Scope of Play:
A Look at Toys Across the Socio-Economic Levels of the American 1820s to the 1840s
By Jacob Richardson
Toys are for everyone. Delve into a collection of toys that entertained children from different walks of life during this period, ranging from simple pleasures to more elaborate pastimes. These toys offer a glimpse into the daily lives, social dynamics, and economic realities of children during the early 19th century. In this exhibit there are toys played with by both boys and girls as well as both enslaved and free families. Toys are important to childhood and everyone should get to play.
This exhibit highlights the diversity of childhood entertainment during the 1820s-1840s, showcasing toys that were accessible to children from various socioeconomic backgrounds. Some toys were only for boys or girls and some were for both. While some toys were affordable and widely available, others were luxury items enjoyed by those that could afford them. There are a mixture of toys that could be made or scavenged by the child or their family and those that had to be purchased. The toys in this exhibit show a wide range of what could have been played with and who could have played with them, showcasing the Scope of Play.
Battledore and Shuttlecocks
Badminton was invented in the mid 1800s, and evolved from battledore and shuttlecocks, a game that existed since the 14th century. Various shuttlecock games have been played for thousands of years around the world, in 3 main varieties: hitting the shuttlecock with your hand, foot, or racket.
Battledore and Shuttlecocks has been around since the Middle Ages, first appearing in 14th century manuscripts in England and France. It was very popular and played all across Europe in the next few centuries. The game came to America with the first settlers; most of the colonists played English sports. In Baltimore, the Maryland Historical Society has an order of Battledores and Shuttlecocks from an English merchant from 1742. In the 18th century some of the advertisements for the game showed it being played by the gentry, but by the 19th century it was a game marketed to girls to support good health. The game was widely played in the US until the 1870s when it was replaced by Badminton.
The rules of the game are simple, keep the shuttlecock in the air as long as possible while passing it between the players. There is no net so one player hits it to the next, who does the same until it eventually hits the ground. The equipment for the game is only the battledore (racket) and the shuttlecock. A battledore is a racket with a wooden handle connected to parchment, or rows of gut or nylon stretched over a wood frame. The shuttlecock typically had a cone shaped piece of cork as the tip and chicken or pigeon feathers stuck in the back to make it more aerodynamic.
Paper Theater
Paper Theaters are miniature theaters that allow children to act out plays themselves from home. These were started in 1811 in Britain with the play “Mother Goose.” The popularity of the theater was very high in the early 19th century and these paper theaters started popping up everywhere. Stores selling these paper theaters were plentiful with “England [having] over 50 publishers, Germany 54, Spain 14, France 13, Denmark 10, Austria 9, and the United States 5.” (https://janeaustensworld.com/2012/03/18/toy-theatres-19th-century-entertainment/) Acquiring a toy theater required a few factors, having money to purchase the theater and the plays, and living in an area that sold them. They were mostly sold in bookstores or stores that sold stationary. Paper theater’s popularity lasted from the 1810s when they were invented until about the 1860s.
These were expensive toys that not every family could afford. Also two parts were needed to be purchased to play with it, the theater and the plays. The theater was expensive and came in a wide variety of sizes and complexity. Some were as simple as a front facade on a wooden plank to a folding and expanding theater with multiple levels and wings for a layered depth effect. The plays were sold separately at “a penny plain, twopence colored” in England. They could be bought as just stenciled pictures which the child could then color or already filled in at twice the cost. The playbooks themselves could come with the characters possibly in a few different costumes and poses, furniture pieces, wing background pieces, backdrops, and the play itself with stage directions.
Corn Husk Dolls
Corn husk dolls were first made by Native American tribes but were played with by the European settlers and enslaved children. These dolls were played with by many groups throughout America's history in rural and agricultural areas because they were easy to make and the materials were easily acquired. Corn Husk dolls could be made entirely out of corn husks and string, some had hair, commonly horse hair, or clothing made from cloth scraps. Even the poorest child could have a corn husk doll.
The practice of making them was started by the Native Americans and they had legend about why these dolls were faceless. There are a few versions of the story but one goes that a girl and her doll were going to play with her friends. On the way there, the girl and her doll cross a pond where the doll sees her reflection. The doll stares at her features in the reflection and thinks that she’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen and tells the girl to go on ahead and that she’ll catch up. The doll continues to look at her reflection until it gets dark. When she realizes she runs home and apologizes. The next day the same thing happens, the doll stares at herself until it gets dark and runs home to apologize. The doll is visited by the Great Spirit, Unetlanvhi, who tells her that if she doesn't go play with the girl tomorrow, she won’t be fulfilling her purpose and there will be consequences. The next day the doll goes with the girl to meet her friends and this time they don’t go by the pond. The doll and the girl play all day and return home. The next day however, the doll wants to go by the pond on her way to play with her friends. The doll again stops to stare at her reflection. While the doll is staring at beauty she is visited by the Unetlanvhi who asks her what she’s doing. The doll says she’s admiring her beauty. The Spirit touches her nose and says this should help you be a better friend to the little girl. The doll checked her reflection again and all her features were taken away. This is the reason given why these dolls have no or only very minimal facial features.
Cup and Ball
The Cup and Ball game has existed in many forms for a long time. The game has origins in France, Spain, and even Japan. The principle of the game is the same across all these areas but the shapes change. The name of the game is to get a ball tied to a string to land on or in a holder attached to the handle. The shape of the handle can range from a cup, the most popular in England, France, and America, to a spike, which was popular in both Spain and France, and a kendama in Japan which consisted of 2 cups and a spike. The popularity of the game peaked in the 16th century in France where it was called Bilboquet and its popularity quickly spread to England and then to the American Colonies. There are reports of this game also being played by Native Americans with a version that used a ring instead of a ball.
In order to play the game you need a string, a ball, and a cup. This was a game that was cheap to buy and could be made if buying one wasn’t an option. Cup and Ball was played by both boys and girls and by both children and adults.
The rules of the game are simple, get the ball in the cup. This is a skill based game that teaches finesse and hand eye coordination. The ball is attached to the handle with the string. The ball is then swung up and the player tries to catch the ball in the cup.
The Mansion of Happiness
Boardgame mass production started in the 1840s and one of the first mass produced boardgames was The Mansion of Happiness. It was published by the Ives Brothers in Boston Massachusetts. Boardgames were more limited in who could play them because they had to be purchased, and there had to be somewhere that sold it in traveling distance or paid a higher cost for importing it. These types of games were played by both girls and boys but were limited to families with more disposable income.
Mansion of Happiness is a game based on Puritan morality values. Players move around the board collecting the Puritan values of PIETY, HONESTY, TEMPERANCE, GRATITUDE, PRUDENCE, TRUTH, CHASTITY, SINCERITY while trying to avoid the AUDACITY, CRUELTY, IMMODESTY, or INGRATITUDE. A player with these attributes has to move back until they get rid of them and can’t progress towards “happiness.” The Mansion of Happiness is the last space and the first player to reach it wins. The game also uses a teetotum because it views dice as the tool of Satan.
Kites
Kites have been around for a long time. The first record of a kite is from ancient China around 2,000 years ago. There is a story that the first “kite” came about when a farmer wore a hat and tied a string to it because it was a particularly windy day. The first recorded kite flying was around 200 BC when Chinese General Han Hsin of the Han Dynasty used a kite to measure the depth of the wall to a city he was attacking. He used this information to know how long to make the tunnel for his army.
Marco Polo brought stories of kites back with him to Europe in the late 1200s. Sailors also told stories about kite flying in Japan and Malaysia in the 1500 and 1600s. Most of these stories involve kite flying for practical purposes like fishing by using the kite to place bait out at long distances, but kite flying has been a very popular pastime since the Edo Period in Japan, the 1600s to the late 1800s.
Evidence exists of diamond kites, like the kite in the black and white illustration, being flown in the 1600s in Holland. Kites were an American pastime since the Colonial Period and became even more popular following the story Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment.
Kites are easy to make which can be a reason for their popularity. While kites could be purchased from the store, they could often be made for very little money. To make a kite you need 3 main things, a frame, a cover, and string. The frame consists of a flexible lightweight material like wood, often being made from sticks found on the ground. The cover was often made of either paper or cloth. The kite used by Benjamin Franklin was made with a large silk handkerchief. A paper cover would have to be purchased but a cloth cover could be made from old clothes. The last thing needed was a string to hold the kite as it flew. String was cheap and widely available or could be made on a spinning wheel.
Thaumatrope
The Thaumatrope, invented in 1825 by John Ayrton Paris (1785-1856), an English physician, was the first instrument to exploit the persistence of images on the retina. It is made by having an image on each side of a piece of paper with strings on each side. When the paper is spun on the string, the images meld together. It uses the idea of retina persistence, an image in your retina can stay in your retina for a short period of time. The most common image was a bird and a bird cage.
Thaumatropes were sold in stores cheaply and guides on how to make your own were included as a bundle in some books of classical literature.
Marbles
Marbles is one of the oldest games around, with small clay spheres being found in Ancient Egyptian pyramids, Native American burial grounds, and in Aztec pyramids. The earliest book on marbles was printed in England in 1815, which stated that marbles were made of china, clay, glass, or marble. Marbles have been found in slave quarters as well, showing that they were played with by both African American and white children. Majority of the marbles found in slave quarters were made of clay. Marble production increased dramatically when a glass molding tool was made to mass produce them, the marble scissor was invented in Germany in 1848 by Johann Georg Wilhelm Greiner and his sons Elias and Adam. As a result of the First World War, most of the world's marble production was in America, with one company making over a million marbles a month in Ohio in 1914.
There are several marble games that were played, the oldest of which is 9 Men’s Morris. The game board is made of 3 concentric squares with 24 dots. The point of the game is to create “mills,” 3 of your pieces in a row. Creating a mill lets you remove an opponent's piece. Once all 18 pieces, 9 for each player, are placed, the players move their pieces 1 adjacent space until 1 player has less than 2 pieces left. The player with more than 2 pieces at the end of the game wins. The game pieces could be marbles, coins, or even rocks, the game board could be made of wood, cloth, or drawn in the dirt. During the Revolutionary War soldiers played the game with musket balls.
One game that is closer to how marbles are played nowadays is called Bowls and Plum. This game was popular since the early 1700s and it involved shooting a marble to get a target out of a circle. The rules are “plums,” large marbles, are placed in the center of the circle. Players shoot their marbles at a plum to knock it out of the circle and claim it. The player who knocked it out got to keep it.
Additional fun fact, the term “knuckle down” comes from marbles. The first recorded mention of it is from 1860s America. It was used to refer to the shooting position when shooting a marble. The shooting position involves pressing the knuckle of your index finger into the ground with the marble curled in your index finger and shooting it by flicking your thumb.
The Game of Graces
The Game of Graces was invented in France in the early 1800s and was called Le Jeu des Graces. It was played across Europe and America. It was considered a game that would make women more graceful.
The game is played by throwing a hoop back and forth using sticks. The first player has the hoop on one stick and uses the other stick to throw it to the other player who then catches it on their sticks and throws it back. The hoop typically has ribbons decorating it and hanging off of it. These are used for both decoration for practical reasons, to slow the hoop down and to make the catch softer.
It is a game of catch, scores typically aren’t kept. This game was predominantly played by women but was played by men as well. The game was often played by a girl and a girl, or a girl and a boy but very rarely by two boys.
Trundling Hoop
Hoop rolling games have been around for a long time and have existed all around the world. Pots in ancient Greece have depicted the game of rolling hoops for entertainment. The Roman Empire adopted the game as well but with a more militaristic twist, they rolled a hoop and threw spears through it as it rolled by. The variety of games varied widely over the few thousand years, but in the 19th century a version of the game became incredibly popular in England and America. The rules of the game were simple: roll the hoop and keep it upright and rolling as long as possible using a stick. The hoops were made out of either wood or metal. Often the metal hoops were scavenged from barrels. Both girls and boys played the game, girls often using wood hoops and boys using metal ones.
The game was so popular that a newspaper in England referred to it as “The Hoop Nuisance” because people were being run into by children chasing their trundling hoops. The police seized several of the hoops and there was a campaign to outlaw the trundling hoop in England in the 1840s. No such law was ever passed.
The cost of the toy was minimal as the materials in question were a small portion of wood or by finding a discarded barrel ring and a stick. This was a game that could be played by everyone.
