Spare the rod, spoil the child; child-rearing theories in 19th century Britain and America

'"Crinoline? - I was suspecting it! So young and so depraved!"'
W.M. Thackeray to Henry James' sister, aged eight.
(Henry James, A small boy and others, 1913, p. 94)
(Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Crinoline? By the American artist  Jessie Wilcox Smith
(Pinterest)

Nursery delights were one result of parents taking a closer personal interest in their children; toy shops and bookshops not only encouraged children to press their noses against the windows, but tempted adults to buy and to play too.  However, there were disadvantages.

It became the fashion to show off the children to admiring guests and it was a small step from using them in a charming naturalistic family group portrait to expecting them to display their talents.   Both children and guests suffered through  recitations of the latest 'piece' of music or verse.

Eleanor Farjeon  remembers:
'So I wetted my lips and began in a monotonous little voice:
"A  Pound of Tea at One-and-three,
A Pot of Strawberry Ham,
A..." Oh, horror, I had said it wrong.  The jumble didn't begin till the Third verse...I began again, hastily:
"A Pound of Tea at One-and-three,
A Pot of Strawberry Jam..."...I hesitate.
Every line, every word of the poem went out of my head.  I stared blankly in front of me...
"A Pound of Tea..."  I faltered, and stuck.
Somebody said, "She's forgotten it, poor little thing." I burst into tears, slithered along the floor-polish...and sobbed in Mama's lap...some of the elders patted me and said, "Never mind, dear," and another child got up and recited something competently.'
(Eleanor Farjeon, (1881-1965) children's author, A Nursery in the Nineties, 1935, p. 345)

Many children, especially girls, were made miserable by their failure to measure up to the conventional Victorian image seen in the Nister picture books; slightly plump, hair curly, preferably golden; blue eyes, definitely pretty.

Edith Sitwell, known for her striking, unconventional looks, said her eighteen year old mother thought that in Edith 'she was being endowed with a new doll - one that would open and shut its eyes at her bidding and say "Papa" "Mama". '
(Edith Sitwell, (1887-1964 English aristocrat, writer) Taken care of, 1965, p.26)

The Sitwell family painted by fashionable society artist 
John Singer Sargent.  Edith is in red.
(Pinterest)

The fashion for curly hair meant hours doing it up in rags and curl papers, and sleeping with a head covered in uncomfortable lumps, curling irons, and curls that either frizzed hopelessly or drooped at the first touch of rain.  Later Victorian dress for little girls was heavy and cumbersome, after a period of relative freedom under the Georgians when loose, unrestricted clothes had been considered healthy.

Alison Uttley, a farmer's daughter, has described her clothes as relatively simple, but by today's standards they were anything but:
'My clothes were plain and few, from the white chemise, which I wore next to my skin, to the top layer of frock and pinafore, (no jeans then!) and everything was home-made except the Liberty bodice on which my stockings fastened.  Buttoned to the bodice were white drawers with Torchon lace around the legs.  I was proud of my drawers, garments which must never be seen or the disgrace is terrible.'
At six she went on a visit to relatives in town, and returned with a child size bustle, which her mother threw on the fire.
(Alison Uttley, (1884-1976, children's author)Ambush of young days, 1937, p.74)

Henry James, the American writer, gives an amusing description of a little New Yorker's clothes in the 1850s:
'The main resource of a small New York boy in this line at that time was the little sheath-like jacket, tight to the body, closed at the neck and adorned in front with a single row of brass buttons - a garment of scant grace.'

At this time that is what little page-boys, in service in London hotels were also wearing, and the novelist W.M. Thackeray thought this very funny:
'"Come here little boy," he said, "and show me your extraordinary jacket!"'
He was equally amused by Henry James' sister wearing a crinoline:
'"Crinoline? - I was suspecting it! So young and so depraved!"'
(Henry James, (1843-1916 American novelist) A small boy and others, p.93, 94)

(Girls wearing crinolines; hoops under the skirt to hold it out.
From Victorian Fashion for Kids.com)

By the 1880s British boys, profiting from the fashion for outdoor life set by Victoria and Albert, had graduated to sailor suits and jerseys, though they  suffered impractical short trousers until about the 1950s.  By contrast their sisters were smothered in clothes.  Here is a description of a little girl's underclothes:

'We, too, put on first of all a vest.  Then a chemise, a garment whose use was never apparent to us, but we were given to understand that it wouldn't be at all 'nice' to go without it.  It was made of white and reached to the knees.  Next 'stays' a strip of wadded pique whose use was unmistakable.  In addition to the five buttons that fastened our stays up the back, they had a number of other buttons at various levels and intervals round the waist.  Two of these held up the elastic 'spenders' of our stockings; the five buttonholes of our drawers belonged to the other three, and yet more were buttoned into two holes in the band of our flannel petticoat.  Over that came a white petticoat made with a bodice.  Sometimes the buttons went pop and one's drawers slid slowly down one's legs.'
(from Phyllis Cunnington and Anne Buck, Children's costume in England, 1965, p. 182- quoted
from Elizabeth Acland, Goodbye for the present, the story of two childhoods; Milly, 1878 -88, 1935 p. 25)

A well-dressed child.
(Heartfelt.Pinterest)

This description is from the early 19th century, but the fashion for stays continued; Gwen Raverat and her sister were put into stays in the 1890s.  They rebelled:
'We knew it was almost hopeless - we were outnumbered and outflanked on every side - but we did rebel against stays.  Margaret says that the first time she was put into them - when she was about thirteen - she ran round and round the nursery screaming with rage. I did not do that.  I simply went away and took them off.  I endured sullenly the row which ensued, when my soft-shelled condition was discovered; was forcibly re-corseted; and, as soon as possible went away and took them off again.  One of my governesses used to weep over my wickedness in this respect.  I had a bad figure, and to me they were real instruments of torture; they prevented me from breathing, and dug deep holes into my softer parts on every side.'
(Gwen Raverat ( 1885-1957, artist,) Period piece, 1952, p. 259)

Gwen Raverat, Olga at the window,
(Pinterest)

Quite apart from these efforts to turn out children, especially girls, presentably, numerous theories on upbringing abounded.  It was as though parents had become fascinated by the problems of bringing up children.  Gwen Raverat, whose mother was a volatile expatriate American, lists some of the rules and prohibitions she and her friends were subject to:
'I don't believe that my mother was more subject to attacks of theories than many other parents of her time; indeed many children of my acquaintance had parents who were more addicted to them than she was...There were some children who might not ride bicycles, and others who were forbidden to go in boats; some who were forced to play the violin, and others who always had to wear mufflers; some who might not eat current buns, and others who were obliged to have cold baths; all kinds of fads and foolishness.  There were even some children who were forced to go barefoot, and others who were forbidden to do so.'
(Gwen Raverat, op. cit, p. 47-8)

Victorian children, artist Emile Vernon Foster
(Colinbradleyart.com)

Generally a plain diet was favoured, as it had been for centuries, but theories on what was plain and wholesome and what must be avoided at all consts changed with bewildering illogicality in the absence of anything more that rudimentary understanding of the effects of diet on health.

One remarkable difference that emerges from British and American autobiographies from this period is that British writers, if they mention food at all, describe childhood meals as varying from extremely plain to quite horrible.  Although some American children, like Louisa M. Alcott, were brought up on the plain diet advised by Locke and Rousseau, it seems to have been far less general than in Britain.
(Louisa M. Alcott, (1832-1888, American writer) Her Life, Letters and Journals, edited by Ednah D. Cheney,1898, p. 19  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

American children, advert for Niagara gloss starch,
(University of Miami, Pinterest)

American writers frequently take delight in describing memories of sumptuous meals.  Mark Twain revels in a long description of Southern corn bread, hot biscuits, wheat bread and fried chicken
(Autobiography of Mark Twain, 2 vols, 1924, Vol. 1, p. 96.  A new Mark Twain Project edition in 3 vols was published 2010-15; The American writer Mark Twain, 1835-1910, worked on his autobiography from 1870)

Henry James revelled in 'mounds of Isabella grapes and Seckel pears in the sticky sweetness of which our childhood seems to have been steeped...bushels of peaches in particular, peaches big and peaches small, peaches white and peaches yellow.'
(Henry James, A small boy and others, op. cit, p. 75)

The British aristocrat and writer Osbert Sitwell, on the other hand, describes the menu in the Renishaw nursery with typical Sitwell wit:
'all the things for which children now clamour - and are often indeed obliged against their will to eat - oranges and sweets and fruit juices, were beyond the pale.  Boiled mutton...and a stodgy eternity of rice pudding, stretching spotless beyond the horizon or, like the Church of England Heaven, a pale eternity of jelly, constituted pour recognised diet, based on scientific knowledge.'
(Osbert Sitwell, (1892-1969) Left Hand, Right Hand, 1945, Vol. 1, p. 163)

The 'eat everything on your plate' rule was still strictly applied.  Compton Mackenzie and his brother hid their fat in the piano until the smell betrayed them.(Compton Mackenzie,(1883-1972,English writer)  My Life and Times, Vol. 1, 1963, p. 36)

Centuries of opposition to beating children produced alternative methods of asserting control over them. From the mid 17th century, for instance, children were shut in a dark room or closet.  Samuel Pepys records in his diary that he
'fell mightily out, and made my wife, to the disturbance of the house and neighbours, to beat our little girle (the servant); and then we shut her down in the cellar and there she lay all night.  So we to bed.'
(Samuel Pepys. (1633-1703, English diarist)  Diary edited by Robert Latham and W. Matthews, 1972, Vol. 6,  19 Feb. 1665)

Elizabeth Grant recalls in her memoirs that she and her brothers and sisters were often banished to a closet if they were naughty, and sometimes forgotten for hours. (Elizabeth Grant,  (1797-1830, known for her family memoir) Memoirs of a Highland Lady, 1898, p. 59)

Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Vicky, the Princess Royal, went through a phase of telling lies, and was put into solitary confinement with her hands tied for saying she had been given permission to wear her pink bonnet for an outing when she had not.
(Daphne Bennett Queen Victoria's Children, 1980, p. 25)

Girl with sweets,
(Victorianctading.com.Pinterest)

Shutting children in closets when they were naughty seems to have been the custom in other royal households; a French nurse arriving with the refugees from the 1848 Revolution admired Osborne House for the number of closets it provided:
'N'est-ce pas, madame, que ce palais est remarquable par la quantité d'armoires qu'il contient, pour enfermer les enfants méchants?'( Madam, is this palace not remarkable for the number of closets it contains for shutting up the  naughty children?)
(Letters from Sarah, Lady Lyttleton 1797-1870, 1912, p. 374)

Punishments which made a child look ridiculous or wounded their self esteem were quite common, particularly in the schoolroom.  Lord Curzon and his sisters were made by their sadistic governess to make and wear red calico petticoats and dunce's caps with placards naming their faults:
'Liar, Sneak, Coward, Lubber and the like.'  He attributed his extremely strong character partly to this difficult time.  As he managed to control the tribes of Afghanistan, the North West Frontier, he must have been a remarkable man.
(Leonard Mosley, Curzon, The end of an epoch, 1960, p. 9, quoted from Curzon's own notes on his childhood.  Lord Curzon, 1829-1925,  writer, Victorian statesman, Viceroy of India,

Various ingenious attempts were made to make the punishment fit the crime, for example, the popular punishment of washing the mouth out with soapy water for swearing, or, in Gwen Raverat's case, for biting:
'And so once, when I had bitten the nursery-maid, I had my mouth washed out with soap and water; and anothger time when I had slapped her, I had socks tied down over my hands and had to come down to lunch and be fed in public with a spoon...And when I cut off my own hair, I was made to go about with it as it was for several days before I was allowed to have it cut properly.'
(Gwen Raverat, Period Piece, 1952, p. 58)

Most children probably accepted adult attempts to discipline them as natural and conformed, rebelled or evaded them according to their nature.  Some, however, rebelled against the very principles behind the system and bitterly resented it as adults.  Their case is put by the well-known children's writer Harriet Martineau in her autobiography:
'Not a word was ever preached about the justice due from the stronger to the weaker...I used to thirst to hear some notice of the oppresson which servants and children had (as I supposed universally) to endure, in regard to their feelings.'
(Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, 1877, Vol. 1,  p. 21 Hathi Trust internet edition available.) (Harriet Martineau, 1802-1876, a British writer and early feminist)

There is evidence that British children were far more strictly brought up at this time than little Americans.  Harriet Martineau travelled in America, and said that constant correction made her a timid child.  She found the independence and fearlessness of American children delightful, and attributed it to their relative importance in a sparsely populated country.  She believed their spirit of individualism was fostered by republicanism:
'Till the United States cease to be republican, and their vast area is fully populated, the children there will continue as free and easy and as important as they are.  For my part I delight in American children.'
(Harriet Martineau, Society in America, 1837,Vol. 3, p. 166. Gutenberg internet edition available.  Quoted in Robert Bremner, Children and youth in America, a documentary history, 1970, Vol. 1, p. 350)

The writer and social activist Harriet Martineau
(Wikipedia)

Europeans often remarked on the independence and what some called the insubordination of American children.  Frederick Marryat tells an amusing story of an American family he met while travelling in the States in the 1830s.  The son was being flagrantly disobedient, but instead of punishing him, his father turned to Marryat remarking:
"A sturdy republican, Sir,"' and smiling at his disobedience.'
(Frederick Marryat, A Diary in America, 1839, Vol. 3, p. 284)  Quoted in Robert Bremner op. cit,
 Vol. 1, p. 344)

The British writer Frances Trollope also travelled in the USA and commented disapprovingly on their 'total want of discipline and subjugation which I observed universally among children of all ages'
(Frances Trollope, Domestic manners of the Americans, 1832, Vol. 2 p. 298, Gutenberg internet edition available)

Like theories on diet, theories on medical treatment have absorbed those who had care of children for as long as parents have been struggling to bring them up.  However, while diet theory generally stated that children should be given plain food, medical theories have varied wildly.  Generally, children suffered the same 'cures' as adults.  By the 19th century improvements in medical knowledge had discredited 'bleeding in the Jugular' as treatment for a feverish cold (Autobiography of the Hon. Roger North (1653-1734) ed. A. Jessopp, 1887, p. 253)

 However, regular use of bleeding as a cure-all had given way to an obsession with regular bowel movements.  From 17th century physicians' tentative theories that there might be some connection between constipation and disorders such as piles, a very strong belief in the value of purging developed.  Children were obvious victims:
'I  have carryed his nurse the Rhubarb, and she promiseth he shall constantly drink it.'

(Frances Parthenope Verney, Memoirs of the Verney family during the Civil War (1642-1651), Vol. 2, 1892 ed. p. 6)

Many children were much more unpleasantly dosed:
'Mrs. Squeers stood at one of the desks, presiding over an immense basin of brimstone and treacle, of which delicious compound she administered a large instalment to each boy in succession.'
(Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby,first published 18-8-9, quote from 1906 ed. Vol. 1, p. 105)

An American nursery maid and small child
(Stripedstockings.Pinterest)

According to Mark Twain, in Monroe County, Missouri, USA, when faced with an obscure illness it was the custom to work up through a series of treatments of increasing severity, beginning with purging with castor oil and New Orleans molasses, and finishing with mustard plasters, presumably to raise the patient's temperature, and, if that failed, bleeding, to lower the temperature:
'The next standby was colonel; the next rhubarb; and the next julap.  Then they bled the patient, and put mustard plasters on him.'
(Autobiography of Mark Twain, op. cit, p. 106)

Samuel Butler's miserable anti-hero Ernest Pontifex was dosed with camomile and Dr. James' powder.  This medicine had been popular since the mid 18th century and was patented by John Newbery, publisher of many delightful early children's story books.  Newbery advertised the powder as a cure-all in the story books he wrote and published;
Goody Two-Shoes' father died because he unfortunately 'contracted a fever in a place where Dr. James's powder was not to be had...'
(Samuel Butler,  (1835-1902, British novelist,) Ernest Pontifex or, The Way of All Flesh, 1903, quote from 1965 ed. edited by D.F. Howard, p. 82. and The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, 3rd, ed. 1766, facsimile edition with an introduction by Charles Welsh, 1881, p. 13)

Compton Mackenzie remembered being given most of the laxatives popular in the late 19th century:
'Dr. Gregory's filthy powder...senna tea or castor oil...given to a wretched child in warm milk...Ipecacuanha was another disgusting tea-spoonful; liquorice powder an equally disgusting glassful.  I suppose the idea of making every aperient a foul business was to instil in the child's mind the notion that constipation was something sinful for which a penalty had to be paid.'
(Compton Mackenzie, (1883-1972, British writer)My Life and Times, 1963, Octave 1, p. 111)

The Royal children were regularly given castor oil, on the advice of their doctor:
'The Princess Royal, although quite well in every other respect, has not gained appetite despite the dose' observed Lady Lyttleton who was the capable and motherly overseer of the royal nursery in the notebook on their progress which she kept for the Queen and Prince Albert
(Daphne Bennett, Queen Victoria's children, 1980, p. 23)

The Royal children, largely due to Prince Albert, enjoyed what, for the Victorians, was a model upbringing.  The Queen thought small babies rather disgusting and refused to breast feed, although this was now fashionable with doctors.  Their first child, Princes Vicky, was put in the care of Mrs. Southey, but disagreements between her and the head nurse led to nursery chaos.  The anxious young father replaced Mrs. Southey with Lady Lyttelton, who remained in overall charge of the steadily growing brood for about ten years. (Bennett, op. cit. p.22)

Her letters show her strict, but tolerant and motherly with a sense of humour;
'Oh dear, I wish there were no portrait being done of the Princess Royal; and that all her relations...did not always come to see her at once, and make her naughty, and her governess cross.  Poor little body! She is never to be naughty; always expected to be good and civil and sensible; and the Duke of Cambridge...tells the Queen...that it is very odd the Princes should ever cry! "So very odd; my daughters never did cry!..."And Her Majesty believes her uncle....'

'Princess just now established herself close to a large mirror down to the ground, and broke out in admiration of her own little fat figure and round white face - "Princessy! darling! oh you darling! Well then I never did!...."  It was much too droll! '
(Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, Lady Lyttelton, 1787-1870, edited by...Mrs. Hugh Wyndham. 1912.  p. 332, letter dated 1842.  See also the Lyttelton Letters, op. cit, 1873 edition, p. 306, 317)

Frederick Winterhalter, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children
(Pinterest)

Prince Albert studied all the latest theories on child care and instituted a regime of good plain food, plenty of fresh air, cold baths, and only small fires to harden the children's constitutions and to lessen the risk of TB germs which were thought to be encouraged by over-heated rooms. Lady Lyttelton was sometimes glad to escape to the fire in her own room, and the children were prone to chilblains and rheumatism but, unusually for the 19th century, all lived to adulthood and some, like Princess Alice, to exceptional old age.

This may have been partly due to Prince Albert's concern with hygiene and to the modern sewage systems installed at Osborne and Balmoral where they spent much of their time.
(see Bennett, D. op. cit, p. 30-)

Prince Edward, later King Edward VII, and his brothers and sisters were treated as nearly as possible like other small children and expected to show the politeness and obedience due from children to adults.
'"But not to Caroline Cocks" said Princess Alice for apparent reason, after one long lecture from Lady Lyttelton.
(Lyttelton Letters, op. cit, p. 394)

 They and their brothers and sisters were guarded from the obsequious pandering to their whims and jockeying for favour which had  encouraged the Prince Regent and George III's other children to become such famously self-indulgent adults.  However, unlike Victoria, who had few companions apart from her many dolls and her governess, they had plenty to amuse them.  Not only did they have each other to play with, but Queen Victoria and Prince Albert took a close interest in their children's upbringing and education, which gave their household a family atmosphere admired by the members of other European royal families.  The Queen, when her duties allowed, heard the children read and personally gave them their early religious instruction.  (Bennett, op. cit, p. 28)

 Prince Albert played with them a lot and taught his children through informal lessons:
'All the children are out with the Queen and Prince attended by the bailiff, to the sheep shorn' (ie to see sheep shearing)

Prince Albert encouraged them to ask intelligent questions, like the children in Scientific dialogues or Conversations on Botany:
'"Pray, Mama, is not a pink the female of a carnation?"' asked Edward, Prince of Wales once.
(Lyttelton Letters, op. cit.  1873 ed. p. 407, 408)

They led healthy outdoor lives, not too strictly supervised:
'Just seen the eldest six zits (sic), all scattered over one of the new terraces, without hats or bonnets, running wild after dinner.  They looked very pretty writes Lady Lyttelton from Osborne, the new palace built by Prince Albert on the Isle of Wight.  Zits was her word for the children. There was plenty of sailing and sea bathing since salt water was thought to be extremely good for the health. Lady Lyttelton records Prince Edward's first dip in the sea at Osborne in 1846:
'A great nursery event.  Princey is gone to be bathed in the sea for the first time...The Prince very pleasantly has undertaken to do it all himself, there being no machines or bathers here.  So the zite is gone with "Only Papa..."

There were pony rides and other pets such as the uncooperative lamb described by Lady Lyttelton:
'Princess Alice's pet lamb is the cause of many tears.  He will not take to his mistress, but runs away hastily, and will soon butt at her, though she is most coaxy; and said to him in her sweetest tones, after kissing his nose often:
"Milly! dear Milly!  Do you like me?"
(Lyttelton Letters, 1873 ed. p. 369, 405)

The Royal household set an influential example to the whole country and encouraged the tendency towards active family life characteristic of Queen Victoria's reign.  Better hygiene and medicine meant more surviving children and larger families.  At best children's lives were enriched by the society of their numerous relations.  Family gatherings on specific occasions, like those celebrated by Dickens, became customary at Christmas, births, birthdays, deaths and weddings and at that very Victorian institution, the family holiday in the country or at the seaside.  It is not surprising that the keynote of most autobiographical accounts of Victorian childhood is one of happiness, although adults often complained of declining standards and the insubordination of the younger generation, just as adults do today:

Artist Charles West Cope; A Life Well Spent
(Pinterest)

'Gratitude to parents, respect for age and authority are not what they should be these days.'
(Queen Victoria to Vicky, Princess Royal, 28 May 1872.  Darling Child, Private correspondence of Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia; ie her daughter Princess Vicky, 1976.)
Certainly Prince Edward, later King Edward VII must have been a great disappointment to his parents; careful parenting sometimes seems to have no better success than no parenting at all.

Educating the upper classes: boys at public school

 I grew so rich that I was sent

By a pocket borough into Parliament

I always voted at my party's call, 

And I never thought of thinking for myself at all. 

I thought so little, they rewarded me

By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

(W.S. Gilbert, making fun of politicians and

the Navy career structure in H.M.S. Pinafore 1881),

Life was not much better for pupils at fee-paying 'public' schools than it was for working class children scraping an education where they could.  A 'public school' in the U.K. has come to mean a private boarding school, where parents pay often huge fees to have their children housed in term, educated, and, very important, make useful connections for their future lives. (for details of their origin and development from free grammar schools, see Wikipedia) The future for boys from the gentry, aristocracy, or well-off families in the 18th and 19th century was expected to be: running the family country estates, enormous or small, becoming Members of Parliament and running the country, becoming officers in the army or, probably second choice, the navy; becoming Anglican clergymen and running the spiritual life of the nation, or entering the legal profession which, with Parliament, controlled the legal life of the nation.  Boys were also expected to make a suitable marriage, hopefully to a girl who would bring more money and estates into the family, and girls were educated with this in mind too.  Any girls who could not, or would not marry could become helpful companions to their families, and, of course, all girls were expected to do good works with the poor, especially if they had married one of the Clergy.

The eldest son, whether suitable or not, would inherit the family estates, which were probably entailed on the eldest male heir. This protected the often huge landholdings of the aristocracy from becoming fragmented.  The remaining sons would often be offered a choice of suitable Anglican 'livings', ie church parishes with a rectory and an income, or would be bought a commission as an officer in the army or navy.  They would be expected to work their way up to, maybe a bishopric in the Church, a General in the Army, or an Admiral in the Navy.
Children who inherited a title automatically also inherited a seat in the House of Lords, then much more powerful than it is in modern times.  Also, until the Parliamentary Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 many M.P.s in the House of Commons were more or less gifted their Parliamentary seats by the local landowner, who controlled the vote.  The Reform Acts gave the vote to many working men, though no women could vote.

Boys would usually be sent at age seven to a preparatory boarding school and then to board at senior public school.  Public school certainly toughened the boys up, if it did not kill them.  Flogging was extensively practised at all major public schools; several masters were renowned for it, and were admiringly spoken of for the ferocity of their beatings.  The best known of all, Dr. 'Flogger' Keate, headmaster of Eton from 1810 to 1834, once attempted to beat a hundred boys in turn.  After he had beaten about twenty the rest started to pelt him with rotten eggs.  He called in two masters with birches to assist him and continued beating.

Eton College, founded by Henry VI in 1440 (Wikipedia)

The future poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was at Eton in Flogger Keate's time.  The other boys enjoyed provoking him to furious rages:
He was known as Mad Shelley, and many a cruel torture was practised upon him for his moody and singular exclusiveness...I have seen him surrounded, hooted, baited like a maddened bull...'
Shelley once stabbed another boy with a fork, but did eventually settle in and became an exceptional scholar.
(Richard. Holmes, Shelley, the Pursuit, 1974, quote from an article by W.H. Mearke in
The Athenaeum, 1848)

The pupils were charged for the rods used; Charles Hotham's bill at Westminster School in 1743 included 1/- 'for the rods at School twice'

The school was very rough at that time, a coachman died after five scholars 'gave him a Westminster drubbing' and wild Lord March, future Duke of Richmond, aged eight, assaulted a master:
'Set fire to Viny's greasy locks, and boxed his ears to put it out again'  (A.M.W. Stirling, The Hothams, 1918, Vol. 2, p.2; 3, internet edition available, California Digital Library)

The poet Lord Alfred Tennyson's brother was at Eton, and told his brother the students once stole a pig.  They kept it on the roof until she had her piglets and then ate them; Tennyson put the story into one of his poems, though not naming the school:

'By night we dragged her to the College tower
From her warm bed and up the corkscrew stair
With hand and rope we hauled the groaning sow
And on the leads we kept her till she pigged.
 (Tennyson, Walking to the Mail, Early Poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson, 1830 internet edition available, Project Gutenberg)

That story may or may not be true, but when the floor of the Old Chamber at Eton, where the pupils slept, was taken up in 1858 two cartloads of mutton bones taken down by rats were removed.  Boarders were expected to go out to houses in the town to wash and buy breakfast, there was no glass in the windows until 1818.   Pupils were still expected to sleep two to a bed at Harrow until 1805.  As blankets were inadequate this may have been a good choice. (Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy,
The Public School Phenomenon,  1977, an excellent, entertaining account of British public schools)

So maybe the behaviour of these young aristocrats partly explains the violence of the staff.
Lord Stanley's son Johnny was flogged at Harrow School in 1851 for:
'secreting light and being up all night, and also for jumping over the dinner table when Dr. Vaughan was there...I hear the foulness of his language is as much complained of as his swearing"
His father, Lord Stanley just remarked: "Dr. Vaughan is a prig"'
(Nancy Mitford, ed. The Stanleys of Alderley, 1939p.211)

Harrow in 1862 founded 1572 under Elizabeth 1
(BBC Archive)

Algernon Stanley was just as unruly:
'Two new punishments were invented at Harrow especially for him - one was to stop in on the half holiday, the other to have his name posted up as having done badly.'
Lyulph Stanley to his mother, concerning his brother Algernon, 1857, Mitford p. 193-4)

Algernon's parents did not consider these punishments enough and Algernon was moved from Harrow to Rugby; his mother, Lady Stanley said:
Rugby 'gives him a chance of strengthening his character in a rough sphere where more co-ercive measures are used.  Perhaps you will think Rugby is not gentlemanlike - it is not polished, but anything is better for Algernon that will change the sauntering, idle, lazy tone of his mind and manner.'
(Mitford p.211)

Rugby school, founded in 1567
as a free grammar school
for local boys (Wikipedia)

Clearly the parents were totally behind severe punishments, and, of course, the boys' fathers would have experienced them previously.  Here is another parent's comment, slightly earlier; 1687, by Mary Woodford:
'This evening I had the cutting news that my second boy was in rebellion at the College at Winton where he and all his Companions resolved not to make any verses, and being called upon to be whipped for it several of them refused to be punished, mine among the rest...God I beseech thee subdue their stubvborn hearts and give them grace to repent and accept of their punishment due to their fault, and let them not run to ruin for Christ's sake'
(D.H. Woodforde ed.  Woodforde papers and diaries, 1932. Google internet edition available)

This is the Rev. Heber, writing to his son Richard in 1792, at the time of the French Revolution, describing how Richard's brothers schoolfellows:
'According to the prevailing Rage of the Times of standing up for the Rights of Boys adopting Tom Paine's principles and doctrines and rebelling against King Kent (the headmaster) barring the master out of the school.  They were starved into submission.  So may all Rightful Monarchs ever prevail against Levellers and Republicans, the pest of Society.'
(R. Cholmondeley ed. The Heber Letters, 1783-1832, pub. 1950, p.78, Google internet edition available)

Giving evidence before the Public Schools Commission in 1836, set up to investigate complaints, Creasy, who was sent to Eton in 1821 at the age of ten, sums up conditions as 'privations that might have broken down a cabin boy or would thought inhuman if inflicted on a galley-slave
(Christopher Hollis, Eton, a history, 1960  p.236 internet edition available on Google Books)

And, finally, here is the testimony of Lord Shaftesbury, famous for championing the rights of chimney sweepers' boy workers and founder of the Shaftsbury homes. He was sent to preparatory school, Manor House, Chiswick, aged seven:
'Evil of every kind was rampant...The memory of that place makes me shudder; it is repulsive to me even now.  I think there never was such a wicked school before or since.  The place was bad, wicked, filthy; and the treatment was starvation and cruelty.'  Shaftesbury compared this school to Dotheboys Hall in Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, 1838, the novel which  made Victorians aware of the conditions in many of these boarding schools.  Lord Shaftesbury went on to Harrow, aged twelve, and was apparently happy there. 

Mrs. Squeers doses the boys, by Phiz,
Nicholas Nickleby 

The curriculum continued to be based on Classical languages.   Charles Darwin (1809-1882)  boarded at Shrewsbury School, founded in 1552, now an independent co-educational school of a very high quality.  In Darwin's day, he complained:
'Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught except a little ancient geography and history.'
(The Life and Times of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin, 1888)

'Lord Chesterfield, in 1704, wrote to his son:
'Dear Boy...
Pray mind your Greek particularly; for to know Greek very well is to be really learned: there is no great credit in knowing Latin, for everyone knows it.'
(Lord Chesterfield, letters to his son, Letter XLIX.  C. Strachey ed. The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to his Son, 1901.) 
Lord Chesterfield's letters on education were very celebrated in the 18th and 19th centuries,
even though his the son and godson actually turned out rather badly.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)also remembered his Latin lessons, at St. James' prep. school, around 1880, aged seven:
'Learning the 1st declension.  Mensa, a table, mensa, o table, etc.  "What does it mean, Sir?" ..."O table - you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table."  And then, seeing he was not caring me with him, "You would use it in speaking to a table."  "But I never do," I blurted out in honest amazement.
"If you are impertinent, you will be punished, let me tell you, very severely," was his conclusive rejoinder.'
(Churchill, My Early Life, 1930 p.24)

Here is Leonard Woolfe, describing the Headmaster of  St. Paul's London, founded 1509, now a successful independent school.  Woolfe was there from 1894-99:
'His vision of the school and education was narrow and fanatical.  The object of a public school was, in his view, to give the boys the severest and most classical of classical educations'
(Leonard Woolfe, Sowing, 1880-1904, pub. 1960)

R. H. Quick summed up the curriculum, dammingly, in 1893:
'To produce a few scholars able to appreciate the classics of Greece and Rome they have sacrificed everybody else; and according to their own showing they have condemned a large proportion of the upper classes, nearly all the middle classes, and quite all the poorer classes to remain 'uneducated'. And, according to the theory of the schoolreoom, one-half of the human race - the women- they have not supposed to need education.
(R.H. Quick, Essays on educational reformers, new ed. 1893, p.18)

'There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight
Ten to make and the match to win -
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.'
(Sir Henry Newbolt, Vita Lampada)

'The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton'
(Attributed to the Duke of Wellington, 1856)

Public schools placed great importance on games, especially team games, and physical fitness.  According to the boys' adventure story writer G. A. Henty (1832-1902):
'Boating or cricket, you had your choice, but once made, you had to be perfect in one or the other.  Fellows rowed then and played cricket then.  They had to.
(G. Manville Fenn, George Alfred Henty, 1907)
|
At Bedales, a very progressive school, which highly valued physical fitness, this was the regime:
'There were runs before breakfast, the last two being swished in by a prefect with a cane.  More runs in the afternoon, more swishing.  The emphasis on labour was not comfortable: there were beds and butter to be made, much digging, the rougher the better, cows to be milked early on frosty mornings.'
Bedales also had earth closets, the headmaster would shovel the excrement into barrows and the boys dug it back into the ground as manure.
Girls were introduced to the school in 1898; the founder, J. H. Badley's  wife refused to marry him unless he made the school co-educational.
(E.L. Grant-Watson, quoted in Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy The Public School Phenomenon, 1977, a fantastic account of public school life)

Boys were expected to call each other by their surnames:
'I must not call him Dick but Tuckfield for I shall be laughed at...'
(John Mordaunt, aged eleven, at Eton in 1820; Elizabeth. Hamilton, The Mordaunts, an Eighteenth Century Family1965, Google internet edition available)

John Mordaunt goes on to give his impression of Eton:
'Dearest Mama...I am in the Middle Remove, that is Middle 4th form and...I like Eton prettry well....I have a set of tea things with 6 cups & saucers, aand 6 knives & forks & spoons, with my name mark on them...I have also had an order for pens, ink, paper, and an inkstand...a great many of them (the boys) swears very badly, & others are quite the contrary...There has been a rough here not long ago, and one boy was expelled, some say for indecency and bullying the boys, and others for something about a fire in the college.'
'The boys of my age are all playing at Marbles now, the bigger boys play at Hockey, Fives and Single Stick, which is beating one another about as hard as you can with sticks I should not think it was a very agreeable game.'
'I am fag to Lord Dunlo, he is a very nice master I think.  I do not get much fagged, but I do not mind if I am a little fagged.'

Fagging was the practise of giving the older boys a younger one to run errands for them.  The idea was that the older boy would also mentor the younger.  Boys in the 6th form also acted as prefects, responsible for school discipline under the masters, with one of them chosen as Head Boy.
Here is a description of fagging by William Tollemache who was at Westminster school in 1830:
I was only two years at Westminster so was a fag the whole time I was there.  I had a rough, disagreeable master - Vance, the son of a surgeon.  I was exactly like his servant out of school hours and had to clean his boots, brush his clothes, fill his jug from the pump in Dean's Yard and prepare his evening meal.'
E.D.H. Tollemache, The Tollemaches of Helmingham and Ham, 1949.

Doubts were expressed about the system;  as early as 1693, the influential educationalist John Locke wrote:
I cannot but prefer breeding of a young Gentleman at home in his Father's sight under a good Governour, for till you can find a school wherein it is possible for the Master to look after the Manners of his Scholars...you have a strange Value for Words when...you think it worth while to hazard your Son's Innocence and Virtue for a little Greek and Latin.'
(John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693 p,148 internet edition available)

This, of course, depended on the attitude of the child's father, many were absent, dis-interested, or had other views on education; the famous Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778) said disapprovingly of  Charles James Fox (1749-1806)later the bitter political rival of the virtuous, well brought up William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806):
'Lord Holland educated his children without the least regard to morality, and with such extravagant vulgar indulgence that the great change which has taken place among our youth has been dated from the time of his son's going to Eton.
Charles James Fox was introduced to gambling by his father aged fourteen, and spread the habit among the pupils at Eton, where William Pitt the Younger was also a pupil:
I never was concern'd with a young Gentleman of so good Abilities'
(Pitt's tutor, Dr. Burchett, quoted in B. Tunstall, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1938)

Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby from 1828 to 1841 is credited with much of the reform of public schools.  He introduced the prefect system which taught boys management and discipline, and his management of the school is celebrated in Tom Brown's Schooldays. 1857, This best-selling book, with Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, 1838, and F. W. Farrar's Eric, or Little by Little, 1858, a cautionary tale of the easy slide from virtue to vice and disgrace and early death,  helped to make the Victorian public aware of the state of boarding schools.   In 1861 a Royal Commission was set up to investigate  and they were gradually brought into order.

“He read ‘Eric, or Little by Little,’” said McTurk; “so we gave him ‘St. Winifred’s, or the World of School.’ They spent all their spare time stealing at St. Winifred’s, when they weren’t praying or getting drunk at pubs. Well, that was only a week ago, and the Head’s a little bit shy of us. He called it constructive deviltry. Stalky invented it all.”

“Not the least good having a row with a master unless you can make an ass of him,” said Stalky'

(Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co, a satirical parody of the Victorian school story, 1899.  Internet edition available)

'

Fairy tales are a danger to children!

'Partial as we confess ourselves to be, to most of the books of the old school, we cannot approve of those which are only fit to fill the heads of children with confused notions of wonderful and supernatural events. 'Mother Bunch's Tales are of this description.'
 Mrs Sarah Trimmer, The Guardian of Education, Vol. 2. 1803,p.185)

Sarah Trimmer (Wikipedia)

The late 18th and early 19th century is remarkable for the large number of Evangelical writers who turned to producing stories for children.  This was largely a result of the growth of the Sunday School Movement; people like Mrs. Trimmer, Hannah More and Mrs. Sherwood quickly found that there were no suitably improving stories for the children in their new Sunday schools for the poor to read.  There was also a steady demand from the better off, particularly parents in the same Evangelical; circles as the writers mentioned above.  They came from a section of society which had traditionally taken a close interest in their children's upbringing.  Their works were popular in both Britain and America. The influential American writer Mrs. Lydia Child recommended in The Mother's Book, an instruction manual for young mothers, the work of the Taylors, the Edgeworths, Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Trimmer, whom she describes as 'among the very best writers of juvenile books; her influence is pure and holy'.  She had reservations about Mrs. Sherwood because of the extremely Calvinistic tone of her theology, and regretted that the Edgeworths, for ideological reasons, as follower of the French philosopher Rousseau, omitted any religious teaching from their books for children.  (Mrs. Lydia Child, The Mother's Book, 1831.p95-103 of 4th ed 1832)  Lydia Child was an influential campaigner for women's rights, the abolition of slavery and Native American rights)

Naturally parents and writers in these social circles carefully scrutinized the books they gave their children and from 1802 to 1805 Mrs. Trimmer edited and largely wrote the very first reviewing journal for children's literature, The Guardian of Education.

One of the most remarkable effects of the virtual monopoly which this group of authors and educationalists established over the production of children's books at this time was the virtual abolition of traditional fairy tales for almost the first twenty-five years of the 19th century.  The Puritans had strongly disapproved of folklore and fairy tales, which they associated with Catholicism and witchcraft, and considered superstitious nonsense.  Mrs. Trimmer's own mildly fanciful moral story, The History of the Robins, 1786, was prefaced by a disclaimer reminding children that robins cannot really talk as they do in the story.  Children should be 'taught to consider them, not as containing the real conversations of birds (for that it is impossible we should ever understand), but as a series of Fables, intended to convey moral instruction...'
(The Guardian of Education, Vol. 2,)

Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories.
with The History of the Robins
(British Library)

The 19th century attack on fairy tales was, however, launched largely on grounds of morality.  In 1802 a correspondent in The Guardian of Education roundly condemned Cinderella, saying it 'is perhaps one of the most exceptional books that was ever written for children...It paints some of the worst passions that can enter into the human breast, and of which little children should, if possible, be totally ignorant; such as envy, jealousy, a dislike to  mothers-in-law (sic, meaning step-mothers) and half-sisters, vanity, a love of dress, etc. etc.' (Guardian of Education, Vol. 2, p.15 and 448 )  Mrs. Trimmer was forced to re-examine her old favourites such as Mother Bunch and Mother Goose, and shortly afterwards produced a damning review of Benjamin Tabart's very charming Juvenile Library, which included the first printed text of Jack and the Beanstalk, 1802.  Even works such as the very respectable Sarah Fielding's The Governess, which both Mrs. Trimmer and Mrs. Sherwood loved as children became suspect.  Mrs. Sherwood replaced the fairy tales it contains with something more improving.

John Newbery's publications became virtually unobtainable.  Charles Lamb,author of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, complained to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writer of The Ancient Mariner: 'Goody Two Shoes is almost out of print.  Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery...Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men.  Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil?  Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history! ' ( Harvey Darton Children's Books in England,p. 131 quoting Lamb's letter to Coleridge)  This complaint is a fore-runner of Charles Dicken's satirical attack on the Rationalists, epitomized by Mr. Gradgrind, in Hard Times, 1854, by which time fantasy and fairy tales were once more accepted: 'Now, what I want is, Facts, Teach these boys and girl nothing but Facts.  Facts alone are wanted in life.  Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.  You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.'

Fairy tales were considered harmful mainly on moral grounds but also because it was feared that children would learn to confuse truth and falsehood, which may have not been unjustified.  Caroline Hutton, daughter of the Birmingham historian William Hutton, recalled that, 'Nothing delighted me so much as did the tales of the fairies.  I no more doubted their truth than I did my own existence.'  She was most disappointed when her home-made wand failed to turn the parlour grate to gold. (Caroline Hutton Reminiscences of a gentlewoman of the last century.  Letters of Caroline Hutton ed. C.H. Beale, Cornish, Birmingham, 1891 p.2)  Mrs. Sherwood as a child peopled the woods near where she grew up with fairies: 'If I could discern fairy rings, which abounded in those woods, they gave me another set of images; and I had imaginary hermits in every hollow of the rocky sides of the dingle, and imaginary castles on every height, whilst the church and churchyard supplied me with more ghosts and apparitions than I dared to tell of.' (Life of Mrs. Sherwood, edited by her daughter Sophia Kelly, 1857 p.37)

Many children, of course, still had access to folk tales in spite of official disapproval.  Harriet Martineau, born 1802, whose father 'held that they developed the imagination in the wrong channels', was told them by her nurse, like many other children, and the traditional tales, along with more sensational literature, were still sold in the form of crudely printed little chapbooks carried round the country by pedlars and having a status similar to modern comics.  (Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, 1877, Vol. 1, p.119)

It was serious folklore collectors, the Grimm brothers in Germany, Andrew Lang and Henry Cole on Britain, who restored fairy tales to the nursery by putting the weight of their considerable reputations behind well presented translations and editions of traditional tales which they collected.  Edgar Taylor argued for the encouragement of the imagination in the preface to the first English translation of Grimm's fairy tales, published in 1823:

'Our imagination is surely as susceptible of improvement by exercise, as our judgement or our memory; ad so long as such fictions only are presented to the young mind as do not interfere with the important department of moral education, a beneficial effect must be produced by the pleasurable employment of a faculty in which so much of our happiness in every period of life consists.'
(preface to German popular stories...collected by M.M. Grimm, 1823, translated by Edgar Taylor)

Curiously enough, fairy tales and fantasy in verse always remained generally acceptable.  It was at exactly this period that John Harris was achieving success with his picture book versions of Old Mother Hubbard, Cinderella  , The Butterfly's Ball, The Lion's Masquerade and numerous other titles.  Edmund Gosse, who was later allowed to read Scott's verse but not his Waverley Novels, supposed the distinction was made on the grounds that the artificiality of verse made it less realistic and so less credible than prose.
(Edmund Goss, Father and Son, 1907 Penguin Modern Classics ed. 1949 p.162)

(M. Roscoe,  The Butterfly's Ball, 1806
British Library)

Verse was, for whatever reason, enormously popular.  Isaac Watts had produced perhaps the most popular collection of children's poems ever published in 1715.  His Divine and Moral Songs for Children was written for a friend who wanted some hymns to accompany catechisms, and many of them are still in regular use.  His poem The Sluggard was parodied by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland:

'  'Tis the voice of the Lobster; I hear him declare
You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair...'
(The Annotated Alice, introduction and notes by Martin Gardner, 1960, Penguin ed. p. 139)

Watt's reasons for encouraging children to learn poetry by heart are given in his preface:
'There is something so amusing and entertaining in rhymes and metre, that will incline children to make this part of their business a diversion...What is learnt in Verse, is longer retained in memory, and sooner recollected...'
(Watts Divine Songs, 1st ed. 1715, preface)

Original poems for infant minds, 1834 ed.
1st ed. is 1804-5
(British Library)

Many collections of verse for children were produced around the turn of the century, including several well known collections by the Taylors, a family of Nonconformists.  'Twinkle, twinkle little star' has taken its place as a nursery rhyme, while My Mother was admired and imitated throughout the 19th century, appealing, as it did, even more to the Victorian cult of womanhood than to the Georgians:

'Who taught my infant lips to pray,

To love God's holy book and day,

And walk in wisdom's pleasant way?

  My mother.

Who ran to help me when I fell,

And would some pretty story tell,

Or kiss the place to make it well?

   My mother.'

(Jane and Ann Taylor, and others, 

Original poems for infant minds, 

1804-5.  Facsimile ed. 1976, p.76)

Little pretty picture books for children in Georgian Britain and America

"Ev'ry lady in this land

Has twenty nails upon each hand

Five and twenty on hands and feet

And this is is true without deceit"'

(Punctuation Personified, 1824)

The 18th century saw great developments in the use of pictures in books for children.  Generally these were crude but vigorous black and white woodcuts; many children's chapbooks in particular had these on every little page, with a short verse underneath.

Chapbooks, c.1800-1815
(Parker Collection Library of Birmingham)

However probably the most notable children's picture books produced in the 18th century were the type known as harlequinades, which are really early versions of movable or toy books.  Home-made lift up or flap books are known to have been popular as early as the mid 17th century in both Britain and America. The earliest were called Metamorphosis and show Adam and Eve, who for no known reason changes into a mermaid on lifting the lower flap.  Cain and Abel follow, then a lion, which becomes a griffin, which becomes a great bird carrying off a baby.  The last two flaps show a miser hoarding wealth and a memento mori. The text was adapted from Benjamin Sands The Beginning, Progress and End of Man, 1650.

From an American Metamorphosis, Samuel Wood & Sons, 1814,
reprinted from a 17th century original
(University of Delaware)

 In the 1760s a London map and print seller, Robert Sayer, adapted this traditional flap book to show scenes from the story of Harlequin and Columbine.  The flap books he printed were sold either plain or delicately hand-coloured.   Elizabeth Newbery (wife to John Newbery's nephew Francis), John Wallis and other publishers quickly followed his lead, and harlequinades were popular in Britain and America until the 1820s.  There is an American version of the traditional Adam and Eve flap book published as late as the 1860s.

Two variations on these flap books was published by Stacey Grimaldi in the 1820s;  The Toilet, and A Suit of Armour for Youth.  These show pictures of toilet articles or pieces of armour with titles such as 'An universal and genuine Beautifier' .  Lift the flap picture and the moral is revealed:  'Good Humour'.  Each picture is followed by an improving poem from Nathaniel Cotton's Visions in Verse.

Grimaldi's Toilet, showing The Enchanting Mirror:  Humility
(Copy: Philadelphia Rare Books, Pinterest)








However the true for-runners of modern children's picture books first appeared n the early 1800s, published by John Newbery's equally adventurous successor, John Harris. The earliest, Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog, a verse rendering by Sarah Martin of a traditional tale was published in 1805 and its success encouraged the publisher to commission other little books to follow.  These picture books were tales in verse about 15cm high, illustrated with copperplates or wood engravings and sold either in plain black and white or, more usually, hand coloured, often quite beautifully, in delicate watercolours. There was a whole cottage industry, employing children in poor families, working from home hand-colouring these and other illustrations.
The stories were versions of traditional tales such as Cock Robin and Cinderella or fantasies such as The Butterfly's Ball,  written by a well known scholar, Mr. Roscoe, for his own children, and first published in The Gentlemen's Magazine.  Other popular titles were The Adventures of Seven Wonderful Old Women, Dame Trot and her Cat, and The Peacock's Party, one of the numerous imitations of The Butterfly's Ball.

Old Dame Trot and her Comical Cat c.1820
(Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

Some of the most delightful of those early picture books are the educational ones; rhyming versions of the rules of punctuation such as Punctuation Personified, or Pointing made Easy, by Mr. Stops which begins:

'Young Robert could read, but he gabbled so fast

And ran on with such speed,that all meaning he lost.

Till one morning he met Mr. Stops, by the way:

Who advised him to listen to what he should say.

Then ent'ring the house, he a riddle repeated,

To show, WITHOUT STOPS, how the ear may be cheated.

"Ev'ry lady in this land

Has twenty nails upon each hand

Five and twenty on hands and feet

And this is is true without deceit"'

(Punctuation Personified, 1824,

Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

Marmaduke Multiply's Mirthful Method of Making Minor Mathematicians was published shortly after the defeat of Napoleon, and for 'Twice 11 are 22' shows a tiny child on father's knee, brandishing a large glass full of something unsuitable, crying:  'We'll drink to the hero of Waterloo!'  He is probably pleased that nurse will no longer be able to terrify him at bedtime with threats of Old Boney.  (Marmaduke Multiply, 1816, Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

Marmaduke Multiply, 1816,
(Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

The series of toy books published by S&J Fuller at the Temple of Fancy, Rathbone Place, London around 1810 combined an improving moral story with cut-out figures.  The most well known are the History of Little Fanny, the History of Little Henry and Ellen or The Naughty Girl Reclaimed.  There are appropriate outfits for each episode in the character's life with a moveable head, and hats,  to slot into the costumes.  

The History of Little Fanny, 1810
(Theriaults The Dollmasters.com)

John Newbery: Instruction and Delight in the 18th century

'Giles Gingerbread, he lov'd Cream, Custard and Curds,

And Good Books so well, that he eat up his Words'.

(The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, Newbery, 1764

John Newbery was the most influential publisher of children's books in mid to late 18th century.
Catherine Hutton of Birmingham, born in 1756, remembered his little books with delight:
'I read all of Mr. Newbery's gilt books, as they were called...Christmas box, New Year's Gift, Goody Two Shoes & etc...I trembled for Bluebeard's wife when she was so naughty as to open the forbidden closet; and when I came to her kneeling at her husband's feet, he with his uplifted scimitar ready to strike, and sister Anne looking out from the window I could read no more.  I burst into tears, laid down the book, and exclaimed "Mama I never will be married."...it was many years before I dared venture to resume the tale, or know that Bluebeard's wife was saved.'
   (Catherine Hutton, Reminiscences of a gentlewoman of the last century...Letters of Catherine Hutton, ed. C.H. Beale, Birmingham 1891)

 Newbery was not the first to publish amusing yet instructive children's books but he was the first to make them a large enough part of his business for many copies to have survived and so he may be considered the first to make a commercial success of his publishing venture.  By the turn of the century he had been joined by others. One of Newbery's most important rivals was  John Marshall of 4 Aldermary Churchyard.  He published quite a range of work, from flimsy chapbook collections of nursery rhymes to attractive little stories like The Christmas Present by 'Solomon Sobersides'.  He also published 'infant libraries', complete sets of matching miniature books in little wooden bookcases.

Newbery knew well that the way to a child's heart is through its stomach and was a great believer in the reward system:
'As (Tommy Trip) rides through the town, he frequently stops at the doors to know how the little children do within; and if they are good and learn their book? and then leaves an apple, an orange, or a plumb-cake at the door, and away he gallops, again, tantivy, tantivy, tantivy.'
(The Lilliputian Magazine, Newbery, 1752, British Library 1387.9.5)
He also used the edible alphabet with great success in the story of Giles Gingerbread, 'the little boy who lived upon learning' :

'Giles Gingerbread, he lov'd Cream, Custard and Curds,

And Good Books so well, that he eat up his Words'.

The little boy's letters were cut out of gingerbread for him, and he learned them as he ate.
(The Renowned history of Giles Gingerbread, Newbery, 1764, S. Roscoe, John Newbery and his successors, 1973)

Giles Gingerbread. From a later, 1820 ed.pub. J. Kendrew, York,
(Osborn Collection, UCLA)

 Andrew Tuer says in The History of the Hornbook that gingerbread letters and gingerbread hornbooks became popular some time in the 18th century.  He quotes Matthew Prior's  poem Alma, Canto II, from Poems upon several occasions, 1721:

'To Master John the English maid

A Horn-book gives of Ginger-bread;

And that the Child may learn the better,

As he can name, he eats the letter...'

(Andrew Tuer, The History of the Hornbook, 1897 vol. 2)

Since Janeway's Token for Children, 1671,  the emphasis seems to have changed a bit from heavenly to earthly rewards for being a good boy or girl.  Little Goody Two Shoes is recommended as a mentor:

'From a state of rags and care

And having shoes but half a pair

Their fortune and their fame would fix

And gallop in a coach and six'

(The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, Newbery, 1765)

History of Little Goody Two Shoes, 1768 ed. (Wikipedia)

This still represented the just reward of honesty and hard work, rather than the activities of a Fanny Hill or a Moll Flanders. Newbery's exemplary stories were firm supporters of traditional morality; 'She never told a lie in her life.  No, No!  she knew that was a naughty pau-pau Trick

 (Nurse Truelove's New-Year's Gift, Newbery, c.1770)

'See Virtue here, with Wealth and Glory crown'd

And all the busy Crowd admiring round;

While she to Church with pious Zeal reapirs

To hear the Sermon, and to say her prayers'.

(The history of Miss Polly Friendly, Newbery, Nurse Truelove...c.1770)

'All Boys and Girls, who are not dutiful and obedient to their Parents , never come to any Good, but are, as they ought to be, always neglected and despised.' 

(A Pretty Play-thing for Children of all Denominations, Newbery, c.1759, Roscoe op.cit. p.226))

John Newbery also sold other educational aids, and, good salesman that he was, promoted them through his story books:

 'When he has learnt the Roman letters, you may teach him the Italic letters in the same Manner, and then the Figures; Afterwards it will be proper to give him a Sett of the Squares sold at the Bible and Sun in St. Paul's Churchyard, by playing with which he will soon learn to read.'  

(A Little Lottery Book for Children, containing a new Method of playing them into a Knowledge of the letters, Figures etc.  Newbery c. 1765? Roscoe p, 171) 

The Little Lottery Book was an original reading aid with a picture on one side of the page and a letter on the other; the child learned his letters by sticking a pin through the picture into the letter which corresponded to it.  Few copies survived such rough treatment.  

Newbery's little books were just as popular in America.  There numerous pirated editions were published by Isiah Thomas of Worcester (Mass) the founder of the American Antiquarian Society, and by Mahlon Day of New York.  Isiah Thomas adopted Newbery's use of advertising, changing the wording to fit his own business and slightly Americanising the text:
'Why! he got all the little books by rote that are sold by Mr. Thomas in Worcester, when he was but a very little boy.  Then he never missed church...He is chosen Congressman already and yet he is not puffed up...'
(Alice Morse Earle, Child life in Colonial Days 1899)