3 au Canada ; Elizabeth Ingolfsrud, Isaac
Bennett Baker, Ontario Builder and Cabinetmaker ;
Joan MacKinnon, The Furniture of Rutherford
House ; Frances Roback, Speakers' Chairs from the
Legislative Assembly of Alberta .
(Spring/Printemps 1981) .
Articles : Gerald L . Pocius, Eighteenth and
Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland Gravestones .
Research Note/Note de recherche : Ronald
Getty and Ester Klaiman, Identifying Medalta,
1916-1954: A Guide to Markings .
No . 13
No . 14
Reviews/Comptes rendus : British Columbia
Provincial Museum, Modern History Galleries
by Ian MacPherson ; British Columbia Provincial
Museum, "William Maurice Carmichael,
Silversmith" by Martin Segger ; Judith Buxton-
Keenlyside, Selected Canadian Spinning Wheels in
Perspective : An Analytical Approach by Peter W .
Cook ; Musee du Quebec, "Regard sur le
mobilier victorien" par Denise Leclerc ; Point
Ellice House, Victoria, B .C . by John Adams ;
Lynne Sussman, SpodelCopeland Transfer-Printed
Patterns Found at 20 Hudson's Bay Company Sites
by Elizabeth Collard .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Duncan
Stacey, The Iron Chink ; Richard Stuart, An
Approach to Material Culture Research .
(Fall/Automne 1981) . Exploiting the Forest/
Exploitation forestiere .
Articles : Robert D. Turner, Logging Railroads
and Locomotives in British Columbia ; Robert B .
Griffin, The Shingle Sawing Machine in British
Columbia, 1901-1915; Chris Curtis, Shanty Life
in the Kawartha.r, Ontario, 1850-1855 ; Normand
Seguin et Rene Hardy, Foret et .rociete en Mauricie,
1850-1930 ; Benoit Gauthier, La .rous-traitanceet
l'exploitation forestiere en Mauricie (1850-1875);
Michel Larose, Le.r contrats d'engagement des
travailleurs fore.rtiers de la Mauricie ; Claire-Andree
Fortin, Profil de la main-d'ceuvre forestiere en
Mauricie d'apre.r le recen.rement de 1861 ; Claire-
Andree Fortin, Les conditions de vie et de travail de.r
bucherons en Mauricie au 19` .ciecle .
Research Note/Note de recherche : Rod Pain and
Mary Shakespeare, Georgetown Mill, British
Columbia : A Historical Salvage Project .
Review/Compte rendu : McCord Museum, "The
River and the Bush/La riviere et la foret . Timber
trade in the Ottawa Valley, 1800-1900" by
Judith Tomlin .
Note : Collections Related to the Forest Industry
.
(Spring/Printemps 1982) .
Articles : George Bervin, Espace phy.rique et culture
materielle du marchand-negociant a Quebec au debut
du XIXe siecle; Georges P. Leonidoff, L'habitat de
bois en Nouvelle-France: son importance et .res techniques
de construction ; Anita Rush, Changing
Women's Fashion and its Social Context, 1870-
1905 .
Research Notes/Notes de recherche : Martin
Segger, Some Comments on the Use of Historical
Photographs as Primary Sources in Architectural
History ; Robert W . Frame, Woodworking Patterns
at the Sutherland Steam Mill, Nova Scotia
Museum ; E.M . Razzolini, Costume Research and
Reproduction at Louisbourg ; Richard MacKinnon,
Company Housing in Wabana, Bell Island,
Newfoundland.
Research Reports/Rapports de recherche :
Barbara Riley, Domestic Food Preparation in
British Columbia, 1895-1935 ; Elizabeth
Quance, Ontario Historical Society Material Culture
Project ; CELAT, Ethnologie de l'Amerique
franfai.re ; Sheila Stevenson, An Inventory of Re-
73

No . 15
search and Researchers Concerned with Atlantic
Canadian Material Culture .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : National Museum of
Man, "The Covenant Chain : Indian Ceremonial
and Trade Silver" by Robert S . Kidd ; Vancouver
Museum, "Waisted Efforts" by Marion Brown ;
National Gallery of Canada, "The Comfortable
Arts" by Anita Rush ; Newfoundland Museum,
"Newfoundland Outport Furniture" by Christine
Cartwright ; New Brunswick Museum, "On
the Turn of the Tide : Ship and Shipbuilders,
1769 to 1900" by Eric Ruff; Musee national de
1'Homme, "L'art du marteau : coup d'eeil sur la
ferronnerie et la ferblanterie" par Johanne
LaRochelle ; Collectif, Jean-Claude Dupont et
Jacques Mathieu, comps ., Les miners du cuir par
David T. Ruddel ; Peter E . Rider, ed ., The History
of Atlantic Canada : Museum Interpretation by
William B . Hamilton ; Thomas J . Shlereth, Artifacts
and the American Past by Del Muise ; David
and Suzanne Peacock, Old Oakville : A Character
Study of the Town's Early Buildings and of the Men
Who Built Them by Harold Kalman ; Jack L.
Summers, Rene Chartrand, and R .J . Marion,
Military Uniforms in Canada, I665-1970 by
Charles Bourque ; Robert S . Elliott, Matchlock to
Machine Gun: The Firearms Collection of the New
Brunswick Museum by John D . Chown .
(Special Issue/Numero special, 1982) . Colloquium
on Cultural Patterns in the Atlantic
Canadian Home .
Papers/Communications : Gerald L . Pocius, Interior
Motives : Rooms, Objects, and Meaning ; Shane
O'Dea, The Development of Cooking and Heating
Technology ; Linda Dale, A Woman's Touch:
Domestic Arrangements ; Wilfred W . Wareham,
Aspects of Socializing and Partying in Outport Newfoundland;
Gary R. Butler, Sacred and Profane
Space ; Kenneth Donovan, Family Life and Living
Conditions in Eighteenth-Century Louisbourg ; Carol
M. Whitfield, Barracks Life in the Nineteenth
Century ; Donald Blake Webster, Furniture and
the Atlantic Canada Condition ; Thomas Lackey,
Folk Influence in Nova Scotia Interiors ; Marie
Elwood, Halifax Cabinet-Makers, 1837-1875 :
Apprenticeships ; Irene Rogers, Cabinet-making in
Prince Edward Island; T .G . Dilworth, Thomas
Nisbet ; Cora Greenaway, Decorated Walls and
Ceilings in Nova Scotia ; Charles H . Foss, Room
Decorating and Furnishing in the First Half of the
Nineteenth Century ; David Orr, Traditional
Furniture of Atlantic Canada; A Roundtable Discussion
: Collectors, Dealers, and Museums : Private
Initiative and Public Responsibility ; Victoria
Dickenson and George Kapelos, Closing
Remarks .
No . 16
No . 17
No . 18
(Winter/Hiver 1982) . Ceramics in Canada/La
ceramique au Canada .
Articles : Lester Ross, The Archaeology of Canadian
Potteries ; Elizabeth Collard, Nineteenth-
Century Canadian Importers' Marks ; Ronald
Getty, The Medicine Hat and the Alberta Potteries ;
Lynne Sussman, Comparing Ceramic Assemblages
in Terms of Expenditure ; Jennifer Hamilton,
Ceramics Destined for York Factory ; William
Coedy and J .D . MacArthur, Characterization of
Selected Nineteenth-Century Southern Ontario
Domestic Earthenwares by Chemical Analysis ;
Donald B. Webster, The Prince Edward Island
Pottery, 1880-98 ; Sophie Drakich, Eighteenth-
Century Coarse Earthenwarea Imported into
Louisbourg ; John Carter, Spanish Olive Jars from
Fermeure Harbour, Newfoundland .
Research Note/Note de recherche : Colette
Dufresne, La poterie au Quebec, une hi.rtoire de
famille .
Ceramics Collections/Collections de poteries .
(Spring/Printemps 1983) . Material Conditions
and Society in Lower Canada : Post mortem
inventories/Civilisation materielle au Bas-
Canada : les inventaires apres dec6s .
Introduction : Jean-Pierre Hardy, Gilles
Paquet, David-Thiery Ruddel et Jean-Pierre
Wallot, Material Conditions and Society in Lower
Canada, 1792-1835/Culture materielle et socidti
au Quebec, 1792-1835 .
Articles : Gilles Paquet et Jean-Pierre Wallot,
Structures sociale.r et niveaux de riche.rse dans les campagnes
du Quebec, 1792-1812; George Bervin,
Environnement materiel et activites economique.r des
con.ceillers executifs et legi.rlatifs a Qrribec, 1810-
1830 ; Jean-Pierre Hardy, Niveaux de richesse et
interieurs donrestiques dans le quartier Saint-Roch Ir
Quebec, 1820-1850; D.T . RUddel, The Domestic
Textile Industry in the Region and City of Quebec,
1792-1835 ; Christian Dessureault, L'inventaire
apre.r dices et 1'agriculture has-canadienne ; Lorraine
Gadoury, Les stocks de.r habitants dans les inventaires
apre.r dece.c .
(Fall/Automne 1983) .
Articles : Anita Rush, The Bicycle Boom of the Gay
Nineties : A Reassessment ; Catherine Sullivan, The
Bottles of Northrup f> Lynuan, A Canadian Drug
Firm .
Research Reports/Rapports de recherche: Julia
Cornish, The Legal Records of Atlantic Canada as a
Resource for Material Historians ; Tina Rolande
Roy, New Brunswick Newspaper Study of imports,

1800-1860; Nancy-Lou Patterson, German-
Alsatian Iron Gravemarkers in Southern Ontario
Roman Catholic Cemeteries ; Lynn Russell and
Patricia Stone, Gravestone Carvers of Early
Ontario ; Luigi G. Pennacchio and Larry B.
Pogue, Inventory of Ontario Cabinetmakers, 1840-
ca . 1900 .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Robert
Griffin and James Wardrop, Preliminary Investigations
into Ocean Falls Pulp and Paper Plant ;
Claudia Haagan, Material History Sources in
Eighteenth-Century Nova Scotia Newspapers ;
Sandra Morton, History of Alberta Quilts ; T.B .
King, A Research Tool for Studying the Canadian
Glass Industry ; Andree Crepeau, An Inventory of
Persons Working on the Material Culture of
Eighteenth-Century Louisbourg ; Elizabeth J .
Quance and Micheal Sam Cronk, Selected Museum
Studies Dissertations at the University of Toronto .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Glenbow Museum,
"The Great CRP Exposition" by David R .
Richeson ; National Museum of Man, "The
Ever-Whirling Wheel" by Catherine Cooper
Cole ; Robert W . Passfeld, Building the Rideau
Canal by Norman R. Ball ; Walter W . Peddle,
The Traditional Furniture of Outport Newfoundland
by Shane O'Dea ; Barbara Lang Rottenberg with
Judith Tomlin, Glass Manufacturing in Canada :
A Survey of Pressed Glass Patterns by Deborah
Trask ; David T. Ruddel, Canadians and Their
Environment by Robert Griffin ; Thomas J .
Schlereth, Material Culture Studies in America by
A. Fenton .
No . 19 (Spring/Printemps 1984) .
Articles : Hilary Russell, "Canadian Ways": An
Introduction to Comparative Studies of Housework,
Stoves, and Diet in Great Britain and Canada ; Ian
Radforth, In the Bush: The Changing World of
Work in Ontario's Pulpwood Logging Industry
during the Twentieth Century ; W. John McIntyre,
From Workshop to Factory : The Furnituremaker ;
Marilyn J . Barber, Below Stairs : TheDomestic Servant
.
Research Reports/Rapports de recherche :
Sandra Morton, Inventory of Secondary Manufacturing
Companies in Alberta, 1880-1914 ; Nancy-
Lou Patterson, Waterloo Region Gardens in the
Germanic Tradition ; H.T . Holman, Some Comments
on the Use of Chattel Mortgages in Material
History Research .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Costume in Canada :
An Annotated Bibliography by Jacqueline Beaudoin-Ross
and Pamela Blackstock ; Canadian
War Museum, "The Loyal Americans" by John
Brooke ; Newfoundland Museum, "Business in
Great Waters" by James Hiller ; McCord
Museum, "The Potters' View of Canada" by
Lynne Sussman ; Elizabeth Collard, The Potters'
View of Canada : Canadian Scenes on Nineteenth-
Century Earthenware by Robert Copeland ; Eileen
Marcil, Les Tonneliers du Quebec by Peter N.
Moogk .
No . 20 (Fall/Automne 1984) .
Articles : Jocelyne Mathieu, Le mobilier contenant:
Traitement comparatif Perche-Quebec, d'apres des
inventaire.r de biens apre.r deck de.r XVlle et XVIIIe
riecles ; Alison Prentice, From Household to School
House : The Emergence of the Teacher as Servant of the
State .
Research Reports/Rapports de recherche :
Frances Roback, Advertising Canadian Pianos
and Organs, 1850-1914 ; Luce Vermette,
L'habillement traditionnel au debut du XIX` siecle ;
Eileen Marcil, La rSle de la tonnellerie dans la reglementation
de la peche au debut du XIX` .riecle ;
Anita Rush, Directory of Canadian Manufacturers,
Bicycle Industry, 1880-1984 ; David Neufeld,
Dealing with an Industrial Monument : The Borden
Bridge ; Claudia Haagen and Debra McNabb,
The Use of Primary Documents as Computerized
Collection Records for the Study of Material Culture .
Notes and Comments/Notes et commentaires :
Gregg Finley, Material History and Museums: A
Curatorial Perspective ; Hilary Russell, Reflections
of an Image Finder: Some Problems and Suggestions
for Picture Researchers ; Papers completed in
North American Decorative Arts Graduate
Course, University of Toronto, 1968-82 .
Forum/Colloque : Robert D . Turner, The Limitation.r
of Material History : A Museological Perspective
; Peter E. Rider, The Concrete Clio : Definition
of a Field of History .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Manitoba Museum of
Man and Nature, "Concerning Work" by David
Flemming ; National Museum of Man, "Of Men
and Wood" by Robert H. Babcock ; Parcs
Canada, region du Quebec, "Quebec : port d'entree
en Amerique" by David-Thiery Ruddel .
No . 21 (Spring/printemps 1985) .
Greg Baeker, Introduction .
Articles : Thomas J . Schlereth, The Material Culture
of Childhood: Problems and Potential in Historical
Explanation ; Felicity Nowell-Smith, Feeding
the Nineteenth-Century Baby : Implications for
75

Museum Collections ; Christina Bates, "Beauty Unadorned"
: Dressing Children in Late Nineteenth-
Century Ontario ; Hilary Russell, Training,
Restraining, and Sustaining : Infant and Child Care
in the Late Nineteenth Century ; Janet Holmes,
Economic Choices and Popular Toys ; Mary Tivy,
Nineteenth-Century Canadian Children's Games .

MATERIAL HISTORY BULLETIN/BULLETIN D'HISTOIRE DE LA CULTURE MATERIELLE
The Material History Bulletin provides a venue for
articles and research reports encompassing a range of
approaches in interpreting the past through an analysis of
Canadians' relationship to their material world . Critical
reviews of books, exhibitions, and historic sites, artifact
studies and reports on collections encourage the use of
material evidence in understanding historical change and
continuity .
The Bulletin is received by 100 universities, research
institutes, museums, and libraries in 30 countries . It is
indexed in America: History and Life, Journal of American
History, Technology and Culture's Current Bibliography in
the History of Technology, and Annual Bibliography of
Ontario History .
Correspondence concerning contributions and editorial
matters should be addressed to : Editor, Material History
Bulletin, History Division, National Museum of Man,
Ottawa, Ontario, KIA OM8 . Manuscripts and endnotes
should be double-spaced . Captions for illustrations should
be double-spaced and include credits, source, and negative
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of objects should be in metric . Authors are responsible for
obtaining permission to reproduce material from copyrighted
works .
The Bulletin is published twice a year . Subscriptions for
1985 are $10 .00 (individuals) and $14 .00 (institutions) ;
single issues are $5 .00 . Cheques or money orders should
be payable to the Receiver General of Canada . Subscriptions
and related correspondence should be addressed to :
Publishing Services, National Museums of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario, K1AOM8 .
Le Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle presente
des articles et des travaux de recherche qui proposent
differentes fa~ons d'aborder 1'etude et 1'interpretation
du passe a travers 1'analyse des rapports qui existent entre
les Canadiens et leur monde materiel . Des critiques de
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favorisent 1'utilisation de temoins materiels en
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Le Bulletin est envoye a une centaine d'universites,
d'instituts de recherche, de musees et de bibliothques
repartis dans une trentaine de pays . 11 est repertorie dans
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Current Bibliography in the History ofTechnology publie
dans Technology and Culture et Annual Bibliography of
Ontario History .
Toute correspondance concernant les articles et les questions
redactionnelles dolt parvenir a l'adresse suivante :
Redacteur, Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle,
Division de 1'Histoire, Musee national de 1'Homme,
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les legendes d'illustrations doivent etre dactylographies
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(si la photo fait partie d'une collection publique) ; les
dimensions des objets doivent etre fournies dans le
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d'ouvrages proteges par le droit d'auteur .
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77