Sleep My Baby

QUESTION: Recently, I purchased an old book on Victorian life at a book sale. As I was leafing through it, I noticed a photo of a bizarre looking little doll. The caption said it was a mourning doll. I never saw anything like this before. What can you tell me about this little doll and what was its purpose?

ANSWER:  During the Victorian Era,  people typically used elaborate physical representations and rituals to mark the death of a loved one. Because people often died at home, family members, usually women, prepared the body of the deceased for buria. The dead body would then be displayed for a time in the parlor. Because of the close proximity of death to the home, and because of high mortality rates for children and infants, children knew about death and dead bodies from a very early age.

In Victorian times, parents and other family members openly discussed death with children. And children's stories often included death scenes and references to death, especially with an emphasis on the joys of heaven and the inevitable reunion with loved ones there.

During the 19th century, especially after the Civil War, death played a major role in everyday life.

By the late 19th century, it became customary to commission a "mourning doll" to lay at the grave of a deceased child. These dolls became a way for families to deal with the death of a child. Along with mourning attire and jewelry, death masks, and post-mortem photography, the mourning doll was just another, if somewhat overlooked, element in the Victorian grieving process.

Considering that many infants died of disfiguring and draining illnesses such as smallpox, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and diphtheria, the mourning doll offered an idealized reality of their loss. While their child may have departed gaunt and bloody, the wax effigy would look as though it had simply closed its eyes and gone to sleep.

Graveside dolls became a way for parents to cope with the death of a child. When a child died, it was traditional for families who could afford it to have a life-sized wax effigy of the child made for the funeral. The doll would often be dressed in the deceased infant or child's own clothing, and most of the deceased child's own hair would be used to make the doll even more realistic. These wax dolls usually show the deceased lying in a coffin-like setting with their eyes closed, to mimic a peaceful sleep.

The backsides of the heads were made flat so that the doll would lay nicely when laid out to rest. Most parents put the mourning doll on display at the wake and would then leave it at the grave site. Some people often kept these effigy dolls after the funeral, placing those of infants in a crib, periodically changing their clothes, and otherwise treating them like a real baby.

To simulate the feel of a real child, the makers stuffed them with sand and heavy cloth to give them a more realistic feel when being held. Sometimes, parents had the doll,  itself, framed. Effigies of older children consisted of just the head and shoulders. All of them had flat backs, so that they could be placed in a picture frame.

Many Victorian girls had some sort of doll. They used them, much as little girls do today, to play house and thus practice social interactions. By the late 19th century, people recognized that childhood was a time for play, but that play also came with instruction. Little girls play-acted tea parties and courtships, and learned the expectations and rules of femininity. Of course, family members encouraged them to dote on baby dolls like they were their own, preparing girls to become good wives and mothers. But there was another role that dolls prepared girls for—funerals.

Wax effigies weren’t the only death-related dolls associated with Victorian children. Parents often gave their daughters “Death Kits,” which included a doll and miniature coffin. In play, the child would then practice dressing the doll, laying it out for visitation by placing it in the coffin, and planning a funeral. She might also be expected to practice attending to the grief of the doll’s mourners. When young Victorian women became adults, they would have most likely been asked to care for dead family members.



A kit would include a doll with black mourning clothes and a doll-sized coffin. Just as in real life, the little girl would prepare the doll for a wake and funeral, displaying it for mourners near the body of the dead child. Sometimes the effigy would be a full bodied doll, its body weighted with sand so as to feel more realistic, and with a flat back so as to lie down nicely in something like a tiny coffin. Dolls of older children might just be a head and shoulders, with the back of the head and torso flattened so it could be framed.

After the funeral the doll would either be left at the child’s grave or kept in the home, perhaps displayed in a glass coffin. Often cared for much like a real child, the mourning doll might be placed in a bed or crib and have its clothes regularly changed. Occasionally, parents would have a full-sized effigy made of their dead child to place in their bedroom.

Although many of these dolls didn’t survive the years, those that did were usually lovingly kept by the parents, often displayed in the bed of the deceased and cared for and re-dressed as though they were the deceased. Those that remain today were preserved in large glass boxes and, typically, depict a child between birth and three years.

Wax mourning dolls lost their popularity as tastes changed and the First World War began in the early 20th century. This is another one of those bizarre Victorian customs that has faded into history.

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