Page 14 - Copshaholm Curriculum Book_2015

The Victorian Home 5

A Girl’s Bedroom

Painted furniture was known as “cottage” furniture and was considered suitable only
for informal use. A girl’s bedroom would feature a whole set of cottage furniture with
each piece hand-painted and stenciled in a floral motif. Some girls had a sleigh bed
(because it resembled a horse-drawn sleigh).

Victorian girls were encouraged to become versed in all the arts and handicrafts, not
as part of some career, but to help make them cultured young ladies.

Dollhouses were popular toys. Parents approved of dollhouse play because they felt
it would help their daughters become organized and “house-proud” young women.

Popular, also, were dolls in all sizes made from all kinds of materials. The china or
porcelain dolls were often “Sunday Dolls,” kept in glass cases all week and only brought
out on Sundays or holidays.

A Boy’s Bedroom

Victorian parents were strict and demanding with their children. Rigid study and
lessons were enforced each day except Sunday, when religious pursuits were
encouraged. Usually desks in a boy’s bedroom were full of schoolbooks and papers.

Still, there was time to play. The rocking horse was a favorite toy in Victorian times,
as it has been for centuries. Victorian boys, wearing paper hats and waving tiny
swords, climbed on their horses and rocked off to imaginary battles. Tin soldiers were
immensely popular, as were model train sets.

The Bathroom

The first bathrooms were found only in upper-class homes because plumbing and
fixtures were very expensive. Most Americans still used the old hip tub for their Sunday
night baths, lugging buckets of hot and cold water to get the temperature just right. Its
no wonder people took only one bath a week!

The bathtub in most Victorian homes was attached to an ornate gas water heater,
thought by some to bring modern improvements to the bath. But these early gas
contraptions had a nasty tendency to explode, causing prudent buyers to shy away from
using them. Often, just cold water was piped into the bathroom and water was heated
in the kitchen to be carried up for hot baths. Most Victorian bathrooms were elaborately
tiled with porcelain tiles.

The toilet or water closet (also called the “W.C.”) was invented by an Englishman in
1596, but didn’t really catch on in America until metal pipe became readily available in
the 1860s.

The early toilets gave off an awful stench because the water trap had not yet been
designed. The water trap is the ingenious turn in the toilet pipe that prevents the smelly
sewer gas from working its way up into the house from below. Even with the water trap,