Wives, Mistresses and Governesses, Girls' education in the 18th and 19th centuries

'I wish the singing master may not get one of my Lady Busby's daughters, which you know is commonly done'
(Lady Gardiner to Sir John Verney, 27 Nov. 1701.  Verney letters of the 18th century ed. Margaret Maria, Lady Verney, 2 vols, 1930, Vol. 1, p.165

 The Married Women's Property Act was passed in 1882.  Until then, in the U.K. the property of a married woman became her husband's  A husband might spend his wife's fortune any way he pleased and there was little her friends and relations, and the wife herself, could do about it though concerned fathers did attempt to tie up their daughters' money in dowries.  There was a great deal to be gained by seducing a young girl from a wealthy family into an a runaway marriage as Charles Wickham tries to run away with Mr. Darcy's sister in Pride and Prejudice.

Victorian girls at school
(Pinterest)

Girls from well-off and respectable families were still educated with marriage in mind, and a good marriage was still the best career option for most of these girls, though it certainly carried the high risk of early death in child-birth.  The standards for a good match were high; a spotless reputation, a respectable family, money, land, connections; intact virginity, beauty, if possible, though this could be negotiable.  Actual love and attraction was also becoming more important, unlike the frequent arranged marriages of earlier periods.  Jane Austen's novels revolve around these sensitive marriage negotiations, particularly Pride and Prejudice, (1813) which features Mrs. Bennet attempting the difficult task of marring off her five beautiful but not well off or well connected daughters.  The penniless opportunist Charles Wickham first attempts to capture wealthy Mr. Darcy's innocent young sister.  Then he 'ruins' the youngest Bennet girl, Lydia and has to be bought off to marry her.  This prejudices the rather slender prospects of Lydia's lovely but impoverished sisters with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingham, but, in the novel, love does triumph over prejudice.

Becky Sharp, the anti-heroine of Thackray's Vanity Fair,(1847) by contrast, did her best to rise in the world by marriage,though she made the unfortunate mistake of marrying the penniless second son rather than the wealthy baronet who has taken her on as governess to his younger children.  Many 18th and 19th century novels revolve around young women attempting to rise in the world through marriage, or having their prospects in life ruined by its failure, and this is because marriage was so important.

As Charles Hotham wrote to his sixteen-year old daughter in the 1760s:
'The Natural Walk and Situation of Women is Marriage.  It will of Course be yours in common with the rest of your Sex.'
(The Hothams, being the chronicles of the Hothams of Scorborough, 1918, p.112.)

In fact this daughter did not marry.  Many girls from middle class families were not able to find a husband, and many, even after marriage, had to earn a living, often unexpectedly owing to fluctuations in the fortunes of their families.  For middle class girls working for a living was considered almost shameful.  Also, girls were not allowed to go to university or take degree examinations, and consequently professions were not open to them.  They might become governesses in well-off households, or teachers in schools.  Some of them set up schools themselves.

Hannah Moore (1745-1833) an exceptional woman of her time, was brought up by her father to earn her living as a teacher.  However her father stopped her maths lessons because she was progressing too fast.  She went on to teach for a time at her father's school, then became financially independent and a well-known bluestocking, intellectual, playwright,founded many Sunday Schools for the poor, campaigned against the slave trade, and wrote Strictures on the Modern System of  Female Education, 1779, Her view was that women need education to be wives and mothers and to contribute to society through charity work:

Hannah Moore, 1821, by H.W. Pickersgill
(Wikipedia)

'The profession of ladies, to which the bent of their instruction should be turned, is that of daughters, wives, mothers, and mistresses of families. They should be therefore trained with a view to these several conditions, and be furnished with a stock of ideas and principles, and qualifications ready to be applied and appropriated, as occasion may demand, to each of these respective situations; for though the arts which merely embellish life must claim admiration; yet when a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, and not an artist. It is not merely a creature who can paint, and play, and dress, and dance; it is a being who can comfort and counsel him; one who can reason and reflect, and feel, and judge, and discourse, and discriminate; one who can assist him in his affairs, lighten his cares, sooth his sorrows, strengthen his principles, and educate his children.'
(Hanah Moore, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 1779)

The influential educationalist and novelist Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) wrote:
'We cannot help thinking that their happiness is of more consequence than their speculative rights, and we wish to educate women so that they may be happy in the situations in which they are most likely to be placed...'
(Maria Edgeworth, Practical Education, 2nd ed. 1801 p 259)

It was not considered lady-like for a girl to be too well-educated.  Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762) secretly educated herself in her father's library.  Probably writing of her own bitter experience, she advised her granddaughter to: 
'conceal whatever learning she attains with as much solicitude as she would hide crookedness or lameness; the parade of it can only serve to draw on her the envy and consequently the most inveterate hatred of all he and she fools....'(Mary C. Borer, Willingly to school, a history of women's education 1976 p.122)

What was school life like for girls?  Mary Borer cites a fashionable girls' boarding school in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, London, called the 'young ladies Eton'.  In 1781 it had 220 pupils age six to sixteen, the fees were over 100 guineas a year.  The girls were schooled in manners, dancing,  history, French and  manners; surprisingly they learned how to use make-up and had their hair fashionably powdered.
(Borer p.185)

Fashionable young ladies
(The School Run, Google)

Not everyone approved:
'Is it surprising that a girl when grown up should starve herself into shapefulness and overspread her face with paint who was trained at boarding school to swing daily by the chin in order to lengthen her neck and accustomed to peculiar modes of discipline contrived to heighten the complexion?'
(Thomas Grisborne, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, 1797, quoted in Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred, Girls' Education in English History, 1965, p. 126)

Another expensive girls' boarding school was 32 Brunswick Terrace, Brighton.  In 1836 the fees were £1000 for two years.  There Francis Power Cobbe studied French, Italian, German, music, manners and dress; the girls were trained to wear full evening dress and wore corsets.  They also studied  drawing, conversation, English, maths, history, geography, had some lessons on science and took regular exercise.  Francis Power Cobbe complained about the food; nothing new there then.
 (Borer p.238)

Mary Vivian Hughes (1866-1956)  described her mother's education at a finishing school in Bath in the mid 19th century.  There were only six pupils. They had visiting masters for French, music and philosophy, and learned good French, Latin and general knowledge.  The school was very strict on what might be considered good manners.  Before the girls went out to tea with anyone they had to eat a plate of thick bread and butter, so that they could show elegant appetites by leaving something on the plate.
(A London Child of the 1870s, 1934, p.44)

Mrs. Trimmer (1741-1810), children's author, and founder of The Guardian of Education, had some critical things to say about those French teachers:
'In the course of a few years the knowledge of the French language was considered as an indispensable part of a polite education, and French masters and governesses were encouraged to come to England as adventurers; these were frequently very low-bred persons of depraved morals, and ignorant of every thing essentially requisite for the important task of educating youth; but they were eagerly engaged by an infatuated people, both for schools and private families...'
(The Guardian of Education, Vol. 1, 1802 p.7 Internet edition available)

The Guardian of Education
(Wikimedia)

 Mary Hughes herself went to the North London Collegiate School and wrote two excellent books on women's life and education: A London Child of the 1870s, A London Girl of the 1880s.

Many girls were educated at home by governesses. Lady Caroline Russell, daughter of the Duke of Bedford,  came from a very wealthy family.  She had:
'...a writing master, music, dancing, French, Italian, singing and harpsichord and guitar.  She was presented at Court aged fifteen in 1758:
'Mama desires me to add to this that...the Prince of Wales thinks me very pretty...I was against writing you this for fear you should think me a saucy, vain Puss.'
Her brother, Lord Tavistock, was sent to Westminster school though his father and grandfather had been taught at home by tutors.
(Gladys Thomson, The Russells in Bloomsbury, 1669-1771, 1940, p. 293)

Here is an extract from the Heber letters, 1796, written during the upheavals following the French Revolution, about hiring a governess for little Mary:
'There are plenty of emigrant ladies, some of the rank of Viscountess, to be had, but I think you could not prefer a French-woman, and I am sure would not take a Roman Catholic into your house.  We have just hired a governess for Mary Ann...She undertakes to instruct her pupils in English, French, Geography, Music, Writing and Arithmetic, all for £40 a year'
(R.H. Cholmondeley, ed. The Heber Letters, 1787-1832, pub. 1950)


 What of the less well-off? Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) in  Jane Eyre, 1847, wrote one of the most famous descriptions of Victorian girls at school.  Lowood  was based on the Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire.  Many clergy were not well off, and would send their daughters to be educated at such boarding schools.  Charlotte Bronte described:

' ...a wide, long room, with great deal tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty.  Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores.
There were four classes in the room, divided by age.  Charlotte Bronte describes their studies:

'The superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having taken her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the first class round her, and commenced giving a lesson on geography; the lower classes were called by the teachers: repetitions in history, grammar, &c., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some of the elder girls.'
The girls also learned French and spent a lot of their time on Bible study.  The school was strict, cold, the food was very poor, and their time at the school gave the Bronte sisters the TB which eventually killed them.
(Jane Eyre, 1847. Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

The original Cowan Bridge school cottages
(Wikimedia)

 Alison Uttley was born in 1884 into a middle class family in Derbyshire.  She eventually won a scholarship to Manchester University and, in 1906, was their second woman honours graduate.  In her autobiography, she described her school life:

'...fifty children had lessons in the long open room.  On the walls were glass cases full of geological specimens, grey, brown and black stones, sparkling stones, bright green malachite, fossils and shells...little classes of children, each with a pupil teacher, sat along the room and in the centre sat the headmaster at his desk...By his side was the cane with which he swished the hands of unfortunate children....The lessons, the games , the singing and music, the open-air drill when little girls used wands and boys iron dumb-bells, all made a new and wonderful life for me.'
But: 'Little boys had school gardens, little girls sewed calico, little boys learned geography.'
(Aliso Uttley, Ambush of Young Days, 1937 p.159)

Vanity Fair, 1847, by W. Makepeace Thackeray,  opens with Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharpe leaving their boarding school.  Amelia Sedley was a model pupil:
'In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroidery and needlework, she will be found to have realised her friends' fondest wishes.  In geography there is still much to be desired; and a careful and undeviating use of the backboard, four hours daily during the next three years, is recommended as necessary to the acquirement of that dignified deportment and carriage, so requisite for every young lady of fashion....In the principles of religion and morality Miss Sedley ...also satisfied the Misses Pinkerton'
W.M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1847, p.2

Vanity Fair
(Wikipedia)

Mrs. Sherwood,(1755-1851) author of many improving books for children, was the daughter of a clergyman.  She learned French, Latin and Greek at the School for Girls at Reading Abbey which Jane Austen (1775-1817) also attended.  She had to wear a backboard, as recommended for Amelia:
'It was the fashion then for children (girls) to wear iron collars round the neck, with a backboard strapped over the shoulders: to one of these I was subjected from my sixth to my thirteenth year.  It was put on in the morning, and seldom taken off till late in the evening; and I generally did all my lesons standing in stocks, with this still collar round my neck'
(Life of Mrs. Sherwood, 1857, p. 37, Internet edition available)

The Sherwood family became short of money and Mrs. Sherwood opened a boarding school herself, teaching English, French, astronomy, grammar, writing and arithmetic.
Financial uncertainties led to many women finding themselves having to earn a living, and many became governesses, earning around £30 a year in the mid 19th century.  This was not very much, though more than a servant would earn, and governesses needed to be educated.   In 1848 Queen's College opened for girls over twelve, also offering evening classes.  This offered teaching to the equivalent of a university standard.  The redoubtable Dorothea Beale (1831-1906) studied there.  She went on to develop the exclusive Cheltenham Ladies College, founded in 1854.  Dorothea Beale also set up the first training colleges for women teachers.  'Good education is a sort of insurance', she said.
(see Schools Inquiry Commission Report on the Education of Girls, 1867-8, internet edition available, it makes very interesting reading)

Dorothea Beale
(Wikipedia)

Frances Buss was a contemporary of Dorothea Beale at Queen's College.  She also found herself teaching to support her family, and made an equally significant contribution to girls education.  She became Principal of Queen's College, later re-named North London Collegiate School for Ladies, and campaigned for the rights of girls to take public examinations and attend universities.  Like Dorothea Beale she was involved in setting up teacher training colleges.

Frances Buss
(Wikipedia)

The SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) tried to improve the lives of the poor, and found that many women with no maths skills had, not surprisingly,  problems getting work in shops.  The Society  began book-keeping classes which led to founding the Langham Place Ladies Institute. which led to Barbara Bodichon founding the Society for the Employment of Women in 1859.  Not only the poor benefited, Emily Davies  and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson met there, going on to fight for women's suffrage,  equal access to schools endowment funds which had been diverted to supporting boys' schools,  university education for girls, and the rights of women to work as doctors and surgeons.   (Internet, Langham Place Ladies Institute; Borer p. 273; Wikipedia)

The advances in girls' education were probably influenced by what was happening in the USA. There a number of all-female colleges were opened from the 1830s on; Georgia Female College, founded 1839, claims to be the first university chartered to award degrees to women.  The USA was much in advance of the U.K. in both girls education and women's suffrage.

'Dullness is not healthy, it points to general malingering, headaches, hysteria, langour.  All we claim is that the intelligence of women, be it great or small, shall have full and free development'
(Emily Davies, Paper at the Social Science Association, York, read by Mr. J. G. Fitch, since as a woman she could not read it herself, 1864.  Quoted in Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred, 1965  This was an extremely important paper, arguing for the re-distribution of charity school endowment funds, intended for the support of both girls and boys schooling, but appropriated almost exclusively to boys public schools.  She and Frances Buss went on to argue the case in front of the Schools Inquiry Commissioners, who were struck by their 'perfect womanliness, possibly due to Frances Buss being struck almost speechless with nerves)

Dorothea Beale cunningly said that girls' education was for:
'the cultivation and improvement of the mental and moral capacities with which they had been endowed for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.'
( Reports issued by the Schools' Inquiry Commission on the Education of Girls by D Beale, Principal of the Ladies' College, Cheltenham,1870)

Cheltenham Ladies College
(Wikipedia)

The Girls' Own Paper, a periodical published by the Religious Tract Society for these newly educated girls, opened in 1880.  It was an entirely new and progressive paper, including articles on independent girls at work, in professions such as nursing and clerical work.  Vol. 20, 1898-9, has a story about 'Three girl-chums and their life in London rooms...with accounts of basic necessities:
'Ada is a type-writer in a very good office in the City.  She has got on so well that she is earning £100 a year'.  Jane is a cookery teacher in a distant parish, and they  trained at Pitman's and a cookery school.  Marion teaches music and does the housework, earning £60 a year and £30 left to her.  The apartment costs 15/- (75p) a week and they have a maid from a National School.

The Girls' Own Paper, masthead, 1886
(Wikipedia)

Angela Brazil (1868-1947) built her writing career on writing stories set in the new girls boarding schools, making them in the process glamorous places that girls longed to be sent to:

'"Isn't it withering?" she remarked.  "And just on the very afternoon when we'd made up our minds to decode the tennis championship and secured all the courts for the lower school.  I do call it the most wretched luck! I'm a blighted blossom."'
(Angela Brazil, The Leader of the Lower School, 1913 p.10
See Mary Cadogan, You're a brick, Angela! A new look at girls'fiction from 1839 to 1975,  pub. 1976)

Angela Brazil
(Wikipedia)

So the girls got their act together and did something about girls' education.  They did rather better than the boys.

www.nikyrathbone@blogspot.com

Death, religion, and the Victorians

'No one will ever understand Victorian England who does not appreciate that among highly civilised countries...it was one of the most religious that the world has ever known.  Moreover, its particular type of Christianity laid a direct emphasis on conduct...'
(R.K. Endsor quoted in Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The public school phenomenon, 1977 p,70)

Queen Victoria as a Child, Martin Archer Shee,
(Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,
Culture Service, Leighton House Museum)

All well brought up Victorian children received religious instruction which in Britain mostly meant Protestant Christianity.  The discoveries of Darwin and the religious controversies of the 19th century led in most cases to the abandonment of literal interpretation of the Bible, and caused many adults to re-assess their beliefs, but on the whole they did so within the Christian faith.

The work of the Nonconformists among the working classes had given people a strong sense of religious duty by the beginning of Queen Victorian's reign. This was increasingly identified with social duty and care for people's bodily welfare; almost as important as caring for their souls.

 However, the attitude of parents of whatever sect towards their children's religious observance during the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and America is shown typically by the Rev. Mr. Hawtrey's reaction to his son Stephen's casual remark, "Oh, I don't like sermons".
 Their gentle-tempered father, his voice trembling with emotion, said:-
' "If ever I hear one of my children saying a word showing want or respect towards the Word of God or religion, I will disinherit him!" and immediately left the room.  The children were awe-struck, and could not speak, but began to cry.  In a few minutes their father returned, and said, "If I have spoken too angrily, my children, it was because I could not hear a word said of disrespect towards religion", and he wept.'  (Florence Molesworth, The history of the Hawtrey family, Vol. 1, 1903, p. 154.  Internet archive version available)

The keynote here is 'respect'. The observance of religious faith differed from sect to sect and was expressed in different ways over the years, as religious conflicts were at least partly resolved.  The steady divorce of religion from politics and the growing respect for the Nonconformist social contribution much reduced anti-sectarian discrimination.  Although religion was still of prime importance in most middle class people's lives it began to find expression in work among the disadvantaged rather than in personal soul-searching and prayer. Children were encouraged to develop social consciences early and involve themselves in constructive work rather than continuing to practise the introspection of the early Puritans.  This religious and moral training, reinforced by public schools, formed the exceptionally honest and conscientious administrators who governed Britain and the Empire, and bred the many missionaries who felt called to take Christianity to far-flung countries and British slums.

Lord have mercy on us, Henry Baraud, c.1850
(Newstead Abbey)

In many households Sunday meant no books except the Bible or religious works, no toys, or only toys with Biblical significance such as Noah's Ark, positively no games, no music or singing except hymns, no running up and down.  The author of Vice Versa, F. Anstey as a child had a set of Scripture bricks showing biblical incidents with texts, Alison Uttley was allowed Noah's Ark.  The Anstey family read Ministering Children, a best-selling story about helping the poor, 'which always affected me with the profoundest melancholy.' and The Fairchild Family, which was rather less successful: 'But a spirit of such irreverence came over us and she (mother) and we laughed so much that I think the readings were given up.' (F. Anstey, A long retrospect, 1936 p. 12, 24, Alison Uttley, Ambush of young days, 1937 p. 123)

Children and adults went to church, often twice, perhaps because it provided one of the few possible diversions on Sundays.  The Ansteys went to St. Paul's in the morning and the Congregational chapel in the evening, enjoying the music at the first and the sermon at the second.
(F. Anstey, A long retrospect, 1936, p.23)
Younger children generally learned a Bible text, older children might teach Sunday school.  Few allowances were made for children, and they were usually expected to observe Sunday as rigorously as adults.  For those who had no deep religious conviction to sustain them it was often excruciatingly boring.

We praise thee o' Lord, Henry Barraud, c.1850
(Newstead Abbey)

So the popular American author Mrs. Lydia Child strongly recommended parents take care not to prejudice children against religion by too strict observance on Sunday.  She quotes the story of the little girl who on being told how God had come down to earth remarks, "Oh, what a good time the angels must have had, when God was gone away."
(The Mother's Book, 4th ed. 1832 p. 72)

Children traditionally began their religious instruction early, particularly in Nonconformist households like the Quaker Gurneys:
"We were very little children when he (their father, Joseph Gurney, brother of Elizabeth Fry the prison reformer) began to take us into his study for times of religious retirement and prayer.,..I think I shall never forget the very great solemnity, the holy, and, to me as a little child, the almost awful feeling of these occasions"
(Augustus Hare, The Gurneys of Earlham, 1895, Vol. 2, p. 17  Internet edition available)

Earlham Hall, East Anglia,
Childhood home of Elizabeth Fry, and the Gurney family.
 (Wikipedia: University of East Anglia)

This was also the rule in American Nonconformist households like the Swedenborgian Alcotts:
'On Sundays we had a simple service of Bible stories, hymns, and conversation about the state of our little consciences and the conduct of our childish lives.'
(Louisa May Alcott, her letters and journals,  ed. Ednah D. Cheney, 1889, p. 29.  Internet edition available Louisa May's famous children's story, Little Women was loosely based on her own childhood)

For others, like Samuel Butler, the experience was more unpleasant.  The semi-autobiographical The Way of All Flesh embodies the very image of a traditionally stern Victorian upbringing:
'Before Ernest could crawl he as taught to kneel; before he could well speak he was taught to lisp the Lord's Prayer, and the General Confession.  How was it possible that these things could be taught too early?  If his attention flagged, or his memory failed him here was an ill weed which would grow apace, unless it were plucked out immediately, and the only way to pluck it out was to whip it, or shup him in a cupboard, or dock him of some of the small pleasures of childhood.'
(Samuel Butler, Ernest Pontefex or The Way of All Flesh, 1903, Methuen ed. 1964 p.79.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Saumeu Butler aged 23 (Wikipedia)

Augustus Hare received his first religious instruction as a similar early age but he was made of more resistant stuff than the unfortunate Ernest Pontefex:
'After dinner to-day, on being told to thank God for his good dinner, he would not do it...talked to him about his dinner, did not he love God for giving him so many good things, and I knelt by him and prayed God to forgive him for being so naughty....'The result was a tantrum; Augustus eventually consented to say grace, sitting under the table.
((Augustus Hare, The years with mother, ed. Malcolm Brown, 1952, p., 16.  Abridgement of
The story of my life, 1896.  Interent edition available).

Researching Augustus Hare I discovered that he included the story of The Vampire of Croglin Hall
in his Story of My Life, here's the cover of the Penny Dreadful based on his story (credit: Vaultofevilproboards)

Many such children could scarcely begin to grasp the concept of God and Heaven, and the results of this early instruction were sometimes rather comic.  The Unitarian preacher and social reformer W.J. Fox (1780-1864) had his first religious instruction at the age of four when his brother died:
'On this occasion my father ...made the first attempt to inform my mind as to the existence of a Heaven.  It was rather premature; years afterwards my deity was a huge old muscular man stretched out at full length on the upper side of a solid sky, and at this time it was with great difficulty that I attained such elevation of thought as to understand that little Charles was gone a long way above the height to which the smoke ascended from the tallest chimneys in our street.'
(R. & E. Garnett, The life of W.J. Fox, public teacher and social reformer, 1786-1864.  1910, p.6.  Internet edition available)

The children's writer Alison Uttley was equally literally-minded as a child.  One day of fitful bursts of brilliant sunshine she came running in, radiant, crying:
'"I've seen Jesus! I've seen Gentle Jesus peeping through the clouds!"'
(Ambush of young days, 1937 p.63)

One of Alison Uttley's well-known Little Grey Rabbit books
(Amazon internet)

Marianne Mordaunt's son John, aged seven, wanted to know all about God and Heaven in very precise detail. He demanded:
'"Do you think I shall think every thing in Heaven as beautiful when I have been there a good many years, as I shall the first year...Does God take part of the angels to make us?"'
(Elizabeth Hamilton, The Mordaunts, an eighteenth century family, 1965, p. 256  There is a bit of background on the book and family at mordauntfamilyhistory.com.)

Early and over-earnest religious instruction sometimes made children morbid.  The Puritan practise of driving adults and children alike through fear of hell-fire to self examination and searching of their consciences was, of course, continued into the 19th century by certain ~Nonconformist sects.  The  American writer Henry James, father of the more famous writer, describes his struggles:
'I am sure no childish sinews were ever more strained than mine were in wrestling with the subtle terror of his name.  This insane terror pervaded my consciousness more or less ...made me loath at night to lose myself in sleep, lest his dread hand should clip my thread of life without time for a parting sob of penitence...'
(Quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James, 1953, vol. 1, p.29  Henry James Sr was born in 1809)

The humorous writer Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) author of Three Men in a Boat, had a similar upbringing.  When he 'got' religion, he:
'gave up taking sugar in my tea, and gave the twopence a week to the Ragged School in Threecold Street.  On Sundays I used to pore over a great illustrated Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs.  This used to be a popular book in religious houses.'  He agonised over the state of his soul:
'How was I to be sure that I did believe sufficiently?'  His failure to move a mountain of rubbish by prayer alone convinced him that he was not a strong enough believer.  He was extremely miserable about this, and about the possibility of unknowingly committing something called, in his circle, the Unforgivable Sin:  'If only one knew what it was one might avoid it.'  One day in a fit of rage he called his deaf Aunt Fan a bloody fool, and was convinced that this was the unnamed sin.  He suffered in agonies of conscience until someone found out and reassured him.  Most probably the sin was masturbation, but unfortunately he does not go into further details.
(Jerome K Jerome,  My life and times, 1926 p. 21, 22.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 1563
(British Library, internet ed.)

Edmund Gosse had the advantage of a father who firmly believed his son was born one of the Elect.  The central event of his childhood was his baptism into full communion at ten.  His father 'admitted the absence in my case of a sudden, apparent act of conversion resulting upon conviction of sin.  But he stated the grounds of his belief that I had, in still earlier infancy, been converted, and he declared that if so, I ought no longer to be excluded from the privileges of communion.'  Edmund Gosse was examined by two elders of the church, amazing them by his humility, knowledge of scripture, and other signs of divine grace.  Large numbers of Plymough Brethren came from all over the county to witness his baptism by total immersion.  (Edmund Gosse, Father and son, 1907, Penguin ed. p. 126-133 )

This famous account of Victorian childhood is well worth reading.  One of the interesting things about Gosse's account of his childhood is the contrast between his father's idealised image of his son and the fallible human reality.  The discrepancy between the two is particularly marked in Gosse's account of his baptism.  At this solemn and central moment which he wholeheartedly entered into, he betrays the very un-spiritual, natural bumptiousness of an over-praised ten year old:

'I would fain close this remarkable episode on a key of solemnity, but alas! if I am to be loyal to the truth, I must record that some of the other little boys present presently complained to Mary Grace that I put out my tongue at them in mockery, during the service in the Room, to remind them that I now broke bread as one of the Saints and that they did not.'

The extreme strictness of Gosse's upbringing as a member of the Plymouth Brethren imposed a considerable strain on him which, though unrecognised during his childhood, he was able to analyse on looking back as an adult. Part of his description of the feat of endurance that was his Sunday is worth quoting with Gosse's comment on it, as an illustration of this.  After breakfast the family and servants had a long sermon and prayers.  Then, in fine weather, they spent half an hour walking in the garden.  Afterwards they each sat in a separate room with Bible and commentary and prepared themselves for the morning service, two hours long, which they attended at 11am.  After Sunday dinner Edmund would go into the garden for a while, and later in the afternoon he and his stepmother went to Sunday school, where he taught a class of smaller boys.  After tea they all went to evening service, followed by the Believers' Prayer Meeting.  All this took Edmund long past his usual bedtime, and he was not only bored but exhausted by the end of the day:

'What made these Sundays, the observance of which was absolutely uniform, so peculiarly trying was that I was not permitted the indulgence of any secular respite.  I might not open a scientific book, nor make a drawing, nor examine a specimen.  I was not allowed to go into the road, except to proceed with my parents to the Room, no to discuss worldly subjects at meals, not to enter the little chamber where I kept my treasures.  I was hotly and tightly dressed in black, all day long, as though ready at any moment to attend a funeral with decorum.  Sometimes, towards evening, I used to feel the monotony and weariness of my position to be almost endurable, but at this time I was meek, and I bowed to what I supposed to be the order of the universe.  (Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, p, 166-7)

Like other children Gosse accepted his early religious instruction without question. His first doubts came when this parents' theories were tested against the directness of his childish logic.

When Gosse tried to obtain a splendid humming top through the power of prayer, justified by his mother's statement that 'no thing or circumstances are too insignificant to bring before the God of the whole earth '   his father, instead of taking the theological line that it was not His Will that Edmund should have the top, told him 'it was not right for me to pray for things like humming-tops, and that I must do it no more.' (Gosse, Father and Son, p.36-7)

Edmund's faith in his father's directives was shaken, and after an address on 'idolatory' he put them to a further test.  Idolatry, his father informed him, 'consisted in praying to any one or anything but God himself' and 'God would be very angry, and would signify his anger if anyone, in a Christian country, bowed down to wood and stone.'  In a spirit of scientific experiment Edmund Gosse tested this: 'With much labour, I hoisted a small chair onto the table close to the window.  My heart was now beating as if it would leap out of my side, but I pursued my experiment.  I knelt down on the carpet in front of the table and looking up I said my daily prayer in a loud voice, only substituting the address 'O Chair!' for the habitual one.  He then waited for God's reaction.  When nothing happened, he did not question the existence of God, but his father's omniscience: 'My father had said, positively, that if I worshipped a thing made of wood, God would manifest His anger.  I had then worshipped a chair, made (or partly made) of wood, and God had made no sign whatsoever.  My Father, therefore, was not really acquainted with the Divine practise in cases of idolatry.' (Gosse, Father and Son, p.38-9)

Gosse's experiment weakened his faith in his father, but not his faith in God, and few children at this time would have followed the lead of the independently-minded George Sitwell, who with an Archbishop for a guardian, was over-exposed to religious enthusiasm, and by his own account became an agnostic and later an atheist:
'When I was three or four, I came to the conclusion that I was too young to understand such things properly, and so had better reserve my judgement until I was old enough to form an opinion of my own'
(Osbert Sitwell, Left hand, Right hand, 1945, vol. 1, p.127)

Given the strong religious atmosphere of most Victorian households, and with life expectancy being much shorter than it is now in Modern Europe or America, it is not surprising that death was very much more part of daily life than it is now.  Children were made aware of it early.  Particularly in evangelical households it was quite usual to take children not only to pay their last respects to a dead relative but also to view their corpses, to remind them of their own mortality and so bring them closer to God.

This was no new custom but a longstanding tradition, late 18th and 19th century moral stories  contain many deathbed scenes like this in The History of the Fairchild Family, 1818:
 '"Should you like to see the corpse, my dear?" asked Mr. Fairchild "You never saw a corpse, I think?"
"No, Papa", answered Lucy: "We should like to see one."
"I tel you beforehand, my dear children, that death is very terrible.  A corpse is an awful sight."
"I know that, Papa," said Lucy, "but we should go."
(Mrs. Sherwood, The History of the Fairchild Family, 1818 p. 146.  Garland facsimile ed. 1977. Internet edition available)

In Victorian children's books, as in novels for adults, deathbed scenes provided emotional climaxes in the narrative.  The death of a major character in a 19th century children's story served to encourage moral and religious faith.  The Religious Tract Society, in fact, expected a Christian death bead scene to be included in the plot of books published by them.  This example is from Little Meg's Children, one of the most popular best-sellers by Hesba Stretton:

'It did not seem  possible to Little Meg that the baby could really be dead.  She chafed its puny limbs, as she had seen her mother do, and walked up and sown the room singing to it, now loudly, now softly, but no change came upon it, no warmth returned to its death-cold frame, no life to its calm face.  She laid it down at length upon the bed, and crossed its thin wee arms upon its breast, and then stretching herself beside it, with her face hidden from the light, little Meg gave herself up to a passion of sorrow.  "If I'd only asked God, for Christ's sake," she cried to herself, "maybe he'd have let baby wake..."'
(Hesba Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868, p.110-111, Facsimile ed. Johnson Reprint Corporation 1970)

Even that iconoclastic romp the Victorian favourite Holiday House ends with Harry and Laura reformed characters at the deathbed of their beloved, exemplary, brother Frank:
'All was changed within and around them, - sorrow had filled their hearts; and no longer merry, thoughtless young creatures, believing the world one scene of frolicksome enjoyment and careless ease, they had now witnessed its realities, - they had felt its trials,- they had experienced the importance of religion, -they had learned the frailty of all earthly joy, - and they had received, amidst tears and sorrow, the last injunction of a dying brother, to "call upon the Lord while He is near...."'
(Catherine Sinclair, Holiday House, 1839, Blackie ed. c. 1896 chapter 17)

Illustration from Holiday House, 1839
 (University of Roehampton internet edition)

In the American author Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women, Part II, published in Britain as Good Wives, the death of Beth has a similar uplifting effect on her tomboy sister Jo, which she expresses in a poem:

'Oh my sister, passing from me

Out of human care and strife,

Leave me, as a gift, those virtues

Which have beautified your life...'

   (Louisa M. Alcott, Good Wives, 1869, Dent ed. 1953 p.209)

Louisa May Alcott aged about 25 (Wikipedia)

Modern authors dispose of parents by sending them on archaeological digs, a lecture tour, or even to prison, and death normally seems only to occur in stories about personal adjustment to it.  In 19th century children's fiction, however, death is another convenient device for removing parents who are an impediment to the plot.

The emotionally shattering opening of The Secret Garden by an English emigrant to the USA, Frances Hodgson Burnett, has everyone but the heroine dying of cholera so that the before the story can get going:
'It was in this strange and sudden way that May found out that she had neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib.  That was why the place was so quiet.  It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little rustling snake.'
(Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, 1911)

The Secret Garden, 1st American edition, 1911,
(Harvard University, Houghton Library)

The possible psychological impact on children was not apparent to the Victorians, although many must, like Virginia Stephen, later Virginia Woolf, have remembered the shock of the compulsory visit to a parent's deathbed all their lives:
'No she was lying straight in the middle of her pillows.  Her face looked immeasurably distant, hollow and stern.  When I kissed her, it was like kissing cold iron; the feeling comes back to me - the feeling of my mother's face, iron-cold and granular.
(Virginia Woolf, Moments of being, Sussex U.P. 1976, p.92)
.
This was a world where death was ever-present.  In Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1863-4, Julia Snow criticised the practise of taking children to view corpses, which she makes plain was as common in America as in Britain. (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1863-4, Vol. 28, p.693-7 internet copy available)

The famous scene in Mrs. Sherwood's History of the Fairchild Family, 1818, where the children are taken to see the corpse of a murderer hanging in chains to rot was omitted from late Victorian editions. (History of the Fairchild Family, 1818 ed., Vol. 1, p.57 internet edition available)   It was true to the time when it was written; public executions and leaving certain corpses on show as a public warning only ceased in 1868, and is still practised in some parts of the world (I wrote this in the 1970s, sadly this has in no way changed)

The History of the Fairchild Family, first published 1818,
 1902 ed.charmingly illustrated by Florence M. Rudland, 
showing how long the book remained popular.
(Project Gutenberg internet ed.)

Lilias Rider Haggard describes in her autobiography an old lady who had been a child in the 1840s telling her how, as a child, her father would tell her to pull the gig's rug over her head and not to look as they drove past Norwich Castle if there had been an execution, so that she should not see the corpses suspended from the bridge (Lilias Rider Haggard, Too late for Tears, 1969 p. 74).   Tess of the D'Urbervilles was inspired by the public execution or a murderess which Thomas Hardy saw as a teenager. (Robert Gittings, Young Thomas Hardy, 1975 p. 32-3)

Although in the reign of Queen Victoria few middle, upper or respectable working class families failed to observe Sunday as a day of worship, by the late 19th century Sunday seems to have been observed with less rigour than in the mid 19th century, at least that is the observation of Edmund Gosse in Father and son, (Penguin ed. 1949 p. 166.  First pub. 1907.  Internet ed. available)

This may have been due to the influence of the Royal household, led by Prince Albert, who found the English Sunday, extremely trying in contrast to the more relaxed German Lutheran Sunday.  In the Royal household Sundays, though not neglected, were treated as holiday, with sailing, skating, battledore and shuttlecock, skittles and country walks.  (Daphne Bennett, Queen Victoria's children, 1980 p.30)

Thomas Younghusband and his Family met Queen Victoria and her Family at Crystal Palace.
C. Wells (Museum of London)

Moral stories for Georgian children

'"Oh what a shocking story," said the children, and that miserable man who hangs there is Roger, who murdered his brother? Pray let us go, Papa"  We will go immediately" said Mr. Fairchild; "but I wish first to point out to you, my dear children, that these brothers, when they first began to quarrel in their play, as you did this morning, did not think that death, and perhaps hell, would the the end of their quarrels"'
 (Mrs. Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, 1818, p.60.  Google digital download)

Mrs. Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, 1818
(University of Roehampton digital collection)

The same writers who banished fairy tales from Georgian nurseries were happy to give children poetry and were very interested in children's education.  They produced a large number of text books which filled a real need.  Mrs. Trimmer produced illustrated introductory history books, Jeremiah Joyce, John Aikin and his sister Mrs. Barbauld wrote popular introductions to science and natural history, using imaginary conversations between parents and children.  These dialogues were based on the educational theories of the French philosopher and educationalist Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778, born Geneva, domiciled in France during the French Revolution.  see Sylvia Wiese Patterson The influence of Rousseau's Emile upon the writers of children's books in England in the late 18th century, University Microfilms Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1970) )

Mrs. Barbauld also wrote and published, in 1778, the very first book for children not only written in very simple language but also printed in large, clear type.  Lessons for Children was written for her adopted nephew Charles because she could not find any books suitable for teaching him to read.  Mrs. Trimmer, in The Guardian of Education, recognised the book as a landmark.
(Guardian of Education, vol. 1,1802, p.153)

Mrs. Barbauld, Lessons for Children, 1778,
 Google Digital Archive copy, Oxford University

Children's literature in the late 18th century and the first thirty years of the 19th century was dominated by the moral stories produced by members of the Christian Evangelical movement.  They give an interesting, slightly distorted, view of the lives led by real children at the time.
The households in these stories are mostly quite well off, though not rich, religious, with few servants, occupied in good works of various kinds, and closely united, loving family units.  The stories encouraged honesty, charity, love of God, kindness to animals, industry and selflessness.  Mrs. Maria Edgeworth's stories, in particular, give a charming picture of 18th century family life.

Mrs. Edgeworth was very influenced by Rousseau and many of her stories are based on  his theories about the importance of learning from good example and by experience.  These are fictionalised in his popular and influential book Emile, 1762 (publicly burned in Paris that year) The central thesis of Emile is that a child in born not, as the Puritans believed, naturally evil, but naturally innocent.  The child must be protected from contact with corrupting influences and carefully nurtured so that natural instincts and talents are encouraged to develop.

Title page of Rousseau's Emile, 1762
Wikipedia

Rosamund, the little heroine of many of Mrs. Edgeworth's tales, has an elder sister, the good one who is never cross, always puts her needles away tidily in her housewife, never lies in bed late on cold mornings, and, being provident, is always infuriatingly ready with quietly given pennies for the deserving poor.

Rosamund and Laura, Harry and Lucy are forever far-away Georgian children in caps and ribbons, set in a Georgian landscape of gravel walks and neat flower borders but their behaviour is timeless children's behaviour;
'I am sure - no, not quite sure - but, I hope, I shall be wiser another time!'
says Rosamund of her unwise choice of the beautiful purple jar in the chemist's chemist's shop, which turns out to be merely a glass jar filled with nasty-smelling purple liquid, instead of the shoes she really needs and then has to manage without.  This is an object lesson which she remembers when offered a housewife to keep her needles safe or an imitation plum with which to play tricks on her brother and sister.  She chooses the useful housewife, though not without some agonising.
 In another story Rosamund gets a thorn in her little finger and won't let her mother take it out because she is afraid of being pricked with the needle.
'It does not hurt me in the least, whist I hold it still, and whilst I hold it out quite straight, mamma."
"And is it your intention to hold your finger out quite straight and quite still, Rosamund, all the remainder of your life?"
With gentle irony, mamma leads Rosamund to realise that having the thorn removed is the wisest thing to do.
Rosamund is never punished directly, simply made to suffer the logical consequences of he actions.  As she is a rational child, she then corrects her faults herself, or at least tries to.
(Maria Edgeworth, The Parents' Assistant, 1796, and Early Lessons, vol. 2 p.1-132 and 96-107)

Rosamund and the purple jar, Early Lessons, 9th ed.
Google digital download 

John Ruskin described his upbringing, based on Rousseau's theories, in his autobiography, Praeteria, and also recognised its shortcomings:
'My mother's general principles of first treatment were to guard me with steady watchfulness from all pain or danger; and for the rest to amuse myself as I liked, provided I was neither fretful nor troublesome.  But the law was, that I should find my own amusement.  No toys of any kind were at first allowed...Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never permitted for an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in toy-shops.  I had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older, I had a cart, and a ball; and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks.'
(John Ruskin, Praeterita, vol. 1, 1885.   Univ. Cal. download p.13)
When Ruskin was older he was taught by his parents and by a series of carefully chosen tutors and, according to Rousseau's principles, kept from the possibly contaminating companionship of other children,

The essence of Rousseau's theory was that the child should be protected from all outside influences which would threaten the natural innocence of its mind, and should acquire knowledge naturally through a benevolently guided exploration of the world around it.  The foundation of Ruskin's lifelong study of art, architecture and aesthetic principles were laid in his early childhood through the tactile and visual exploration of everyday objects.  His building bricks were particularly important to him:

John Ruskin c.1864
Wikipedia

'I never saw or heard of another child so fond of its toy bricks except Miss Edgeworth's (fictional) Frank.  Maria Edgeworth's tales, particularly Harry and Lucy, were of course part of Ruskin's staple reading.   Ruskin developed finely tuned artistic sensibilities as a result of his early education.   It is likely that Darwin and other Victorian scientists, also following their natural inclinations, developed their habits of scientific analysis, while still children, as a result of the same method of education, having been encouraged to collect cabinets of shells, geological specimens, insects or botanical specimens and examine them.

However the solitary upbringing advocated by Rousseau and the ceaseless vigilance with which Ruskin was watched over as a youth left him 'only by protection innocent, instead of by practise virtuous' (Praeteria download version p.55), emotionally vulnerable because his emotions had never been tested, and lacking social graces.  So the eruption into his life of the charming girls who came to stay for a while when Ruskin was about seventeen was overwhelming, the embarrassment of trying to entertain them awful, and possibly his over-protected childhood led to the failure of his marriage.(Praeteria download version p.273-)

In Mrs. Sherwood's books, as in Maria Edgeworth's, moral lessons are taught by the children's failings.  The History of the Fairchild Family, (3 vols, 1818, 1841, 1847) is another children's book which  remained very popular throughout the 19th century.  Maybe this is also what made it popular with children.  Emily, Henry and Lucy are always falling short of perfection in their own eyes as well as in their parents; trying to be good and failing.  In the chapter forbiddingly called The constant bent of man's heart towards sin, for instance, the children have been left at home under the care of a servant.  They are determined to be good.  They begin their lessons, but see a pig in the garden and think it would be good to chase it out.  This would be good, but instead of stopping at the gate they follow it down the lane and through a stream.  A farmer's wife sees how wet and muddy they are and invites them in to get dry.  This is kind of her, but they should not have accepted because her children are naughty children and their parents have forbidden them to play there.  The farmer's wife gives them cake and cider, which was kind, but they get tipsy and fall down in the lane and muddy their clothes even more.  They are very remorseful for a while, but then they are tempted by the swing in the barn, on which they are not allowed to play unsupervised.  Of course their swinging gets out of hand and Emily falls off and cuts her head.  In despair the servant, John, ties the other two children to a chair so that they cannot get into any more mischief.  When their parents get home they are very sorry and run to confess their naughtiness.  (Mary Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, vol.1, 1818, digital p. 70-83.  Available in digital download, University of Roehampton)

History of the Fairchild Family,
 illustrated by Florence Rudland, 1902
(Project Gutenberg internet edition)

In these stories the cardinal sins are disobedience to parents and lying.  One of the most forceful stories in The History of the Fairchild Family is Absence of God where Mr. Fairchild punishes Harry, explaining that a father stands in relation to his children as God does to man and so disobedience to his father is a sin against God.(p 265-75)  The children's worst punishments, in accordance with this religious theory, are their own remorse and their parents' displeasure.  Emily steals damsons from the cupboard and is so overcome by guilt that she nearly dies of a fever.(p.114-123)  Henry refuses to learn his first Latin lesson on the ingenious grounds that although this one is easy he has looked at later lessons and knows he will not be able to do them: 'I am sure I cannot learn all the hard words in this book, and so I won't begin;  (p.265-275)  Harry's punishment is to be ignored by his family, though his little sisters are very tearful about it, and he is quickly brought to a state of remorseful repentance by the moral weight of family disapproval, another example of the kind of psychological punishments which both John Locke and Rousseau favoured.  On one terrible occasion the children art taken to see the body of a hanged man on a gibbet, as a lesson in how small faults can lead to greater ones and eventually to the gallows.  (Google digital edition p.,75-6)

As might be expected religious duties are strongly stressed in these moral stories, but in fact religious observance clearly varied between puritanism as strict as any practised in the 17th century to Henrietta Hotham's lighthearted declaration in 1763 at the age of eleven: 'I have not yet declared of what Religion I shall be; but I go three times a week to the Church door; and upon Moses Hart's having done a most humane and charitable action by one of Mr. Carr's sons, I have been to the Jew's synagogue; it is observed that there is no Apprehension of my being a Papist, I like Fish too well to have it my Duty to eat it.'
(A.M.W. Stirling, The Hothams,  2 vols, 1918, p.95)

Even in a strict Quaker household such as the Gurney's the children's private journals for spiritual self-examination contain some surprisingly rebellious sentiments:
'At this time I do not believe in Christ' 'Oh how I long to get a broom and bang all the old Quakers who do look so triumphant and disagreable.'
(Augustust J.C. Hare, The Gurneys of Earlham, 1895, Vol. 7 p.72, 79)

Generally, however both adults and children who belonged to the various sects which disented from the established Church of England were particularly fervent in their religious beliefs, partly, no doubt, because in the latter half of the 18th century dissenters were still liable to persecution.  As late as 1800 Isaac Taylor, (brother of Jane Taylor who wrote Twinkle twinkle little star) described a near escape from a mob bent on attacking their house, and there was strong feeling against the Catholics due to the Stuart claim to the Crown.
(Doris May Armitage, The Taylors of Ongar, 1938 p. 24-55)

 Adults and children were exposed to propaganda such as The Protestant Tutor, 1713, advertised as:
'Instructing Youth and Others in the Complete Method of Spelling, Reading, and Writing True English: Also Discovering to them the Notorious Errors, Damnable Doctrines and Cruel Massacres of the Bloody Papists; which England may expect from a Popish Successor, with Instructions for Grounding them in the Protestant Religion.  To which is added the Preamble to the Patent for Creating the Electoral Prince of Hanover a Peer of the Realm, Duke of Cambridge.
(later George I  The Protestant Tutor, 1713, Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham))
The anti-Catholic Foxe's Book of Martyrs was also still very popular reading.

Image from Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 1563
British Library digital image

Mrs. Sherwood remembered being at school in Reading where many French refugees fled during the French Revolution (1789-99) One of them, the Abbe Beauregard, attempted to convert her to the Catholic religion which she resisted:
'Popery of course must be wrong, because my parents had said so, and because those people worshipped saints; and God alone, I had been taught, was the fit object of worship.'
(The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, 1857 A digital version is available on Google)
Stephen Hawtrey, at school in France shortly before the Revolution, experienced the reverse prejudice, being told that, as a Protestant, he could not be a Christian because he had not been baptised.
 (Florence M. Hawtrey,  The History of The Hawtrey Family, 1903, Vol. 1, p. 392)

Although the 18th and 19th centuries were a period of strong and active religious feeling in Britain which expressed itself in generally puritanical attitudes to dress and behaviour, it is evident from the force with which Nonconformist and Evangelical writers condemned such behaviour that a large number of middle and upper class children were being brought up under what, to their eyes, appeared a deplorably lax regime, and to very different standards.  Many late 18th and early 19th century stories proclaim the superiority of spiritual beauty over physical, ridicule overdress, spoilt children, and extol the virtues of plain dressing, simplicity and personal cleanliness, something which was beginning to be expected in polite circles.

Mary Hughes, The Ornaments Discovered, 1815,
 Copy:internet  Biblio.co.uk, Abbey Antiquarian Books

The Ornaments Discovered by Mary Hughes contrasts the behaviour of Emma:
'dress, unfortunately for her, was the most important object in life' and foundling Fanny, whose spiritual ornaments give the title.  Fanny is so sweet natured, or lacking in discrimination, that she continues to regard Emma as her dearest friend when the latter's lack of moral courage has led to Fanny being considered a liar and a thief.  She is, in fact, a shining moral example of not only virtues such as honesty but also those qualities which the Georgians and especially the Victorians thought so essential in a woman, utter unselfishness, sweet-nature, good temper and gentleness.
(Mary Hughes, The Ornaments Discovered, 1822 edition, Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

The poem Finery in Jane and Anne Taylor's popular collection Original Poems for Infant Minds makes the same point:

''Twas Lucy, tho' only in simple white clad
(Nor trimmings, nor laces, not jewels she had)
Whose cheerful good nature delighted them more
Than all the fine garments that Harriet wore.'
(Jane and Anne Taylor, Original poems for infant minds, 1804.  p. 99.
Garland Press facsimile 1976.  Digital copy available on Google Project Gutenberg, but pagination differs)

For a few years at least simplicity became the fashion.  However, with so many pretty things to tempt them who could blame those who could afford it for yielding to the temptation to display their wealth and dress themselves and their children up like Christmas trees?

The New England Puritans were no more successful in discouraging people from a taste for finery than the British Nonconformists and Evangelicals. Alice Morse Earle quotes, for example, a long letter from a twelve year old American girl, Anna Green Winslow, written in 1771, describing her complicated toilet for a special occasion:
'I was dress'd in my yellow coat, black bib & apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my aunt Storer sometime since presented me with blue ribbins on it, a very handsome locket in the shape of a hart, the paste pin my Hon'd Papa presented me with in my cap, my new cloak & bonnet on, my pompedore gloves, and I would tell you they all lik'd my dress very much.'...Nor was this all, on another occasion she wore'...black feathers....my paste comb, all my paste, garnett, marquasett, and jet pins, together with my silver plume...'
(Alice Morse Earle Child life in Colonial days, 1899, p.58-9.  Digital copy available on Project Gutenberg, an excellent account of child life in the USA)