Birthdays

If you’d been thinking there was something wrong with my blog’s web-page because it was permanently stuck in October 2008, you’d be wrong. I just haven’t updated it for a few months. It’s hard to start back again – do I explain my absence (pressure of the paying job, mostly) or do I jump straight back in? Or a bit of both?

It was Helen who put the hard word on me – “update your damn blog” – a couple of weeks back, on the occasion of my god-daughter Izzy’s first birthday party. A good time was had by all, especially the birthday girl, although she really doesn’t have the hang of presents yet. She’s much more interested in crawling off at high speed. She enjoyed her birthday cake, a sponge decorated with her name written in marshmallows. I know she enjoyed the cake because I got given the job of feeding it to her, and at one point she chomped down quite enthusiastically on my finger. Those little baby teeth are sharp! Who would want to be breast-feeding when the teeth started to arrive – instead of a mother-baby bonding moment, it would be a desperate race to refuel the little piranha before it drew blood. Poor Sarah, still breast-feeding Ovid when he was sixteen months.

Anyway, Izzy’s birthday party made me wonder about the celebration of birthdays back in Victorian times. I wasn’t sure that they celebrated at all, although you would think, given the infant mortality rate, that Victorian parents might want to mark the first and second birthdays just to acknowledge the child’s survival. Or maybe they didn’t want to make too big a deal of it, in case they somehow jinxed the baby?

Further research revealed that social class and income seem to have played a part. By late in the Victorian period, lavish children’s parties with entertainment like a conjuror, were all the rage in upper-class and aristocratic families. Even the middle-class were doing their best to keep up with the Joneses when it came to birthday bashes. It all seems very much like the McDonald’s / magician / clown parties young children seem to expect today.

On the other hand, most children of the poor struggled to be able to say how old they were, let alone the date of their birthday. It seems unlikely that their birthdays were marked in any special way, or even remembered at all.

Working class families seem to have celebrated birthdays according to their means. The day would be remembered, but whether there was any more to it than recognition that it was Fred or Jane’s birthday depended on the state of the family finances. A special family meal could probably be managed. If there were presents, they were more likely to be things the birthday boy or girl needed – hankies and underwear, those traditional stand-bys – or things lovingly crafted by siblings – embroidered hankies, knitted scarves or pen-wipers, a rag doll or carved animal. Sometimes cards would be sent by relatives, maybe with a little money.

I imagine this is pretty much how birthdays went in the Norgrove household, but whether there were birthday parties is hard to know. If William and Sarah adopted the philosophy that what one got, they all got, then you’re looking at six or seven children’s birthday parties a year in the 1850s. It seems unlikely, although it’s possible that during their school years, the girls at least might have had small gatherings of friends at home. Gertrude and Emma had birthdays a week apart, and although there was a four-year age difference between them, this would be a likely occasion for all of the girls to prepare special treats and invite a friend or two each.

Whether the adults gave each other gifts is uncertain, but it seems likely. William at least, could always give Sarah the gift of a sketch – one of the children, or a favourite place. He seems to have been the sort of person who would spend money if he had it – so might have given quite generous presents when in funds, and more likely to resort to giving a drawing when broke. He doesn’t seem to have come from a family which made a huge deal out of birthday gift-giving, going from a comment in a letter to him from his sister Hannah in 1869 :

Dear Mother’s birthday is on the 7th September and yours she tells me is on the 28th of the same month. We did not allow the day to pass without drinking your health as it is call’d, and most sincerely wishing yourself, dear Sarah and your dear children prosperity and every real happiness.

Later, when the children were older and the family more prosperous, both bought and hand-made gifts were the order of the day. In 1889, Sarah wrote to Gertrude for her birthday – by this time, Gertrude is married and has a family of her own :

Your sisters & Brothers write with me in wishing you many happy returns of the day. Kate has just gone to Mrs Compton’s to leave a small parcel for George Groves to take you - the photos for dear Ovid [Gertrude’s son], the wash stand set for you. I made every stitch since my birthday, so you must please excuse any faults as I insisted on doing it all myself. I intended to line the crochet with Turkey red twill, but Mrs Earll persuaded me that as they would wash easier as they are. Your sisters bought the photo with Joe’s shop [Joe Dempsey, Gertrude’s husband, had a saddler’s shop in Blenheim before the Dempseys moved to Wellington], they thought you would like to see it.

Weaning the baby

My god-daughter Izzy is 7 months old and she just got her first tooth, not that she was very keen to show it to me yesterday. She’s getting started on solid food. Her Mum Helen says she likes sweetcorn and potato, peas and broccoli, kumara and carrot, but she’s not that impressed with the sharper tastes of apple and plum. Banana is OK though. Izzy gets mushy veggies into spooned into her and she smears them back all over her Mum, who wants to know what great-great grandma weaned the babies onto.

My assumption was that Ovid would be weaned onto mushy veggies, just like Izzy, except that his wouldn’t come in convenient little jars and tins from the supermarket. Then I consulted Dr Thomas Bull’s 1840 manual, The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease, and discovered that nineteenth-century babies were weaned onto things like boiled cereals, which were sieved and mixed with milk. Sometimes they were started on flour boiled with milk and water. Dr Bull also suggested “tops and bottoms, steeped in hot water, with the addition of fresh milk and loaf sugar to sweeten”. Tops and bottoms of what? Carrots? Swedes? No, there’s not a vegetable to be seen in the weaning plan of C19th infants. “Tops and bottoms” are apparently small rolls of dough, baked, cut in halves and then baked in the oven, used as food for infants. Mmmmm, not much nutritional value. Dr Bull said beef tea and chicken broth could be added occasionally, along with a little cooked egg. “Animal food” was strongly discouraged as being bad for the digestion, however sugar was regarded as a necessary condiment, as was salt, which stimulated the digestion and prevented worms! Fruit was OK, and water the preferred beverage, although apparently toast-and-water might be more palatable. [Really? This seems to be a drink for infants and invalids found in a number of old recipe books. Toasted (but not burnt) bread is soaked in water and then strained. It’s supposedly a refreshing drink. Can I bring myself to try it?] Finally, Dr Bull spoke out strongly against the maternal practice of giving wine, beer or any stimulant to any child, except medicinally!

From around twelve to 24 months, Dr Bull suggested the following meal plan :

Its breakfast between seven and eight o’clock, to consist of tops and bottoms, steeped in hot water, a little milk added, and the whole sweetened with sugar; or bread may be softened in hot water, the latter drained off, and fresh milk and sugar added to the bread. Its dinner about twelve o’clock, to consist, every other day, of a small quantity of animal food (chicken, fresh mutton, or beef, being the only meats allowed) with a little bread and water; on the alternate days, well boiled rice and milk, a plain bread, sago, tapioca, or arrow-root pudding, containing one egg; or farinaceous food, with beef-tea. Its afternoon meal, about four o’clock, the same diet as formed the breakfast. At seven, a little arrow-root, made with a very small proportion of milk, or a biscuit, or a crust of bread, after which the child should be put to bed.

Still not a vegetable in sight!

The weaning of Ovid Norgrove is something of a puzzle for me. These days, solids start appearing in baby’s diets after 6 months. Back then, Dr Bull was suggesting between 9 and 12 months as the optimum time to start introducing solids. His view was that with mother and baby in good health, weaning shouldn’t be delayed after 12 months of age. His colleague Dr Jacobi agreed, noting that while many mothers continue breast-feeding to prevent conception, sometimes until the child is four years old, breast-feeding is not a guaranteed way of avoiding pregnancy. However, Sarah tells us that on the voyage to New Zealand, Ovid was breast-fed; she didn’t start weaning him until they reached New Zealand 4½ months later. The Gertrude sailed from England on Ovid’s first birthday, so he would have 16 months old before she started weaning him off the breast. His brother Oscar was conceived about 3 months later, so either the breast-feeding or the close proximity of the neighbours on Gertrude had been acting as contraception!

Rations weren’t provided for children under one year of age on the immigrant ships – they were expected to be breastfed. However, a number of “comforts” were provided for the breast-feeding mums and their babies – stout for the mums, and good old sago, tapioca and arrow-root for the babies. Chances are Ovid actually started on solids while on Gertrude – the cereals, a little bread soaked in preserved milk, and maybe a ship’s biscuit to gnaw on when his teeth started to come through. Once in New Zealand, fresh cow’s milk was available – he had his first taste within hours of coming ashore – but if Sarah followed the traditional approach, he probably didn’t see a mashed vegetable until he was much older. Sarah had eight siblings; twins Alfred and Anne were born when she was five, and by the time she turned eight, she had five brothers and sisters. No doubt she had been helping her mother raise babies since she was a small child; sister Caroline was born six months after Sarah had Ovid, so she went straight from caring for her siblings to raising her own babies. She probably did the same things with her children as her mother did, and fed them the same sorts of foods as her mother, and her mother’s mother, had traditionally prepared.

So there we are. Nineteenth century baby food was cereals and breads, seasoned with salt and sugar – not quite as nutritious as what modern babies receive, but less likely to stain than when baby lovingly wipes a face-full of mushy pumpkin all over mum’s blouse.