The strangest parenting tips for Victorian parents

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It would seem that today there is very little in common with the 19th century. There is only one thing that has definitely not changed over time. And it will not change, probably never - this is a huge amount of completely stupid advice given to parents on how to raise children. At all times, there were enough such advisers. Here are some of the weirdest and sometimes wildest parenting tips from the Victorian era.

Most important: nutrition

Parents of the 19th century were advised to give their children only the most nutritious foods. For some reason, this "nutritional value" automatically meant its absolute tastelessness. Certain foods were considered hazardous and were the culprit in indigestion.

According to George Henry Rohe's Textbook of Hygiene (1890), any digestive disturbances children encountered were caused by poor diet. This statement is difficult and pointless to dispute, because it is true. But the book calls such products not only nuts, candies, pies, jams and pickles. The author should be especially persistent in avoiding fruits. Parents were urged in every possible way to avoid giving their children apricots, peaches, plums, raisins and cherries with cherries at any cost.

But what then could the kids eat, according to Roe? Nutritious food sounds too vague. Meals had to be limited to porridge, bread and potatoes. Of course, these products could not be served hot or cold. Everything should be warm. No snacks recommended. As a last resort, the child was allowed to eat a piece of dry bread.

No greenery

A very important topic in parenting advice in Victorian society was to avoid anything green. Lydia Maria Childs, in her 1831 guidebook, The Book of Mothers, states that while a child is teething, he should never, under any circumstances, be given anything green.

Pye Henry Chavasse argues that a child should never be allowed to eat anything containing "yellow or green pigments." Even drinking green tea was forbidden. According to Chavasse, green tea makes people nervous, and young people especially should "not know what it means to be nervous." Now everyone knows that there is some truth in this. There is a lot of caffeine in green tea. It is probably unnecessary to talk about its effect on the body.

Oddly enough, about everything green, Victorian advice book authors were also right to warn their readers against eating anything artificially colored green. The fact is that in the 19th century, arsenic was used to paint various things in a beautiful green color. Everything from wallpapers to dresses and fake flower petals contained this poisonous substance to give them a deep color. In fact, adults had no problem with this. It was just that the children were persistently advised not to eat anything containing this dangerous poison. Quite sensible advice, isn't it?

Diseases

Among other things, arsenic in those days was far from the worst thing. For children, under the guise of drugs, doctors prescribed various poisons. Even with innocent teething, a kind of "soothing" syrup was given. In most cases, the mixture contained alcohol or drugs.

For example, one similar drug of the time, Mrs. Winslow's syrup, contained only two magic ingredients. They were alcohol and morphine. The drug promised to cure diarrhea and relieve pain. Probably it helped well because it was sold just like hot cakes. Parents bought one and a half million bottles of this wonderful soothing syrup every year.

Mercury was another widely used poison. It was also used as a medicine. William Horner advertised mercury as a cure for every ailment in his 1834 Home Book of Health and Medicine. True, I advised you to use this tool with caution. This substance was a completely common ingredient in many patented drugs of the 19th century. Most often, mercury has been used in freckle creams.

Opium was also very often used then. It was considered simply a "miracle cure" that can cure any ailment. Opium was sold freely as a pain reliever. Parents of those times used it quite freely to treat colds in children and to calm crying babies. For example, Dr. McMann's opium elixir was marketed to prevent "pain and irritation, nervous excitement, and various morbid conditions of the body and mind."

Also, this elixir was considered much more effective than morphine. In principle, this is not surprising. Of course, after using so many harmful things and using various poisons, all that remained was to be treated with opium.

No reading and no fun

Since there were no various harmful gadgets in the 19th century, one would think that children were spending their time en masse in an ideally useful activity - reading. It was not there! Books were banned. According to the advice given to parents in those days, reading was discouraged. Not only girls, as one might think, but also boys. Experts at the time argued that fiction was overly stimulating for their underdeveloped brains.

Of course the girls were controlled more strictly. Especially during adolescence. After all, romance, parties and opera could trigger early puberty. A British physician named Edward J. Tilt wrote an entire guide to Keeping Women Healthy During Critical Times in Life. He believed that reading romance would be too stimulating for young girls, and worried that they would then start looking for romance in real life.

Boys, on the other hand, were advised more simply to limit the amount of fiction they read. William Jones, wrote a book of advice called Mentor Letters to His Students. There he says that although he does not believe that it is necessary to completely refrain from fiction, but still it is the root of the "weakness of the human mind."

If kids can't read, what are they doing for fun? A lot of things really. For example, it was recommended that the boys be given a pile of earth so that they can make mud pies. Also, children should not buy toys, they should be DIY. This helps them fill their time with rewarding pursuits. But this is really useful! How many parents today pay huge sums of money for the fact that a specially trained teacher with their child, relatively speaking, "sculpts mud pies." You can't argue with Lydia Maria Childs, who believed that it was incredibly useful for girls to make dolls by cutting them out of paper. How boring it is now to buy any ready-made one and not show any creative attempts!

Punishments

Of course, if the children did not obey their parents, they had to be punished. One can argue endlessly about what the punishment should be, but we must admit that it should be. Much of the parenting advice literature in the 19th century promoted corporal punishment. In the 1884 book A Few Tips for Mothers on How to Behave with Their Children, mothers reported that old-fashioned flogging with thin, soft, old leather or house slippers was still the best way to punish. The only thing that matters is to make sure your ears are not damaged.

However, that was not all. If this method seemed boring and obsolete to the parents, the child could be tied to a chair. It was also possible to douse the naughty offspring with cold water. Orson Squire Fowler, in Self-Culture and Character Excellence: Including Youth Management, advised parents to send their children to “take a cold bath,” or pour a jug of water over their heads. It was considered a great way to reason with naughty kids.

Of course, even those tips that are useful sometimes sound more than strange. Much has changed since the 19th century. The only thing that has remained unchanged is that children are often naughty anyway. This is fine. It is abnormal to douse them with water, tie them to a chair, give them poisons. In this light, grandmother's sacramental "put on a hat or you'll catch a cold" sounds more than innocent.

Read an interesting story about the queen who gave the name to this era in our other article: how Queen Victoria of England nearly became Queen of Nigeria due to translation difficulties.