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.

The Victorian nursery: games, toys and moral education

'The Noah's Ark was the most  wonderful thing that Laura had ever seen...There were zebras and elephants and tigers and horses; all kinds of animals, just as if the pictures had come out of the paper covered Bible at home.'
(Laura Ingall Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek, 1935)

Noah's Ark
(Pinterest)

The Victorians sentimentalised childhood, specially poor children.  Golden haired waifs and their protective little brothers become almost a cliche in late 19th century fiction.  Stories such as Hesba Stretton's Jessica's First Prayer and Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist were enormously popular.
The single most appealing child character was probably Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett's sturdy flaxen haired American heir to a British earldom, Little Lord Fauntleroy.  This sentimental but very readable story has been totally demolished by the scorn of adults such as Compton Mackenzie who were forced by doting mothers to wear their hair long like girls and go to parties in velvet suits:
'That confounded Little Lord Fauntleroy craze which led to my being given as a party dress the Little Lord Fauntleroy costume of black velvet and Vandyke collar was a curse.'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, Octave 1, 1883-1891, pub. 1963, p.178)

Little Lord Fauntleroy, 1888
(Library of Congress)

Lady Lyttleton describes the Ashley boys, aged five and seven, playing ball in the long gallery at Windsor Castle crying:'"Queen! (QueenVictoria, Lady Lyttleton was a Lady in Waiting) look! I have killed the Lady"' in their excitement, 'most lovely to behold, in their green velvet frocks and long perfumed hair.'
(Letters from Sarah, Lady Lyttleton, 1777-1878, pub. 1873, p.243)

Similar sentimentality is found in many children's portraits from the late 19th and early 20th century.  Millais Bubbles and John Singer Sargent's Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose are famous examples.  It is the attitude of the Romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth.  Kate Greenaway's picture books show girls in quaint old-fashioned dresses and mob-caps, playing traditional games like 'Oranges and Lemons'.  Parents copied her illustrations and dressed their children in Kate Greenaway costumes.

Kate Greenaway, Rhymes for the Young Folk, 1887
(Pinterest)

The beautiful picture books produced by the German publishers Nister are the most sentimental of all Victorian children's books,  They show chubby-cheeked golden haired children, often clutching kittens or puppies, in the warmth of the nursery firelight, or standing at Mother's knee, or playing either in sunny, flower-filled meadows or in a white Christmas landscape.  Some of these books were movables, or opened into three dimensional scenes.  These picture books are part of the wealth of delights to be found in a Victorian nursery.  The picture books of Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott and Walter Crane are now collectors' classics.

Nister.  Stories from Hans Andersen, c.1890
(Pinterest)

By the middle of the 19th century children were once again allowed to enjoy fairy tales due to the work of folklore collectors such as the Brothers Grimm in Germany, Andrew Lang (1844-1912) who collected and edited the Blue, Yellow, Green etc. Fairy books, and the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) Anderson's fairy tales were translated into English in the 1840s.
Charles Perrault's French fairy tales, originally written for adults, were appropriated for children; these include Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty; very unsuitable in the original version, Red Riding Hood, a warning to young maidens about who they might meet in the woods, and Puss in Boots.  British writers experimented with the genre, producing collections like Frances Browne's Granny's Wonderful Chair, 1856 (internet edition available, Project Gutenberg)

Some Victorian fantasies have become classics, for example Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, 1865 and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, 1871, George Macdonald's Princess and the Goblin and its sequel,  and Rudyard Kipling's Rewards and Fairies, stories which celebrate the English countryside as fairy and folk tale.   Charles Kingsley disguised the moral story as a fairy tale in The Water Babies, (1862-3 Project Gutenberg internet edition available) and turned it into a lightly disguised fairy tale, while Thackeray also turned the venerable moral story on its head in his sophisticated, mocking fairy tale, The Rose and the Ring,:

John Tenniel illustration, the Cheshire Cat disappears
Alice in Wonderland
(Pinterest)

'...I suppose Blackstick (the Fairy) grew tired of it.  Or perhaps she thought, "What good am I doing by sending this Princes to sleep for a hundred years?...by causing diamonds and pearls to drop from one little girl's mouth, and vipers and toads from another'?  I begin to think I do as much harm as good by my performances.  I might as well shut my incantations up, and allow things to take their natural course.'
(The Rose and the Ring, 1854, p. 1.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

The Rose and the Ring, MS
(Morgan Library)

All these books were read and enjoyed by children across the English speaking world. The American author Louisa M. Alcott remembered 'Miss Edgeworth and the best of the dear old fairy tales'
(Louisa May Alcott, her life, letters and journals, 1898, p. 29.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available) another American author, Henry James, said 'All our books at that age were English'
(Henry James, A small boy and others, 1813, internet edition available)

The terminology of British authors was often strange to American ears; Oliver Wendell Holmes complained of: 'Books..... where naughty schoolboys got through a gap in the hedge to steal Farmer Giles' red-streaks instead of shinning over the fence to hook old Daddy Jones' Baldwins; where Hodge used to go to the ale-house for his mug of beer, while we used to see old Joe steering for the grocery to get his glass of rum; where there were larks and nightingales instead of yellow-birds and bobolinks; where the robin was a little domestic bird that fed at table instead of a great, fidgity, jerky, whooping thrush.'
(Quoted in Alice Morse Earle Child life in colonial days, 1899, p. 303, internet edition available)

In the 19th century American authors began writing books for children which crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction.  Probably the most famous, still read today, are Mark Twain's two books about life among white and black folk on the Mississippi river in the American south, at a time when slavery was still legal, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876 and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885.

E. W. Kemble illustration to Huckleberry Finn,
Jim mistaking Huck for a ghost

British and American children alike also enjoyed the phenomenally successful works of Samuel Goodrich, 'Peter Parley'.  His tales, packed with useful facts, were the mainstay of parents looking for improving rather than imaginative literature for children.  For in the midst of this wealth of storybooks some parents still refused to allow their children to read them.  Edmund Gosse had no contact with a work of fiction until he was ten, when his father gave him Tom Cringle's Log, a novel for adults, to answer his questions about the Antilles.
Gosse, having absolutely no experience of 'stories' took the whole work as literal truth and describes the effect on him as 'like giving a glass of brandy neat to someone who has never been weaned from a milk diet.'(Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, 1907. p. 143)

Louisa M. Alcott and Elizabeth Wetherall's books were as popular in Britain as in America.  James Fennimore Cooper contributed a classic told from the Native American viewpoint in The Last of the Mohicans (1826).  Tales of the pioneers in the American West and Canada, and goldrush adventure stories were also a popular subject for garishly illustrated 'penny dreadfuls'.  Frontier settings were used by British writers such as G. A. Henty and R.M. Ballantyne, a Scottish author who based The Young Fur Traders (1856) on his experiences with the trappers in Canada.

The Young Fur Traders
(Vanished eras.com, 1930s ed)

The demands of pioneer life encouraged qualities of resourcefulness and independence in Americans and although in cities American girls generally led lives similar to British girls, in the remoter parts of the USA and Canada they often had to be as capable as their brothers.  'All the excellent qualities which the London writer attributes to the American girl spring...from social conditions which foster self-respect and self-reliance', a writer said in Harper's Magazine, 1889 (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 78, 1889, p. 657-8)  The courageous, if slightly scatty, tomboyish heroine was an especially American contribution to stories for girls, from Jo in Little Women (Louisa M. Alcott, 1868-9)to Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did,(1872) L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908) and the incurably optimistic Pollyanna (Eleanor H. Porter, 1913) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1903, internet edition available)

(Image, The bookdorks.blog)

The example of those resourceful American heroines and of their real life originals probably did a great deal to change the Victorian Miss's image of herself from a rather timid, dependent girl, hedged about with restrictions, to the independent heroine of the Girls' Own Paper and Edwardian girls' school stories.

Many periodicals for teenagers began life in the late 19th century, the boys had the Boys' Own Paper, there was also Saint Nicholas and Aunt Judy's.  Probably some of the least beloved were the ones designed to provide suitable Sunday reading, Sunday at Home, Sunday Reading for the Young.

The Biblical Noah's Ark was one of the few toys considered suitable for Sundays in strict religious households.  It would have a sliding roof, and Noah and all his animals, two of each, were crammed inside:
'In the Ark lived Noah and his family, eight people with round heads and large hats, the women with tiny pinched waists, the men with long coats and sticks which moved in their hands...There were about sixty animals, grey elephants, camels and dromedaries, zebras with black stripes, giraffes with spots, bears, antlered stage, buffaloes, tigers, cows with long horns, sturdy pigs, calves, horses of different breeds, and many strange dogs, spotted and striped.  There were blackbirds, ravens, crows and doves, all the same size.  We liked the birds, for they perched on the Ark's roof and stood firmly on their feet and tails, unlike the animals whose legs were broken as we knocked them about.'
(Alison Uttley, Ambush of Young Days, 1937, p. 123)
F. Anstey had no toys on Sundays except scripture bricks featuring stories from the Bible.
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936)

Jigsaws and board games were still very popular and new games began to appear.  They were usually educational, like the New Parlour Spelling Game, a collection of letters with a slatted frame to slot them into, or word games like Word Taking and Word Making, where the players tried to make words from tiles chosen at random, a bit like Scrabble.  There were card games teaching spelling, history and geography.  Cards just as an amusement were, like dice, out of favour in well-run nurseries because of their association with gambling, which was raging out of control among well-off adults.

The Game of Human Life, a moral board game, c.1790
(branchcollective.org)

Building blocks were very popular, both the art historian Kenneth Clark, an Edwardian child, and the writer and architecture critic John Ruskin loved these:
'My bricks were made of a non-shiny, stone-like substance and included pediments, arches, columns, bases, trabeations and an endless variety of blocks.  It was possible to make quite large and elaborate buildings and learn a great deal about the laws of construction.  I took my buildings very seriously, preserving them for weeks on end, and demanded criticism from the unfortunate guests who were press-ganged into visiting my nursery.'
(Kenneth Clarke, Another part of the wood, 1974, p. 13)

There were scientific educational games such as The Young Naturalist, c.1860, based on the popular hobby of collecting cabinets of fossils, rocks, butterflies, shells.  After Benjamin Franklin observed that the mixing of the marks on the surface of children's spinning tops provided a lesson in optics  special toys which demonstrated the mixing of the colours of the spectrum were made.
The Zoetrope, or Wheel of Life depended on the spinning of a cylinder pierced with slits and lined with paper with figures in slightly different positions printed onto it.  When the cylinder was spun the figures blended into one and appeared to be moving.  The Phenakiscope, with figures painted onto a flat disc, worked on the same principle, and these ideas were later used in movie cartoons.
(Leslie Gordon, Peepshow into Paradise, A history of children's toys, 1953, chapter 21)

The Young Naturalist game
(BBC images)

Another ingenious toy illustrating the principles of static electricity was a glass-topped box lined with silver paper, filled with minute figures which, when the glass was rubbed to produce static, apparently came to life and danced. (Eleanor Farjeon, A nursery in the nineties, 1935 p. 315, and Gordon, p.206)

Alison Uttley was captivated by the magic lantern slides of strange monsters and exotic places which she and her brother saved up to buy:
'We set it up in the kitchen, on the servant-boy's stool, placed on a table.  A sheet was hung from the clothes line, across the room to take the pictures...My brother stood on the chair and manipulated the slides; the tiny lantern sent a stream of smoke to the low ceiling, and there was a delicious odour of hot japanned metal.  The brightly coloured pictures filled us with joy, and we looked at them over and over again, inventing tales about them, swept into a world of romance...'
(Gordon, op. cit, p.202-3)

Harriet Martineau was terrified by the magic lantern in 1804.  She was also terrified by the  the Phantasmagoria: 'I did not like the darkness to begin with; and when Minerva (Greek Goddess of Wisdom) appeared, in a red dress, at first extremely small, and then approaching, till her owl seemed coming directly upon me, it was so like my nightmare dreams that I shrieked aloud.
(Gordon, op.cit, p.203)

There were many different mechanical toys, from simple wooden figures who ran up sticks or danced when a string was pulled, which we can still buy, to Jumping Jacks, which seem to have disappeared, and toys like Leotard the Acrobat 'who lived in a glass-fronted box.  His loose-jointed limbs were cardboard, cardboard his slender trunk; and his hands eternally grasped the bar of a trapeze.  You turned the box round swiftly five or six times; the wonderful unresolved machinery worked, and Leotard swung and leapt, backwards, forward, now astride the bar, now flying free; iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, unceasingly novel in his invention of new, unguessable attitudes; while above, below, and around him, a richly dressed audience, painted in skilful perspective of stalls, boxes, dress-circle, and gallery, watched the thrilling performance with a stolidarity which seemed to mark them out as made in Germany.'
(Kenneth Grahame, Dream Days, 1899, p.257)

Jack in a Box
(BBC Primary History, Victorian Britain)

The best European toys were indeed made in Germany, and in France.  They included elaborate German automata, toys for adults, like the Emperor's golden nightingale in the Hans Andersen story which sang in their bird-cages, and little figures which solemnly went through a stiff routine when their clockwork was wound up, like the ones still to be seen on some famous German public clocks.  They were sold by Cremers, the famous toy shop in Regent Street, London.  Just before the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71) Henry Cremer made an urgent trip to Paris where he bought up all the best toys he could find:
'When the news arrived that France and Germany were going to war, I need not tell you, if you know whence we obtain a large proportion of our finest toys, that I became seriously alarmed...We cannot get on, you know, without French toys...'
(Gordon, op.cit, p.69)

Germany for automata, France for dolls.  France led Europe for fashion clothes, and the doll and fashion trades were closely connected.  Cremer describes how the gun and sword makers he visited were too busy making the real thing to fill his orders.  In Germany too dolls' house furniture and utensils were made by those who made the full size articles.  Many dolls were made to display miniature versions of fashion outfits and there is probably a close link between demonstration miniature articles of furniture, so tempting to a child, and pieces for the dolls' houses which had become a regular feature in Victorian nurseries.

A Jumeau doll
(Pinterest)

In Queen Victoria's reign the doll population grew ever more wonderful.  In addition to the many different kinds available.  Wax and porcelain dolls reached a peak of perfection that makes them sought after collectors' items today.  From 1849 to 1876 the firm of Montemari was producing wax dolls of delicate beauty, using real hair for head and eyebrows, each single strand separately inserted with a hot needle.  The famous Jumeau porcelain dolls were produced from 1844 to 1898.  Jumeau pioneered more baby-like dolls, a fashion which held until the modern teenager dolls appeared in America.  (see Alice K. Earle, English dolls, effigies and puppets, 1955, Chapters 7 & 8)

These wonderful dolls had wigs of real hair, eyes which opened and closed, lips delicately parted to show two pearl-like teeth, and possibly a voice and walking mechanism.  It was a doll like this which Nellie refused to let Laura Ingalls Wilder and the other pioneer farmers' children play with at her birthday party:
'She was dressed in blue silk.  Her petticoats were real petticoats trimmed with ruffles and lace, and her panties were real little panties that would come off.  In her feet were real little blue leather slippers.'
Laura had to be content with Susan, a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief until her mother made her beloved rag doll Charlotte.
Being the storekeeper's children Nellie and her brother Willie had far better toys that the other children at Plum Creek.  Laura remembered tin soldiers, a jumping-jack and that Noah's Ark.  And a bicycle.  In the 1870s some were advertised in an American fashion magazine:
'Velocipedes are in special favour this winter...very good ones can be bought for $4.77'
 'They can't ride my velocipede!' shouted Willie when Laura and her sister came to that party.
(Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek, 1937, p.109)

(Wikipedia image)

In The Advanced First Reader, 1882, an itinerant toy-seller in the USA is described as carrying tops, tin animals, dolls, wagons, toy ships, kites and candy mice in his pack.  What has become of sugar mice?(Mrs. Lewis B. Monroe The Advanced First Reader, Philadelphia, 1882, p. 51

Dolls were generally sold dressed only in a chemise and their owners would learn to sew by sewing their clothes.  Louisa Alcott set herself up as dolls' dressmaker to the neighbourhood in Boston, USA, at twelve 'with my sign out and wonderful models in my window.  All the children employed me, and my turbans were the rage at one time, to the great dismay of the neighbours' hens, who were hotly hunted down, that I might tweak out their downiest feathers to adorn the dolls' headgear.'
(Lousa May Alcott, her life, letters and journals, 1889, p. 30.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

In the Southern USA children played with black rag dolls, later called 'Golliwogs', and fictionalised in Florence Upton's popular children's picture books about the adventures of Golliwog and two Dutch peg dolls, (1895-1909)  now banished  as racist, along with Helen Bannerman's enterprising hero Little Black Sambo. (1899)

Florence Upton's Golliwog and Peg Dolls
(Wikipedia)

Back in the U.K.  Edith Nesbit had a very splendid doll given by her sister:
'Renee had brown eyes and pink cheeks, a blue silk dress and a white bonnet with orange blossoms on it.  She had two pairs of shoes and two pairs of stockings, and she had two wigs, a brown and a flaxen one.  All her clothes took off and on, and there was a complete change of them.'
Edith Nesbit, Long ago when I was young, 1966, p.66)

She must have been similar to the doll which became poor Sara's confident in Mrs. Frances Hodgson
Burnett's story A Little Princess. (Frances Hodgson Burnett, Sara Crewe, or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's, 1888.  Later re-titled A Little Princess.) Kate Greenaway had a doll almost two metres high which she called Guaraca as it was a reward for learning a 'piece' of that name. (Gordon, op. cit, p. 85)
Guaraca wore her brother John's clothes with the tucks let out to make them large enough, and full size baby shoes.  Kate Greenaway had many other dolls.  The smallest were the Royal family, two halfpenny dolls which she called Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, though both wore skirts, and several farthing dolls representing the princess and princes.
(M.H. Spielman and G.S. Layard, The Life and Work of Kate Greenaway, 1905, p.26)

Alison Uttley had a doll which cried "Mama" and "Papa" when a string was pulled.  She was only allowed to play with her, reverently, on Sundays; for everyday she had a battered old wooden one which was eventually given to the poor:
'When my mother suggested that I should give away some of my toys to little children not so well off, I chose out the beloved object as the greatest sacrifice, welcome to God.'
(Alison Uttley, Ambush of Young Days p. 61)
She always regretted it, and the poor probably did not appreciate the gift at all.

Many other Victorian children had their toys bundled up and sent off to orphanages or hospitals when they felt to be too old:
'We were being daily inundated with leaflets headed by a woodcut depicting Little Annie (of Poplar in London) sitting up in her little white cot, surrounded by the toys of the nice, kind, rich children.' remembers Kenneth Grahame
Less well brought up than Alison Uttley, they rescued few favourites from the box and buried them in the garden.  Outgrown, battered, but full of happy memories, who could ever love a toy as well as the child whose constant companion it once was.

The children also had one of the rocking horses which became a standard for Victorian nurseries:
'In days of old each of us in turn had been jerked thrillingly round the room on his precarious back, had dug our heels into his unyielding sides, and had scratched our hands on the tin tacks that secured his mane to his stiffly-curving neck...'
(Dream Days, 1895, p.255, 259)
The rocking horses were always dapple grey and their tails were real horse hair.

(Legends rocking horse image)

Toy soldiers were great favourites, in sets so elaborate they are now coveted collectors' items.  They were Thomas F. Anstey's favourite toys:
'They were sold in square wooden boxes with sliding lids which had improbably but thrilling battle pictures on them.  Inside these was a little compartment for a cannon, and another for dried peas; the rest of the box contained the rival armies on a disproportionate amount of shavings. 'Rules of Warfare' were pasted inside the lid...The first box I remember contained Federal and Confederate troops with their respective colours.'
He also had a set representing the Allies and Russians in the Crimean War, and there were sets representing most of the armies of Europe.
(F. Anstey (1856-1934) was a comic journalist and author of Vice Versa, a famous father and son role, and body reversal story. A Long Retrospect, 1936, p. 15)

German toy soldiers
(Proxibid.com)

 Cheap tin toys were made in Wichendon, Massachussetts and Birmingham, England.  The toys made there were chiefly tin or iron; trains, carriages, doll's prams, and novelties such as a tin monkey used to teach the rules of arithmetic; his feet could be made to point at two numbers and his hands would show, not very accurately, the correct multiplication of the numbers.
(Leslie Gordon, op. cit, p. 181, and Parker Collection of Children's Books and Games, Birmingham Libraries,  mechanical monkey)

Toy trains, indespensible for boys in the twentieth century, made their first appearance in the 1840s.  Leslie Gordon describes the earliest known example in Peepshow into Paradise.  It was a wooden one, based on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company's engines, but covered in daisies.
(Leslie Gordon, op. cit, p. 182)

(Image, Modeltraincollectors.wordpress.com)

The English writer George Sturt (1863-1927) lived in rural Surrey in the U.K.  He describes playing with marbles and hoops made of iron; wooden hoops for girls, maybe these became hula hoops?  They had spinning tops:
'At school there was a game - a circle about a yard in diameter was scratched in the dust, and in that circle the boys spun their tops (if they could!) while other boys hurled down theirs, all spinning, in the hope of striking the revolving peg into somebody else's top.'
He also remembered 'the paint brushes, a penny each, were of camel-hair, and in buying one you had to suck it, to be sure that it would go properly into a point.  In use paint brushes could be sucked clean...Only you had to be careful not to suck up too much paint. Crimson lake, indeed, tasted delicious...'
I wonder how many children suffered from lead poisoning?
(George Sturt, A small boy in the sixties, 1927, p. 150.  Chapter 16 describes their games)

Finally,  a Native American Hopi described his pastimes:
'We shot arrows at targets, played old Hopi checkers, and pushed feather-edged sticks into corncobs and threw them at rolling hoops of corn husks.  We wrestled, ran races, played tag, kickball, stick throwing, and shinny.  We spun tops with whips and made string figures (cat's cradle?)  on our fingers...'
(Robert Bremner, Children and Youth in America, Vol. 2, 1971, p. 48.  Quoted from Leo W. Simmons ed. Sun Chief, the Autobiography of a Hopi Indian, 1942, p. 51-53, 60-61, 66-71

(Goodreads.com)

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

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

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

Victorian girls at school
(Pinterest)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fashionable young ladies
(The School Run, Google)

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

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

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

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

The Guardian of Education
(Wikimedia)

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

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

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


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

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

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

The original Cowan Bridge school cottages
(Wikimedia)

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

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

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

Vanity Fair
(Wikipedia)

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

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

Dorothea Beale
(Wikipedia)

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

Frances Buss
(Wikipedia)

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

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

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

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

Cheltenham Ladies College
(Wikipedia)

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

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

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

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

Angela Brazil
(Wikipedia)

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

www.nikyrathbone@blogspot.com