Nurses and Governesses; surrogate parenting

'Parents were aware that the child could be a nuisance, and a whole hedge of servants, in addition to the complex guardianship of nursery and schoolroom, was necessary, not so much to aid the infant as to screen him off from his father and mother, except on such occasions as he could be used by then as adjunct, toy or decoration.'
(Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand! An autobiography, 1943, Vol. 1, p.92)

John Sargent, The Sitwell Family, 1900 (Wikipedia)
Edith, Sir George, Lady Ida, Sacheverell, Osbert

Though family life began to be, as it were, fashionable, in the 19th century, many parents did not, in fact, spend a lot of time actually with their children.
In the 19th century large households gradually developed a complete suite of rooms set aside for the children and their servants, usually at the top of the house.  Kenneth Clarke, born 1903, describes his as: 'behind a green baize door on the edge of the servants' wing.' (Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 1974)

There would normally be a night nursery, a day nursery, possibly a schoolroom, and often all this plus bathrooms, scullery, governess's room and sick room, also used as a bedroom for visiting children.  This was the arrangement at Bear Wood, built 1865-74.  The owner, John Wood, proprietor of The Times  newspaper, eventually had thirteen children to fill this complex.
(Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House, 1979, p.263-272)

Although parents were officially the ultimate authority, the nurses or governesses who took care of children most of the time would obviously be important figures in their lives.
As Eleanor Farjeon put it:
'The departure of the First Governess, like the departure of the First Nurse, creates a Nursery cataclysm.  They are The Nurse, The Governess, as our parent are The Parents.'
(Eleanor Farjeon, A Nursery in the Nineties, 1935, p.408)

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
Image: Alchetron)

It was usual for children to be gradually integrated into adult life in families such as these.  When they were little they often saw their mother for a short while in the morning, informally in the nursery, and would be brought down to the dining room for both parents and any guests to see them after dinner.  Elizabeth Grant, born 1797, has described the routine in her family in the early 19th century:
'When father was at home, all appeared at late dinner, or rather at the second course, in full dress, like the footmen.  We sat in a row - we four, little Mary and all, on four chairs placed against the wall - trained to perfect quiet...to hear and not to speak; but on the dessert appearing we were released, walked forward to receive a little wine, a little fruit, and a biscuit, and then to have our game at romps....'
(Elizabeth Grant, 1797-1888, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the autobiography f Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, after Mrs. Smith of Baltiboys, 1911, p. 61.  Internet copy available, University of Toronto)

Lady Grant with her two children,
(University of Toronto, internet edition)

As the children grew older, they might join their mother at lunch unless, like most boys, they were away at boarding school.  Boys were usually sent away at about age seven. Girls were usually educated at home, and would gradually introduced to their mother's friends and private social circle before they officially 'came out' into society aged about seventeen.

As small children they spent their time with their nanny or nursery maids.  Improvements in prams and push-chairs made nannies and their little charges more mobile in the late 19th century, and a complex nanny-oriented social life developed in fashionable cities such as London, Brighton, Bath, Boston and New York.

Compton Mackenzie, who had an extraordinarily vivid and long memory, recalls what it felt like to ride in one of those early prams:
'I wonder if many people recall the sensation of riding in a 'pram' - that bump down from the pavement into the roadway and that bump up when the opposite pavement was reached.  One shot forward against the safety-strap as one bumped down, and backwards as one bumped up.  And then those ominous words "its coming on to rain", after which the hated hood was raised and the brass catches - or whatever they were called - were straightened with a click.  The world on either side of one was excluded...'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, Octave I, 1963, p. 91)

Nannies would congregate in the public parks with their charges; children's tea-parties were arranged.  There were strict hierarchies of importance, depending, in Britain, on the rank of one's charges or, in east coast America, on wealth or that great mark of social distinction, descent from the original Mayflower immigrants.

Hulton Archive

In that great nanny haven, Kensington Gardens, for instance, 'Untitled' nannies might not occupy certain benches.  This complex snob system was evolved more or less spontaneously by the nannies themselves.  Just as having a nanny for the children became a middle class mark of social arrival, so being in charge of the infant section of some distinguished house conferred social distinction on the nanny, who in her anxiety for her own status would often pass on an exaggerated idea of their personal importance to her charges
(see Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and  Fall of the British Nanny, 1972, p. 197-204)

Several autobiographies mention those, to the children, rather boring nanny-organised occasions.
The most evocative account is the writer Virgina Woolf, of walks twice a day in Kensington Gardens:
'There was the Broad Walk, the Round Pond and the Flower Walk.  Then...there were two gates, one offosite Gloucester Road, the other opposite Queen's Gate.  At each gate sat an old woman.  The Queen's Gate old woman was an elongated, emaciated figure with a goat-like face, yellow and pock-marked.  She sold nuts and bootlaces, I think. And Kitty Mase said of her: "Poor things, it's the drink that makes them like that"...The other old woman was round and squat.  To her was attached a whole wobbling balloon of air-balls.  She held this billowing, always moving most desirable mass by one string...for a penny she would detach one from the bellying soft mass, and I would dance away with it...'(Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, 1976, p.35)

'This is the old woman shown in Arthur Rackham's illustrations to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, almost blown away by her enormous bobbing bunch of coloured balloons.  Periodically the walks were strewn with minute sea shells, and until the park keepers came with their roller and ground them down to powder, the children would rush up and down making collections, while their nanny sat conversing with other nurses on a circular bench under one of the big trees, generally on the subject of the misdoings of their respective charges.'
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936 p. 16)

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens,
 illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1906
(Pinterest)

One of the few other diversions was sailing boats on the Round Pond, where one day Virginia Stephens' Cornish lugger sailed right to the middle and suddenly sank.
(Virginia Woolf, b. Virginia Stephens, op.cit. p.75)

At about five years old the children generally began to take lessons from a governess, and there was frequently  considerable rivalry between her and the nanny, generally won by the governess as the children inevitably grew into her sphere and out of that of the nanny.

This system meant that many children were practically brought up by nurses and governesses or tutors.  For only children it could be a lonely life.  Margaret Lane gives a sad picture of lonely little Beatrix Potter, later famous as the creator of Peter Rabbit, living in her well-regulated nursery with all her material needs provided for, playing with her doll Topsy, eating her daily cutlet and rice pudding, always the same, dressed up in muff and button boots to go for her daily walk, and almost forgotten.
(Margaret Lane The tale of Beatrix Potter, 1946 chapter 1)

Beatrix Potter aged 8 with her parents
(V&A)

However the nursery could also be a haven to which, like Leonard Woolf would look back to with nostalgia all their lives:
'I can still feel myself physically enfolded in the warmth and safety of the great nursery on the third floor of the house in Lexham Gardens, the fire blazing behind the tall guard, the kettle singing away, and nurse, with her straight black hair parted in the centre, and her smooth, oval peasant face, reading the Baptist Times or the visions of the opium eater (Confessions of an English Opium Eater, de Quincey)...and occasionally far off could be heard the clop-clop if a horse in a hansom cab or four-wheeler,...I never again found any safety and civilisation to equal that of the gas-lit nursery.'
(Leonard Woolf, Sowing, 1880-1904, Hogarth Press, 1960 p. 60-61, internet ed. available.  Somehow nurse had got hold of a copy of Confessions of an English Opium Eater and read it over and over again)

For many children in the American South their black Mammy epitomised the same security:
'None but a Southerner to the manner born can appreciate or imagine the tie that bound us of that old-time South to our dear black mammy, in whose capacious lap the little ones confided to her care cuddled in innocent slumber' says Mrs. Clay of Alabama in her memoirs
(A Belle of the Fifties...Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama...1853-66, 1905, p.211, e-book available)
As in many European families the children's black mammy frequently held a privileged position on the household long after her charges had outgrown the nursery.  How did those children reconcile their upbringing with slavery?  Is the role of Scarlett O'Hara's beloved black mammy in Gone with the Wind intended to point up this inconsistency? The Black American actress Hattie McDaniel, as  Mammy, won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the 1939 screen version of Margaret Mitchell's book about slavery and the American Civil War.  As I write, August 2017, a theatre in Memphis has just cancelled its regular summer showing of the film, as romanticising slavery.

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy,
Sleznick International Pictures, 1939)

Employing nurses to bring up children probably began with hiring wet-nurses to feed babies breast milk, which was pretty universal in any families that could afford one, and really only declined when bottled milk became available.

 By the 19th century, as the 1814 wage bill for Nunwell, a country house on the Isle of Wight, shows, the wet nurse had decreased in importance to a mere human milk machine.  This bill included a nurse, nurserymaid and under-nurserymaid, paid 18 guineas a year, 8 guineas and 8 guineas plus tea allowances.  The previous year there had also  been a wet nurse at 4/6 a week plus tea allowance.  Tea had now overtaken beer as the beverage of choice for nursemaids.
(Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell Symphony, 1945, p. 179-80)

The whole organisation of the nursery was now under the direction of the head nurse, later called the nanny.  This meant that the nanny no longer had to be a young woman, and quite frequently a beloved nanny remained with the family for life, or even returned to nurse the children of her original charges.
Ruskin's nurse Anne had previously nursed his father, though it was more usually the mother's nurse who was retained, almost taking on the role of many grandmothers today.
Ruskin numbers Anne with his parents as one of the people he most loved.
(John Ruskin, Praeterita, 1900, Vol. 1, p. 34, internet ed. available)
This is very common.  R.L. Stevenson dedicated A Child's Garden of Verses to his 'Dearest Cummy':

'The angel of my infant life -
From the sick child; now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold.'

This nurse, Alison Cunningham, was a strict Presbyterian Covenanter who told him tales of Scottish history.  Many years later he said to her:
'"It's you, that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie"
"Me, Master Lou,", I said; "I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.""Ay, woman", said he, "But it was the grand dramatic way ye had of reciting the hymns."'
(Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1901, Vol. 1 p. 37, internet ed. available)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) aged 7
(Wikipedia)

Such nurses could, of course, exercise a very powerful influence over their charges' future lives.
The seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, the great philanthropist, had an extremely unhappy childhood.
Shaftsbury scarcely saw his parents and attributed the formation of his strong religious faith and moral character entirely to Marie Millis the housekeeper who cared for him until he was seven.(Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, KG, 1886, Vol. 1, p. 51.  Internet ed. available)

Many children, however, divided their affection between nanny, whom they loved in an everyday way, and parents, particularly their mothers, whom they associated with treats, parties, glamour and excitement.  Winston Churchill give a classic comparison of the two relationships in My Early Life:
'My mother always seemed to me a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power...I loved her dearly, but at a distance.  My nurse was my confidant.  Mrs. Everest it was who looked after me and tended all my wants.  It was to her I poured out my many troubles, both now and in my schooldays.'
(Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930, p.18. internet ed. available.  Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, was a rather rackety American socialite.  Although she was a distant figure in Churchill's early life she became a close confidante and supporter when he was adult)

Winston Churchill aged 10, 1884
(BBC Archive)

As adults many people, like Leonard Woolf, described their mothers as adoring them, even when it is clear they only saw each other for a couple of hours each day.
 Possibly nannies acted as a kind of buffer state, taking on all the unpleasant, disciplinarian aspects of mother and leaving child and mother free to idealise each other.   (Leonard Woolf, op.cit, p.54)
Compton Mackenzie certainly seems to have rationalised his relationships this way.  His nanny does not seem to have been actually unkind, just strict, unimaginative, grumpy:

'Looking back on it now, I think that having to deal with unreasonableness in an elderly woman was a valuable preparation for life because it taught me very early to expect people to be stupid and to be agreably surprised when they were not.'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, 1963, p.38)

Annie Curry operated a system of rewards and withdrawal of privileges; perfectly normal, enlightened 19th century practise, which he bitterly resented:
'Apparently anything even mildly pleasant came under the category of treats.  It was a treat to walk on the grass in the Gardens; it was a treat to help to push Stella's perambulator; it was a treat to have the sponge floating beside him in the bath...'She tied their hands in bags at night to prevent nail biting, gave them nasty medicine, insisted they ate all their fat, and, probably unintentionally, terrified Compton Mackenzie with threats of being carried away by climbing coalmen:

'Michael caught his breath.
"Can coalmen climb?" he asked, choking at the thought.
"Climb like kittens," said Nurse.

A new bogey had been created, black and hairy with yellow cat's eyes and horrid prehensile arms.'
(Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street, autobiographical novel, p. 20-21 and p.33)

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy in his research discovered that few children had the misfortune to suffer genuinely cruel nannies.  Even those who did, he notes, rarely admitted to disliking them which is probably because they had become surrogate mothers, covered by the same taboos.  Cruelty and misery are more commonly associated with governesses who would often take charge of both boys and girls from about the age of five to seven when boys generally went as boarders to prep school.
J. Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny, 1972, chapter 9)

Nannies in the park
(Pinterest)

The redoubtable Viceroy of India, Lord George Curzon's account of his governess Miss Paraman is particularly interesting since her evident effect on his character, and his future career, are so well documented.  Lord Curzon describes her physical and mental cruelty to him and his sisters.  She appears to have been quite sadistic; Lord Curzon later concluded she was probably insane:
'She made us trundle our hoops all alone up and down a place near the hermitage where were tall black fir trees and a general air of gloom of which we were intensely afraid.  She forced us to confess to lies we had never told, to sins which we had not committed, and then punished us savagely as being self-condemned.  For weeks we were not allowed to speak to each other or a living soul.  At meals she tool all the dainties for herself and gave us nothing but tapioca and rice.  I suppose no children so well born or so well placed ever cried so much, or so justly.'
(Leonard. Mosley, The End of an Epoch, 1960. internet ed. available)

Moseley sums up the effect on Lord Curzon:
'Thereafter, it could almost be said that he spent his life looking for stronger, more ruthless and more egotistic characters upon which he could bruise himself...'' and quotes Lord Kitchener's remark:
'There is only one thing that Curzon likes more than hurting others...and that is to persuade others to humiliate him.'  (Moseley, op.cit. p10) Against that, according to Wikipedia Curzon had a firm, happy marriage.  I don't know whether Leonard Moseley has any link to Oswald Moseley, but Wikipedia says two of Curzon's daughters, and his second wife, had affairs with him.)

Lord Curzon as a Hindu God
(Maratha Punch, 1899, Baksheesh!)

Similar experiences, though documentary evidence is sadly lacking, might help to explain the late 19th and early 20th century upper class passion for flagellation and other sexual games of humiliation.  Although there is also probably a connection with bullying and beatings inflicted at school, Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians notes that in such sexual fantasies the beater is a woman not a man, and the accompanying humiliations are often those of the nursery.

It is also suggested by Gathorne-Hardy that nursery maids sometimes prematurely aroused the sexual instincts of their charges, intentionally or not, leading, in later life, to strong sexual attraction to girls of their class.  No doubt many little boys sharing a room and sometimes a bed with their nurse maids made discoveries which could form the basis of adult fantasies, in spite of the nanny habit of undressing under their enormous, tent-like calico night-dresses.
Compton Mackenzie,. for instance, says he made his first innocent sexual exploration when put to bed with Ellen, one of the maids.  He woke in the middle of the night and 'started to explore the sleeping Ellen in the course of which I was astonished to find myself, like Dante once upon a time in a Selva Oscura (dark jungle) which I searched in vain for my own little appendage, and being greatly puzzled by not finding it anywhere...' (Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, p.162. )

(The pram society.com)

Lord Curzon (1859-1925) said that by the end of his career such cruelty as Miss Paraman's would be impossible since by that time the governess system had largely disappeared while it had become normal for children to spend. a great deal more time with their parents.  However, unless parents keep a close watch over their children the system is always open to abuse.  The novelist F. Anstey
(Thomas Anstey Guthrie, 1956-34) for instance, had a nurse stricter than his father liked. She believed children should eat everything set before them, and used to serve up any crusts left from supper at breakfast next morning until their father found out.  Anstey says:
'Somehow none of these petty oppressions, of which these are only instances, lessened our affection for Fanny; it never occurred to us that she was going at all beyond her authority.'
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936 p.15)

Kenneth Clark  (1903-1983) felt his parents' servants got back at their employers by being unkind to him as a small boy.
'They gave me uneatable food although they themselves lived off the fat of the land.  I remember a cheese so full of weevils that small pieces jumped about the plate; I remember branches of bitter rhubarb, sour milk, rancid butter - and, of course, nothing but obstinate silence.  It was an unconscious programme of revenge.'
(Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 1974)
Children rarely have enough critical sense, lacking experience, to know that people are not doing their jobs properly.

Lack of parental control over the nursery and schoolroom could also work in the child's favour. Elizabeth Grant's father laid down extremely strict rules about diet, and a rigorous spartan regime, which was frequently relaxed by sympathetic nursery maids when he was not around.
(Elizabeth Grant, 1797-1888, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the autobiography f Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, after Mrs. Smith of Baltiboys, 1911, p. 56.  Internet copy available, University of Toronto)

The Sitwells' nurse supplemented the children's plain diet with little treats of winkles and shrimps which she bought herself. (Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand, 1943 Vol. 1, p. 92)

Mother lays down the law to Nurse
(Pinterest)

Although Lord Curzon is right saying that by Edwardian times children of wealthy parents  saw a lot more of them than when he was a boy, far more boys were sent away to boarding school.  Since they were often sent away to prep school at seven school life was just as important as family life.

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)