18th Century Society
Attitudes Toward Children
What were the typical circumstances of children’s lives? Some scholars have claimed that high mortality rates prevented parents from forming emotional attachments to young children. With a reasonable expectation that a child might die, some scholars believe, parents maintained an attitude of indifference, if not downright negligence. Most historians now believe, however, that 17th and 18th century parents did love their children, suffered anxiously when they fell ill, and experienced extreme anguish when they died.
What were the typical circumstances of children’s lives? Some scholars have claimed that high mortality rates prevented parents from forming emotional attachments to young children. With a reasonable expectation that a child might die, some scholars believe, parents maintained an attitude of indifference, if not downright negligence. Most historians now believe, however, that 17th and 18th century parents did love their children, suffered anxiously when they fell ill, and experienced extreme anguish when they died.
Parisian Boyhood
Source: Jacques-Louis Menetra, Journal of My Life
The life of Jacques-Louis Menetra, a Parisian glazier, exemplified many of the social patterns of his day. He lost his mother in infancy, was educated at a parish school, married late, and had four children, two of whom died. Menetra distinguished himself from other working men, however, by writing an autobiography describing his tumultuous childhood, his travels around France as a journeyman, and his settled life as a guild master. Menetra’s father was often violent, but he fiercely defended his son against rumored child abductions in Paris (in reality the police had overstepped orders to arrest children loitering in the streets).
Source: Jacques-Louis Menetra, Journal of My Life
The life of Jacques-Louis Menetra, a Parisian glazier, exemplified many of the social patterns of his day. He lost his mother in infancy, was educated at a parish school, married late, and had four children, two of whom died. Menetra distinguished himself from other working men, however, by writing an autobiography describing his tumultuous childhood, his travels around France as a journeyman, and his settled life as a guild master. Menetra’s father was often violent, but he fiercely defended his son against rumored child abductions in Paris (in reality the police had overstepped orders to arrest children loitering in the streets).
"I was born on 13 July 1738 a native of this great city. My father belonged to the class usually called artisans. His profession was that of glazier. Hence it is with him that I begin my family tree and I shall say nothing about my ancestors. My father married and set himself up at the same time and wed a virtuous girl who gave him four children, three daughters and one boy, myself, all of whose little pranks I’m going to write about.
My father became a widower when I was two years old. I had been put out to nurse. My grandmother who always loved me a great deal and even idolized me, knowing that the nurse I was with had her milk gone bad, came to get me and after curing me put me back out to nurse [where] I ended up with a pretty good woman who taught me early on the profession of begging. My [grand]mother and my grandfather when they came to see me…found me in a church begging charity. They took me home and from then until the age of eleven I lived with my good grandmother. My father wanted me back, afraid that he would have to pay my board. He put me to work in his trade even though several people tried to talk him out of it [but] he wouldn’t listen to them…
My father became a widower when I was two years old. I had been put out to nurse. My grandmother who always loved me a great deal and even idolized me, knowing that the nurse I was with had her milk gone bad, came to get me and after curing me put me back out to nurse [where] I ended up with a pretty good woman who taught me early on the profession of begging. My [grand]mother and my grandfather when they came to see me…found me in a church begging charity. They took me home and from then until the age of eleven I lived with my good grandmother. My father wanted me back, afraid that he would have to pay my board. He put me to work in his trade even though several people tried to talk him out of it [but] he wouldn’t listen to them…
When I felt a little better, I went back to my usual ways which is to say that my father was always angry with me. One night when I was lighting the way in a staircase where he was installing a casement and not mounting it the way he wanted with an angry king [he] knocked out all my teeth. When I got back home my (step)mother took me to a dentist by the name of Ricie who put back the teeth that weren’t broken and I went three weeks eating nothing but bouillon and soup.
In those days it was rumored that they were taking young boys and bleeding them and that they were lost forever and that their blood was used to bathe a princess suffering from a disease that could only be cured with human blood. There was plenty of talk about that in Paris. My father came to get me at school as many other fathers did along with seven big coopers armed with crowbars. The rumor was so strong that the windows of the police station were broken and several poor guys were assaulted and one was even burned in the place de Greve because he looked like a police informer. Children weren’t allowed to go outside; three poor wretches were hanged in the place de Greve to settle the matter and restore calm in Paris.”
Questions:
- What hardships did the young Menetra face in his childhood? What attitude did he display toward his childhood experience?
- What characteristic elements of 18th century family life does Menetra’s childhood reflect? Does his story provide evidence for or against the thesis that parents deeply loved their children?
The Catechism of Health
In the second half of the eighteenth century, medical reformers sought to educate children (and through them, their parents) on how to take proper care of their bodies. A popular genre was the health “catechism,” which took the form of easy-to-understand questions and answers about issues such as fresh air, cleanliness, proper diet, and exercise. The catechisms often promoted new treatments, like smallpox inoculation, and opposed traditional practices of bloodletting, purging, swaddling infants, and wet-nursing. Bernhard Christoph Faust’s the Catechism of Health for the Use of Schools and for Domestic Instruction (1794), excerpted below, was distributed in schools and reached a wide audience, including Americans, through a 1798 New York edition.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, medical reformers sought to educate children (and through them, their parents) on how to take proper care of their bodies. A popular genre was the health “catechism,” which took the form of easy-to-understand questions and answers about issues such as fresh air, cleanliness, proper diet, and exercise. The catechisms often promoted new treatments, like smallpox inoculation, and opposed traditional practices of bloodletting, purging, swaddling infants, and wet-nursing. Bernhard Christoph Faust’s the Catechism of Health for the Use of Schools and for Domestic Instruction (1794), excerpted below, was distributed in schools and reached a wide audience, including Americans, through a 1798 New York edition.
Q. What does the little helpless infant stand most in need of?
A. The love and care of its mother. Q. Can this love and care be shewn by other persons? A. No. Nothing equals maternal love. Q. Why does a child stand so much in need of love and care of its mother? A. Because the attendance and nursing, the tender and affectionate treatment which a child stands in need of, can only be expected from a mother. Q. How ought infants to be attended and nursed? A. They ought always to breathe fresh and pure air: be kept dry and clean, and immersed in cold water every day. Q. Why so? A. Because children are now, at the time alluded to, more placid, because not being irritable, they grow and thrive better. Q. Is it good to swathe [swaddle] a child? A. No. Swathing is a bad custom, a produces in children great anxiety and pains; it is injurious to the growth of the body, and prevents children from being kept clean and dry. |
Q. Do children rest and sleep without being rocked?
A. Yes. If they be kept continually dry and clean, and in fresh air, they will rest and sleep well, if not disturbed; the rocking and carrying about of children is quite useless. Q. It is, therefore, not advisable, I suppose, to frighten children to sleep? A. By no means; because they may be thrown into convulsions, and get cramps. Q. Is it necessary or good to give children composing draughts, or other medicines that tend to promote sleep? A. No. They cause an unnatural, and of course, unwholesome sleep; and are very dangerous and hurtful Q. How long must a mother suckle her child? A. For nine or twelve months. Q. What food is most suitable for children? A. Pure unadulterated cow’s milk, with a little water and thin gruel; grated crusts of bread, or biscuit boiled with water only, or mixed with milk… Q. Is it good to cover their heads? A. By no means; it causes humours to break out |
Questions:
- What practices of child rearing does Faust advocate and what practices does he criticize?
- In what ways did Faust’s advice challenge traditional methods of caring for babies? How would you contrast the message in this passage with ideas and practices of child rearing described in the autobiography of the Parisian boy
The First Step of Childhood
The painting is attributed both to Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) and his sister-in-law Marguerite Gérard (1761-1837) Questions:
|
The Commercialization of Sports
Ask people to name their most cherished memory of school and, as likely as not, you will hear about a victory at football, or volleyball or another encounter with organized sports.
Today’s world of college and professional sports owes a great deal to the entrepreneurs of 17th and 18th century Europe who produced the first commercialized spectator sports, in which trained athletes, usually male, engaged in organized competitions for the entertainment of ticket-buying fans. These spectacles were part of the array of new leisure-time activities introduced in this era. When they were not strolling in pleasure gardens, debating philosophy in coffeehouses, or perusing fashions in fancy boutiques, crowds of men and women gathered to watch boxing matches and horse races, as well as rowing, walking, and running competitions.
Kings and aristocrats had raced their horses privately for centuries, but first began breeding them for this purpose in the 17th and 18th centuries, producing the thoroughbred stains still prized today. The first large-scale race meets began in the mid-seventeenth century at Newmarket, still home to today’s British racing industry. Originally treated as lowly domestic servants, jockeys gained recognition as independent professionals in the early 19th century. Aristocrats also deployed their footmen in pedestrian races, which then grew in popularity and attracted semiprofessional competitors. These races sometimes featured female competitors, including a toddler who in 1749 beat the odds by walking half a mile of a London street in under thirty minutes.
Ask people to name their most cherished memory of school and, as likely as not, you will hear about a victory at football, or volleyball or another encounter with organized sports.
Today’s world of college and professional sports owes a great deal to the entrepreneurs of 17th and 18th century Europe who produced the first commercialized spectator sports, in which trained athletes, usually male, engaged in organized competitions for the entertainment of ticket-buying fans. These spectacles were part of the array of new leisure-time activities introduced in this era. When they were not strolling in pleasure gardens, debating philosophy in coffeehouses, or perusing fashions in fancy boutiques, crowds of men and women gathered to watch boxing matches and horse races, as well as rowing, walking, and running competitions.
Kings and aristocrats had raced their horses privately for centuries, but first began breeding them for this purpose in the 17th and 18th centuries, producing the thoroughbred stains still prized today. The first large-scale race meets began in the mid-seventeenth century at Newmarket, still home to today’s British racing industry. Originally treated as lowly domestic servants, jockeys gained recognition as independent professionals in the early 19th century. Aristocrats also deployed their footmen in pedestrian races, which then grew in popularity and attracted semiprofessional competitors. These races sometimes featured female competitors, including a toddler who in 1749 beat the odds by walking half a mile of a London street in under thirty minutes.
Professional boxing had less exalted origins in the popular blood sports of the day. In 1719 a London prizefighter names James Figg became the first boxing entrepreneur, opening an “amphitheater” where he staged animal fights and contests among human boxers and swordsmen. With the growing popularity of the sport, the first rules of boxing appeared in the 1740’s, calling for fights to include gloves, referees, and judges, and outlawing hitting a men when he was down.
The football and soccer games so central to school spirit in our day arose from the ball games played by peasants across medieval Europe, sometimes taking the form of all-out competitions between rival villages. Elite boarding schools transformed these riotous events into organized and regulated games, because their masters believed that team sports strengthened the body and disciplined the mind. The rugby school thus produced the first written rules of rugby in 1845. The games of soccer and football developed from these origins in the 19th century, and the first professional leagues began in the 1890’s.
Along with commercialization of sports came gambling, cheating, and disorderly crowds, problems that continue to confront professional athletics. A spirit of competition and thirst for victory may be seen as constant elements of the human character; however, historical events profoundly shape the way individuals manifest these qualities. In turn, the way we play and watch sports reveals a great deal about the societies in which we live.
The football and soccer games so central to school spirit in our day arose from the ball games played by peasants across medieval Europe, sometimes taking the form of all-out competitions between rival villages. Elite boarding schools transformed these riotous events into organized and regulated games, because their masters believed that team sports strengthened the body and disciplined the mind. The rugby school thus produced the first written rules of rugby in 1845. The games of soccer and football developed from these origins in the 19th century, and the first professional leagues began in the 1890’s.
Along with commercialization of sports came gambling, cheating, and disorderly crowds, problems that continue to confront professional athletics. A spirit of competition and thirst for victory may be seen as constant elements of the human character; however, historical events profoundly shape the way individuals manifest these qualities. In turn, the way we play and watch sports reveals a great deal about the societies in which we live.
Questions
- In what ways did the commercial sporting events of the 18th century reflect the overall “consumer revolution” of this period? How do the professional sports of today’s world reflect our own patterns of consumption?
- What continuities do you see in the social and commercial function of sports between the 18th century and today? Conversely, what war the various ways our or those around you “consume” or participate in sports that an 18th century individual might never have dreamed of?