Customs and Fashions in Old New England

by Alice Morse Earle

"Between 3 & 4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son whom I named Stephen. Day was louring after the storm but not freezing. Child shrank at the water but Cry'd not. His brother Sam shew'd the Midwife who carried him the way to the Pew. I held him up."

And still again on April 8th, 1677, of another of his children when but six days old:

"Sabbath day, rainy and stormy in the morning but in the afternoon fair and sunshine though with a Blustering Wind. So Eliz. Weeden the Midwife brought the Infant to the Third Church when Sermon was about half done in the Afternoon."

Poor little Stephen and Hull and Joseph, shrinking away from the icy water, but too benumbed to cry! Small wonder that they quickly yielded up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily and so coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived him, a majority dying in infancy; and of fifteen children of his friend Cotton Mather but two survived their father.

This religious ordeal was but the initial step in the rigid system of selection enforced by every detail of the manner of life in early New England. The mortality among infants was appallingly large; and the natural result—the survival of the fittest—may account for the present tough endurance of the New England people.

Nor was the christening day the only Lord's Day when the baby graced the meeting-house. Puritan mothers were all church lovers and strict church-goers, and all the members of the household were equally church-attending; and if the mother went to meeting the baby had to go also. I have heard of a little wooden cage or frame in the meeting-house to hold Puritan babies who were too young, or feeble, or sleepy to sit upright.

Of the dress of these Puritan infants we know but little. Linen formed the chilling substructure of their attire—little, thin, linen, short-sleeved, low-necked shirts. Some of them have been preserved, and with their tiny rows of hemstitching and drawn work and the narrow edges of thread-lace are pretty and dainty even at the present day. At the rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem may be seen the shirt and mittens of Governor Bradford's infancy. The ends of the stiff, little, linen mittens have evidently been worn off by the active friction of baby fingers and then been replaced by patches of red and white cheney or calico. The gowns are generally rather shapeless, large-necked sacks of linen or dimity, made and embroidered, of course, entirely by hand, and drawn into shape by narrow, cotton ferret or linen bobbin. In summer and winter the baby's head was always closely covered with a cap, or "biggin" often warmly wadded, which was more comforting in winter than comfortable in summer.

The seventeenth century baby slept, as does his nineteenth century descendant, in a cradle, frequently made of heavy panelled or carved wood, and always deeply hooded to protect him from the constant drafts. Twins had cradles with hoods at both ends. Judge Sewall paid sixteen shillings for a wicker cradle for one of his many children. The baby was carried upstairs, when first moved, with silver and gold in his hand to bring him wealth and cause him always to rise in the world, just as babies are carried upstairs by superstitious nurses nowadays, and he had "scarlet laid on his head to keep him from harm." He was dosed with various nostrums that held full sway in the nursery even until Federal days, "Daffy's Elixir" being perhaps the most widely known, and hence the most widely harmful. It was valuable enough (in one sense of the word) to be sharply fought over in old England in Queen Anne's time, and to have its disputed ownership the cause of many lawsuits. Advertisements of it frequently appear in the Boston News Letter and other New England newspapers of early date.

The most common and largely dosed diseases of early infancy were, I judge from contemporary records, to use the plain terms of the times, worms, rickets, and fits. Curiously enough, Sir Thomas Browne, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, wrote of the rickets as a new disease, scarce so old as to afford good observation, and wondered whether it existed in the American plantations. In old medical books which were used by the New England colonists I find manifold receipts for the cure of these infantile diseases. Snails form the basis, or rather the chief ingredient, of many of these medicines. Indeed, I should fancy that snails must have been almost exterminated in the near vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and employed medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or snail-pottage; here is one of the most pleasing ones:

"The admirable and most famous Snail water.—Take a peck of garden Shel Snails, wash them well in Small Beer, and put them in an oven till they have done making a Noise, then take them out and wipe them well from the green froth that is upon them, and bruise them shels and all in a Stone Mortar, then take a Quart of Earthworms, scowre them with salt, slit them, and wash well with water from their filth, and in a stone Mortar beat them in pieces, then lay in the bottom of your distilled pot Angelica two handfuls, and two handfuls of Celandine upon them, to which put two quarts of Rosemary flowers, Bearsfoot, Agrimony, red Dock roots, Bark of Barberries, Betony wood Sorrel of each two handfuls, Rue one handful; then lay the Snails and Worms on top of the hearbs and flowers, then pour on three Gallons of the Strongest Ale, and let it stand all night, in the morning put in three ounces of Cloves beaten, sixpennyworth of beaten Saffron, and on the top of them six ounces of shaved Hartshorne, then set on the Limbeck, and close it with paste and so receive the water by pintes, which will be nine in all, the first is the strongest, whereof take in the morning two spoonfuls in four spoonfuls of small Beer, the like in the Afternoon."