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MELANIE KEENE: I am Dr. Melanie Keene. I am a historian of science for children here at Homerton college, Cambridge, where I'm a fellow. Well, I mean, if you think back to the toys and games

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of your childhood, you might see them as really important markers of particular times and places. You'd associate them with certain kinds of activities and certain people--

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certain memories. They might be part of a collective celebration, such as Christmas or a birthday. They might be the first way you learned a new kind of skill

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or found out about a new subject area. So I think if we can reflect on our own experiences, we can see how important such things, perhaps, have been for other kinds of children in the past.

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And from the late 18th century onwards, companies started to create a market for these kinds of really beautiful objects particularly for children.

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And I think these are interesting insights into that past. And if we think about different kinds of history, we can use these objects in different ways.

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So for instance, if you're studying the history of childhood, we can think about children as active agents in history. They're those kind of [INAUDIBLE] power

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for their parents-- picky consumers saying they want the latest kind of toy or game. We can think about them as active players of games. We can think about them as the idealised audience for some

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of these kinds of games or as these sort of competitive collectives of young people-- siblings arguing around who's going to win the game. If we think more about social and cultural history,

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perhaps we can think about who was playing these games. Why were they playing a game? And what kinds of subjects or formats-- what kind of cultural references--

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were these games trying to bring in? If you're looking for more of a history of the book perspective, we can think about how the games were created and printed--

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produced as particular artefacts themselves. And we can think about how they might relate to children's literature and other kinds of things that a child might have in their bedroom or nursery--

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might have access to by their school, or increasingly something like a local library by later. We can also think about the companies that produce these games.

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They are people who are looking at business or commercial history. Some of these became incredibly important and influential businesses--

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huge, well-known companies such as the McLoughlin Brothers, which created and innovated different kinds of games throughout the 19th century. Or we can think about these as material objects--

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as things which survive in archives and museums. So what were these kinds of games made from? How were they interacted with in a multi-sensory manner? And what kind of marketing practises

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were there around these as innovative kinds of things? I think, above all, we're seeing a real resurgence in scholars who take play seriously-- that we see this as an important part of our culture

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past and present. And if we're going to take play seriously, then we really need to think about how toys and games have this long and interesting and multifaceted

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and, I think, in and of itself, quite a playful history. So we are incredibly lucky in these digitised collections to have access to an enormous wealth of historic toys and games that survive--

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mainly from the 19th century and mainly from America. And that's partly because it was that century that witnessed a big change in the kinds of these objects that were created for children.

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And they responded to new challenges and new kinds of opportunities-- for instance, the possibilities of using new printing technology and printing and colour for the first time-- new educational philosophies that were based around play

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and learning through objects-- new markets and people with the ability to afford some of these game-- and the kind of burgeoning of a leisure

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culture, which meant these things were actually valued. So I think it's sort of no coincidence that we see these as coming mainly from the late 18th to the early 20th century.

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This is when we see the growth and development of these kinds of things really move forward. I think we have some toys and games that might seem quite familiar-- things like chess sets or dominoes--

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board games-- race games-- alphabet blocks or things like paper dolls. But there's also more particular objects that we can see which might be more unfamiliar today--

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things such as panoramas. Or there's a wonderful Chiromagica sort of game that we can see in the collections that's a bit more unfamiliar.

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So I think it's nice that we can see the continuity between the surviving historical artefacts that we can recognise today and also ones that we're a bit more unfamiliar with. And I think one of the more unfamiliar genres

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of these games are sort of the educational games. Nowadays to say you want to learn geography or learn astronomy by playing a race game-- we might find that slightly odd.

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But in fact, there were many, many of these kinds of games that were produced in the-- particularly late 18th, early 19th century-- that we see represented here.

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And so I think it's really interesting to think about what we have that survived-- which often isn't the set of games that we've played with. So we can see from the digitised images

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these are games which are mainly in immaculate condition. They're ones which they have all the pieces for-- we haven't lost the rule book. In some ways, in fact, for historians

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it's more interesting if these sources have been damaged. We can see signs of these. And so there will be games and toys which also don't survive at all.

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We can see a catalogue or an advert that says there's lots of other things which went alongside what we have that exists. So I think we're very lucky to have this surviving material,

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but that shouldn't give us a sense that we have everything that still survives. So we know more was published than has survived, despite the wealth of published material we have.

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However, you never know what might be hiding out in someone's dusty attic. So hopefully this is just the beginning of what you might be able to explore

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with this kind of historic material. So you might be surprised to be looking at a collection of toys and games rather than something more familiar,

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like a digitised correspondence, letters, or books-- or even things like magazines or court records. And I think there's something particular about the toy or game as a source.

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Because it sits between different kinds of historic artefacts. So often we can think about these as hybrid kinds of sources.

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So for instance, you would have the rules of the game written out, but the game board itself will be a series of images. And often, I think, to look at toys and games,

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you have a sense of piecing together different kinds of source material. And I think that gives access to certain kinds of historical experiences that perhaps it's

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hard to trace in some of those more formal records. So things which, for instance, you might find hard to access in terms of how children just experience the world.

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What was it like to be a child? The children themselves are, with some notable exceptions, not keeping their diaries or records easily accessible. However, we can get some insights

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into what they were doing on a daily basis by looking at the kinds of objects they had access to and how they were guided in the use of those objects. So I think we get an insight, perhaps,

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into the expectations of what children were supposed to be doing and then also some insight into the experiences of young people when we think about what it meant, for instance, to learn the multiplication

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table through a song or what it meant to learn about geography through an imaginary trip to another part of the world. What it meant to have a playful way of learning the different names of different animals.

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So I think it gives us a more rounded picture, and it gives us access to some kinds of historical experience which is hard to look at through other kinds of sources. And there was a quite fun.

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It always makes it easier, I think, if you've got something that's engaging and interesting to look at as a historical source. That doesn't mean that they're not serious--

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it doesn't mean that they can't provide really important information for historians. With these kinds of sources, I think they're, as I said, a hybrid of different kinds of thing,

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so often you need to have a range of expertise. You need to think about how to analyse a text. You need to think about them as material artefacts. You need to think about the imagery.

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So you're bringing a different skill set to looking at these than you would be if you were just looking at, for instance, a correspondence. I think it's also the case that often you

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have to collage together your own kinds of knowledge as well. So it's not just the text themselves that are hybrid, but how you find out the information about them has to be done in different ways.

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It's very rare that you would have a source such as a game which in and of itself provides you with all of the information that you would need to know.

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So often there's clues there that you can follow-- so what is depicted on, say, a historical race game? You might not have a date on the game itself, but when it leads up to--

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can you give a rough approximation of when it was published? We might not have a sense of who authored the game, but from looking at the publications

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that the same company produced, for instance, we might be able to cross-reference and see where material, for instance, has been used between a children's book and that rules

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for a children's game. So in some ways, I think you have to be even more of a bit of a historical detective when you're working with these kinds of sources

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and be prepared to go into different kinds of historical archives to put together the story of how these came to be. And the other side of this obviously

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is how these things came to be used, and there we often have even less evidence. And again, it's a case of how these kinds of things appear across different sorts of source material.

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So that might be references to playing games in certain kinds of novels. That might be records of schools that have these kinds of things amongst their collections.

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That might be the occasional mention in a child's own remembrances-- autobiography that's written later on-- or rarely-- but they do exist--

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things which children themselves have produced. Sometimes on the object itself, we can also find evidence of use. So what's being coloured in-- folded down--

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broken-- lost-- can also give some sense of how these things might have been used. So I think there's some difficulties with working with this kind of source, but in other ways,

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there's a real W for creativity and for lateral thinking about how we can use these kinds of source to get those insights into childhood experiences and how those kinds of objects connect to these wider worlds

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that these young people were living then. These toys and games come in different kinds of formats. Some, such as the paper dolls, are fairly standardised, and there's also a range of game types

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from the late 18th to the early 19th century. Some of the leading publishers, such as the Wallaces or Harris or the Dartsons in the UK-- and then people like the McLoughlin Brothers over

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in America-- really used as the basis for some of their games. So for instance, there's a traditional race game format called the game of the goose, and that's

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where you move around into the middle. And you have counters. You have a spinning top-- a totem-- dice, particularly at the early part of this period,

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were seen as very dodgy and associated with gambling-- which is the wrong kind of play. So your number for your moves was randomly generated by a spinning top instead.

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And so you have this competitive race game format which then gets applied to all kinds of subjects, from astronomy to natural history to geography to learning about the latest

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industrial productions to the city that you're living in. And there's a really nice mix in some of these formats between what we might think of as the instruction-- the learning--

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and the amusement or the play. So there's some squares which are quite self-referential about learning itself. So for instance, if you land on a square,

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and you're the "studious boy," for instance, then you'd advance. However, if you land on a square which says you're an idle boy, then you'd have to stay there.

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And they have things like gaol [INAUDIBLE],, which we're familiar with from Monopoly and so on. Today. So there's a sense that people come into these games

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would have an expectation of what it means to race each other to the board. But then in each case, there'd be a new topic to learn about. And again, part of your progress in the game

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would be dependent on how much you could demonstrate you knew about, for instance, astronomy. So you would have to know the moons of Jupiter or explain what a telescope is or give

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an outline of the solar system in order to be able to progress. And these kinds of things, I think, became quite well known formats that people

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would expect to come and buy. However, the publishers, I will say, continually innovating-- and so there's new kinds of games that get produced. Sometimes in response to new opportunities-- for instance,

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when you get a travel that comes in a more widespread way, then you have games which are specifically designed to fit in the sort of pocket or to be folded up quickly.

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So these are more-- as we might think of them now-- as travel games-- rather than things which would have previously being played at home in a parlour and perhaps the more upper middle class.

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I think we see an interesting period in the 19th century. And as represented in this collection, we have some longstanding formats which are being reworked with new kinds of topics, but then

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you also have people who are really pushing at the edge of what is possible with new kinds of printing technology-- with new kinds of manufacturing--

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and with new kinds of market-- where each Christmas, for instance, there's a demand for a new kind of toy. So I think you have a mixture of continuity reworking of formats

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but then also people really trying to innovate and say let's do something that's really going to be the must have toy or game for the young consumer this year.

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So from their emergence in the late 18th/early 19th century, these toys and games were fairly expensive, since they were produced mainly for upper middle class households.

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And they were things which you would not have access to, perhaps, if you're from a lower class and working class background. That's not to say that there weren't toys and games that

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were being played by those kinds of communities-- just that these sorts of marketed, particularly created games were really for a slightly more upper middle class market. Often these were marketed to families,

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and they were presented as things which families could play together-- so for boys and girls. A bit later in the century we see some things

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which are more sharply differentiated along gender lines. So you have, in association with, for instance, the rise of separate magazines for boys and girls

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in the second half of the century-- then we also can see some things which are being particularly targeted-- for instance, paper dolls that would

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be targeted for young girls. I think it's really interesting to think about why upper middle class people felt these kinds of things were good purchases for their children,

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and I think that's because they were seen to be part of a polite culture of the right kind of education. So these are things which are in training

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the right kinds of knowledge and cultural reference. So these are things which are-- we might call it more social conditioning nowadays for children.

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And they're also inculcating the right kind of genteel play that can take place in a parlour around a table. So board games are called table games, for instance, when they were first brought in.

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Or things like jigsaw puzzles-- which are called dissected puzzles. Often, for instance, maps that have been cut up into the different shapes of the counties

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or the countries and then put back together. So there's a way in which these are seen as teaching the right kinds of subjects in the right kind of way and therefore

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of appropriate for boys and girls within this polite society. I think as we go through the century and across the pond over to America,

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we see the opening up of a wider range of production. So you get things which are still at the very elite expensive ends, but then you also get things which

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are versions of those which are on sale for much cheaper throughout the 19th century. I think you also then have a sense of a sort of differentiation and that you get

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more different kinds of things. So that means there's something for everyone, I suppose. But throughout, I think there is a real sense that these aren't objects of any kind of play--

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that they retain that essence of trying to be both educational but also often instructive, too. So there's some things which are designed particularly for the more leisure end of the spectrum,

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but the sense is that these games are increasingly produced for all children-- but trying to retain that sense of teaching them and giving them the right kind of playful opportunities.

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So we might think the answer to playing games is obvious-- that playing games is meant to be fun. It's meant to you win. It's achieving a sense of passing time

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in a rainy campsite or a long journey. But I think there's something more profound going on beneath some of these kinds of objects. That's not to say that they weren't

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intended to be entertaining. That's really an important part of this. But they're not just entertainments. So often these games were associated, for instance,

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with new kinds of educational philosophies-- such as the philosophy of Friedrich Froebel, founder of the kindergarten, who really thought the play was a crucial part of child development.

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And particularly play with certain kinds of objects was absolutely essential. So you have a lot of ways in which these kinds of artefacts are drawing on that kind of new insight

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into what we would now call child psychology that attempted to match the natural, they would say, activities that children wanted to engage in with the appropriate tools for the job.

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So these objects-- yes, marketed and meant to be something which can appeal to the purchasing uncle who is desperate to find something for that Christmas stocking. But they're also meant to map on to how children are supposed

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to be learning about the world around them and about different kinds of topic. So there's a sense that play is the best way to get those kinds of messages

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ingrained within young people's minds and also say the best way to teach certain kinds of sensory skills, such as motor development by moving things around.

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So that's a really sort of interesting way, I think, in which games is meant to achieve a certain kind of personal development-- is meant to achieve a certain kind of moral development--

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that these are the right kinds of play to engage in. They're not violent. They're quite sedate. But they're also kind of healthy competition that's seen as good

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for children to have. So it's about channelling some of those ways of developing in the right way. And then I think in some ways, if we might consider

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the games which are on the more educational end of the spectrum, they are really trying to teach you the multiplication table. They're trying to teach you the countries of the world.

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There's a much closer didactic purpose. And to the extent that sometimes looking back at these you might think, this doesn't seem very fun at all. This is a set of information cards-- this isn't a card game.

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So then I think there's also the way in which how the games were prescribed to be used or played-- and then what people actually did with them also can't be assumed.

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So that's another interesting historical puzzle which allows us to go beyond what we just have in the represented sources to think about, did this person have to follow the rules?

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What happened if you actually said, you know what? I don't want to use this in the way you've been taught to. So I think there's always a match that you have to be a little bit sceptical about between what the player game

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was meant to achieve in the eyes of those who created it-- sold it-- even bought it for their young charges-- and then what it actually achieved in the minds and bodies of the young people themselves.

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Some of these games were really great ways of taking you to different places. So often, for instance, a game was written up as a trip, or it was seen as a series of different wonders of the world,

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for instance. So these were ways of experiencing what we might call virtual tourism-- where, from the comfort of your home, you could--

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in your imagination and by the help of a race game or a set of cards-- travel across the planet or go around New York City finding exciting things to look at

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or go and have a wonderful afternoon in Paris. So some of these games were definitely seen, I think, as forms of escapism or as ways of reflecting on what it meant to be a global citizen

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in the 19th century-- whilst others, were more local and really helped you think about that particular time and place that you were in.

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So I think one really interesting thing about toys and games is that they aren't operating in isolation. So some children might be spending

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quite a lot of their time playing with these kinds of objects, but it's not the only thing they're doing. And more than that, the toys and games

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are explicitly themselves responding to other things which are going on. So for instance, toys and games might be connected quite explicitly to academic subjects.

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So sometimes-- and some of the multiplication examples are really nice ones here-- so they're meant to be a way of learning something specific. So they're connected to what we might think

00:24:10.080 - 00:24:21.440

of as more formal education. The same is true for some of the objects around, say astronomy, See, so were movable planets there. There's a sense there that they're a game--

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a playful version of another kind of activity-- i.e., stargazing-- that could go out and then do. Or equally some of the animal cards might be associated with, for instance, going to a zoo

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or looking at the animals in your local farm yard. So there's a sense that these games could be prompted to do other kinds of what we might call real world activities

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or might be hints to help you with things you are learning in more formal education, particularly later in the 19th century when we get more formal schooling being brought in.

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We could also think about how toys were connected with other kinds of leisure activities. For instance, children's literature and children's toys and games often operate very closely together,

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and that's partly through hybrid forms like toy books-- which are partly books and then partly movable. And whether that's pop-ups or dials or things to pull, these are some of the innovative publications

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that these companies are also involved in. But it's also games which refer quite explicitly back to literature-- so stories such as Uncle Tom's Cabin or the Shakespeare game--

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where there's a sense of-- you're really trying to layer the children's knowledge by referring back to something that they're also familiar with.

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So interesting ways in which we have those connections to other kinds of subjects-- I think more generally, as well, we have the sense that these games are trying to help

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retain that police in society-- that these aren't neutral-- these are going right back to their early days-- games which were attempts to demonstrate what kind of child

00:26:07.220 - 00:26:18.350

these children should be and help teach them what kind of world they are growing up in. And we see that with the many references to contemporary history or to particular moments

00:26:18.350 - 00:26:30.890

of significance about the creation of a country. And I think in America, in particular, we have a sense that to construct the idea of what it means to be American means bringing together

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a disparate community of lots of immigrant children and to say, and here is what we want America to become. And games are one of the tools in that arsenal of trying to create--

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particularly in the latter part of the century-- the archetypal American democratic citizen. And we see a lot of these messages coming out of games which help reinforce

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certain kinds of ideology and hierarchy about what it means to be American. So I think you have interesting levels on which some of these games sometimes play quite literally with connecting

00:27:09.110 - 00:27:20.410

to other kinds of activities and in other ways on a more ideological level-- trying to give a sense of what kind of child you should be and what kind of citizen you should Become.

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So I think one really interesting aspect of this is how we can see the games associated with annual events such as Christmas, and several of the games in the collection

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are explicitly marketed as something you might want to purchase for a young person for Christmas or a family. Also, you might want to play at Christmas.

00:27:47.000 - 00:27:56.360

So perhaps it could be brought out with the ornaments and the Christmas tree every year. So there's a sense of these things becoming part of a sort of rhythm of childhood.

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There's also objects which have been created as commemorative-- that tie in, for instance with the Centennial Exposition-- or which are specifically commentaries on something-- for instance, in historical moments

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such as the American Revolution or the Civil War. So there's a sense in which nationhood and patriotism come into these kinds of games, and they are also part of a reflection of the age in which they are produced.

00:28:26.310 - 00:28:35.870

So there's a real emphasis in some of these productions on novelty-- on them being innovative and waiting for the latest catalogue of toys and games to come.

00:28:35.870 - 00:28:48.950

And we see this increasingly across the 19th century with these new kinds of production being made possible. But even earlier, you have a sense that different publishing houses are part of that competitive market

00:28:48.950 - 00:29:00.770

for the young consumer. So they're really trying to capitalise on who can get these kinds of games out that are going to be really popular but also, in some ways, which are going to be responsive

00:29:00.770 - 00:29:10.460

to what's happening. So I think it's really interesting how the different producers of these games are really responding to some of these current events--

00:29:10.460 - 00:29:19.010

that they're capitalising, for instance, on things like the exhibitions to produce an object that would go alongside that. But it's earlier in the century--

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you have producers which really are trying to use the templates of their games to keep generating new kinds of games. And also reissuing games--

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so they might update, for instance, a history with some more recent events. So there's a sense in which we have both particular responses to current events.

00:29:41.030 - 00:29:53.750

We also have this more annual cycle of Christmas or of birthdays or things for the spring and natural history and summer. But then also, the sense of reworking of old favourites

00:29:53.750 - 00:30:07.790

so they can reach new audiences. And again, I think this is part of the bigger context of what it means to have a toy or game for young people. What it is meant to do in terms of teaching them

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about certain things? How it also gives them their own flexibility to think as free agents about these kinds of things where there might be resistance to the messages

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that games attempted to teach. Where there might be ways for children to reinterpret the use of the games themselves along the lines that they're comfortable with.

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So I think we can never assume what a game is trying to teach so that's it's a really interesting opener for the conversation about how we might imagine the lives of those children

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or in fact how some of these childish productions connect to bigger questions about nationhood, about education, or about commerce across this time period.