Bartholomew Baby

Bartholomew Baby

By Kirstie Bingham

 

Upstairs in the bedroom of the Merchant’s House, you will find a wooden doll standing on the small side table waiting to be played with. This is a Bartholomew Baby. These wooden dolls remained popular children’s toys throughout the Tudor period and were regarded with high esteem into the Victorian era. The name ‘Bartholomew’ refers to the Summer Fair in London where this doll would have been sold.

The Bartholomew Fair was a two-week festival in August celebrating the Feast of St Bartholomew, the patron saint of leatherworkers. This fair was principally a cloth-trading event and attracted visitors of all classes from across the country. The annual fair was held from 1133 to 1855 in London in the area known as West Smithfield and was opened by the Lord Mayor of London.

 

Our merchant may have returned home from buying cloth at the fair with this present for his daughter, which she could then dress herself using off cuts from her father’s materials. It is a simply but beautifully carved doll with no arms and no joints, though some examples had arms of leather. They were sometimes sold painted and dressed in the fashions of the day. Young girls would have been encouraged to make outfits for their babies, as it would help them develop their sewing skills.

Even children from poor families may have owned a small wooden toy similar to this, since the design was easy to carve and durable. The doll would have been handed down to younger siblings, and new outfits would have been made to show the changing trends in fashion.

Wooden babies, as they were known, were not called ‘dolls’ until the 18th century. In the twenty-first century, wooden toys are rising in popularity, so it is not too late for the Bartholomew Baby to be loved once again.

 

 

Did you know?

By the Victorian era, the term Bartholomew Baby was also used to refer to “A person dressed up in a tawdry manner, like the dolls or babies sold at Bartholomew fair.”[1] Furthermore, a farmer must be careful when choosing a wife, and not to pick one “trickt up with ribband and knots like a Bartholomew-baby; for such a one will prove a holiday wife, all play and no work.”[2]

 

 

[1] The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

[2] Dictionary of Early English By Joseph T. Shipley