Fuelled by a boon in books on childrearing, Victorian parents gained access to a growing body of recommendations on the "proper" methods of bathing, dressing, feeding, and disciplining children (Henderson and Sharpe,1821). Monthly magazines such as Babyhood: A Monthly Magazine for Mothers, Devoted to The Care of Infants and Young Children and the General Interests of the Nursery (1886-1887), provided detailed recommendations for nursery room decoration, as well as information on the best toys for infants and toddlers. By 1886, mothers were encouraged to forego "the entire class of clockwork toys" (H.T.L. Babyhood - "Toys for Small and Large Babies, pg. 18, 1886) in favour of toys that were less delicate, and easier for small hands to manipulate, such as rattles and blocks (H.T.L. Babyhood - "Toys for Small and Large Babies, pg. 20, 1886).
Recommended toys included: hand-made playthings such as rattles made from tin boxes filled with beans and large knitting needles with empty spools of thread for threading practice and furnished playings such as rocking horses and dolls (H.T.L. Babyhood - "Toys for Small and Large Babies, pg. 19-20, 1886).
The toy pictured here, made in England in 1880, represents the toys available to wealthy children in the nineteenth century. The painted wooden Water Cart toy consists of two parts - the wooden horse on wheels and the attached wheel-cart. The wheels of the cart component are made of metal, and the addition of synthetic hair on the horse's mane provides texture.
Sources:
Henderson, Heather, and William Sharpe, editors. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Victorian Age. 3rd ed., vol. 2B, Pearson Longman, 2006, pp. 1819-1823).
Water Cart. 1880–1899. Victoria and Albert Museum, collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O90962/water-cart-unknown/. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.
Yale, Leroy M, Editor. Babyhood: A Monthly Magazine for Mothers, devoted to the care of infants and young children, and the general interests of the Nursery. Volume 3, New York: Babyhood Publishing Company, 1887, pp. 18-23.