If we are curious about the supposed Victorian custom of mourning dolls, said to be made to commemorate a dead child, a cursory search online produces a number of sites with text to this effect: By the late nineteenth century, it became customary to commission a "mourning doll" to lay at the grave of a deceased child. These became widely popular as a coping mechanism for families dealing with the death of a child.1 It is claimed that the dolls were modeled to look like the child who died, using their real hair and teeth. They were placed on the grave and left to decay. When the doll was completely decayed, the family's official mourning would be ended. This is one of those legends that sounds possible, even plausible, and we would like to believe that grieving families were comforted by such a practice. But there is no contemporary 19th-century evidence to show that commissioning a mourning doll was a Victorian mourning practice. While there are many accounts of parents describing their grief at the death of a child2, I have not found any describing intentions to create a portrait doll of that child. As a side note, human hair used on a doll is not evidence that it was a portrait doll; human hair was used for dolls' wigs, particularly for more expensive dolls.3 Dolls were also not left on graves to decay, with one notable exception. We do know that just as funeral effigies were created for royal and aristocratic adults, funeral effigies were sometimes made for infants of noble houses, such as a poignant wax image of the infant Don Santiago de la Haza y Laguna now held by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. However, I do not know of any reliable primary sources or artifacts that support the existence of portrait dolls of dead children - except for this doll. 1. Doll representing Patrick Pierotti The reason it is so exceptional is that it commemorates Patrick Enrico Pierotti, who died in 1900, the son of dollmaker Charles Ernest Pierotti, famous for his lifelike wax dolls. This doll was said by the family to be modeled to look like the child. The hair is said to be the child's own hair and the clothes may also have been young Patrick's. Other than funeral effigies, this is the only authentic memorial doll I have encountered. If anyone has any other properly documented examples, I'd be glad to see them. 2. Infant Jesus Doll in Glass Case But please don't cite this photo, which is often said to be a "mourning doll." This wax figure surrounded by flowers in a glass case is, in fact, a devotional figure of the Infant Jesus. These were often made by nuns. There was a custom called a Day of Recollection where, in some convents, an image of the Infant Jesus was given to a nun, who would spend the day adoring it and tucking it up in its own crib.4 3. Grave of Hackless Jenkins, 1878-1928, Sea Islands, Georgia As for the exception to dolls being left on graves, in the United States it was a tradition in Black communities to leave objects on the grave—something prized by the dead or what they last touched: medicine bottles, clothing, crockery, or toys. This was an instance where a doll might actually be left on a grave. These were not portrait dolls and had nothing to do with closure for the family when the articles decayed, but seem, rather, a remnant of African traditions of keeping the dead supplied with earthly comforts so that they would rest in peace.5 4. Lova Cline's Dollhouse Grave, Rushville, Indiana There are also reports of parents putting a child's favorite doll, toys, or clothes in a glass-fronted case on a grave. This is often described as a German custom, although it was also found in France. And, of course, there are a number of famous doll house grave markers.6 One writer described a collection of "cemetery doll houses" full of toys in the Baltimore Cemetery, all from German families, and noted, "To them there seemed little appropriateness in entrusting the memory of a merry child to a slab of cold, unfeeling stone. In what the child held dear they found a more fitting and helpful memorial."7 Even today, the bereaved put toys, trinkets, and holiday decorations on their loved ones' graves. The articles left on graves in some Black cemeteries or the German cemetery doll house custom may be the source of the modern myth of mourning dolls. 5. The Widow Doll and her Admirers Now, if you define a mourning doll as a doll dressed in mourning or dressed as a widow, there is no question that there are many authentic 19th-century reports of children playing at "funeral," burying dolls, toy soldiers, and pets.8 However, the idea that Victorian children were trained to mourn properly by playing with toy coffins and dolls is again a modern myth, which continues to spread despite no contemporary evidence. For example, an academic book on the history of childhood states: "By the 1870s, death kits were available for dolls, complete with coffins and mourning clothes, as a means of helping to train girls for participating in, even guiding, death rituals and their attendant grief."9 Another book states: "Parents encouraged funeral ceremonies meant to properly sanctify the 'bodies' and protect the 'souls' of the poor deceased dolls."10 Although this sounds plausible, contemporary 19th-century evidence for such practices is lacking. First, there seems to be no contemporary Victorian references to anything called a "death kit," or anything remotely resembling such a thing called by any name. Victorian children attended deathbeds, wakes, funerals, and burials. They did not need toys to practice mourning. They played at funerals because death was ever-present. Burying dolly and then digging her up was no different than a child "coming back to life" after being shot playing soldier. A doll dressed in mourning was like a widow seen on Main Street. Miniature hearses were simply another vehicle in the toy fleet, along with the farm wagon and the fire engine. Second, by the 1870s, the traditional role of women caring for their dead was being usurped by the male-dominated professions of undertaker and embalmer. In rural districts women might still lay out the dead, but undertakers increasingly took charge of funerals. There was no need to train girls in performing funeral rites because, in the main, they were no longer fulfilling those roles. Third, there seems to be no evidence that parents encouraged funeral play. Two 19th-century collections of case studies discuss how children played funeral or buried their dolls: Child Observations, 1st Series: Imitations and Allied Activities by Ellen M. Haskell (1896); and A Study of Dolls, by Granville Stanley Hall and Alexander Caswell Ellis (1897). In these accounts, parents/adults are observers, bemused by toy funerals. In several cases, the parent/adult would not allow their children to say that their dolls were dead and actively prohibited or disapproved of playing funeral.* There are also many accounts of doll or pet funerals in the papers,11 but the tone of these reports makes it clear that these funerals are news because they are a novelty, not because they were a codified practice. We also know that miniature hearses and dolls dressed as widows and other mourners were sometimes sold commercially. The newspapers reporting on these toys make it clear that they were considered something of a morbid aberration—not a mainstream practice. The language used in the press to describe dolls dressed in mourning is usually pejorative, calling them: "Latest freak of fashion" (1889)12; "One odd caprice" (1877)13; and noting incredulously that "An exhilarating new thing in toys is a miniature hearse, drawn by four prancing horses, and a little coffin with a doll inside, surrounded by a group of mourning dolls. Next we shall have a gallows and a guillotine" (1881)14. 6. Doll in Miniature Coffin Miniature coffins from the 19th century also exist. These may be artifacts from Odd Fellows Lodge rituals, homemade toys, snuffboxes, or salesmen's samples. There are also many reports of small-scale coffins used to terrorize an enemy.15 So miniature coffins are not necessarily evidence for formal mourning toys. In summary, much as we might like to believe that it was true, there is no evidence of a tradition of mourning portrait dolls. There were dolls dressed in mourning and toy hearses, but there was no documented custom of using dolls to instruct children on how to be proper mourners. Perhaps it is time to let this legend rest in peace. *Editor's note: In this I am reminded of the movie (and book), Meet Me In St. Louis, in which the youngest daughter is continually having funerals for her dolls, which inevitably fall ill and die of various diseases. For this behavior to be included so casually in the story (which is set in 1903/1904) is an indication that it was a common childhood behavior at the time – and most probably a common example of children imitating what they saw in the adult world around them. Find Out More: "The World of Victorian Grave Dolls," by Kate Cherrell, January 20, 2019, https://burialsandbeyond.com/2019/01/20/the-world-of-victorian-grave-dolls/ The Victorian Book of the Dead, Chris Woodyard, 2014, pp. 330-333 "Doll Philosophy," by Dr. Charles H. Campbell, Ballou's Monthly Magazine, Vol. 55, p. 356 A Few Lines to Tell You: My Life in Carmel, by Sister Marie of the Trinity, Pittsburgh: St. Joseph's Protectory Print, 1957, p. 23 "Keeping the Devil at Bay: The Shoe on the Coffin Lid and Other Grave Charms in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century America," by James M. Davidson, International Journal of Historical Archaeology14, no. 4 (2010), 614–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41719810. Lova Cline's Dollhouse Grave, Rushville, Indiana, https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/dollhouse-grave-lova-cline Cemetery Doll Houses, https://thevictorianbookofthedead.wordpress.com/2024/01/03/cemetery-doll-houses-1891/ Trouble Arising from a Doll's Funeral: 1899, by Chris Woodyard, https://thevictorianbookofthedead.wordpress.com/2019/12/11/trouble-arising-from-a-dolls-funeral-1899/ Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society, by Paula S. Fass, New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004, p. 402 Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930, , by Miriam Forman-Brunell Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, p. 23 "Billy's Funeral." Barber County Index [Medicine Lodge KS], 1 January 1890, p. 1 Wirarapa Daily Times, Masterton, NZ, 18 September 1889, p. 2 Godey's Lady's Book, March, 1877: p. 293 Reading [PA] Times, 8 February 1881, p. 1 The Lost Art of the Coffin Threat, by Chris Woodyard, https://thevictorianbookofthedead.wordpress.com/2019/10/23/the-lost-art-of-the-coffin-threat/ Illustration Credits Patrick Pierotti, Victoria and Albert Museum Accession No. MISC.272-1983 Infant Jesus in glass case, by User:Kristinharris231, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31706597. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Grave of Hackless Jenkins, 1878-1928, Sea Islands, Georgia, decorated with clocks, glassware, & other objects. Photographed by Doris Ulmann, 1933, https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b39153/ Lova Cline's Dollhouse Grave, Rushville, Indiana, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9313680/lova-frances-cline The Widow Doll and her Admirers, The Omaha [NE] Daily News, 27 October 1905, p. 3 Doll in miniature coffin, c. 1870-1900, The Henry Ford Museum. Accession No. THF303686

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