Ahria’s Dolls House
Our youngest daughter Ahria has always loved a dolls’ house. Well to be honest I have too! Having visited the V&A Museum of Childhood on many occasions we would often be drawn to the collection of beautiful dolls houses that have spanned generations.
My favourite is the “Killer Cabnet House” from the 19th century. It was made by Stockbridge surgeon, John Egerton Killer, for his wife and daughters in the early 1830s when he had four daughters living at home: Jane, Mary, Frances Leigh and Ellen, aged 8 to 14 years old.
The beautifully made cabinet shows four main rooms: top left, the drawing room, top right, the bedroom; bottom left, the parlour and bottom right, the kitchen. Everything is up to date and fit for a well-do-do family of the best class. The neat fingers of his wife and daughters made many of the furnishings.
Back in 1783, as a young lad of 16, John Killer started his apprenticeship as an apothecary. The 1822 Herb Garret, St Thomas’s Hospital, 5th April, 2020 (category Natural World) will know, it was a long, arduous and intensive training. A hard-working and properly-trained apothecary could rise in the world, as John Killer obviously did; he became a well-respected member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and helped to establish the Stockport Dispensary for the Poor, and the Stockport infirmary which provided hospital beds for workers injured in the cotton mills.
According to the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, dolls’ houses weren’t originally made for children but for the education of young ladies. They were both instructional – the servants you will have and this is what they should be doing – and aspirational – your duty is to help your husband go up in the world and, for that, you need the right sort of home with the right sort of things in it.
Over the years Ahria has had several dolls houses and spent many a happy hour playing with them. More recently she asked if we could get her another one. Feeling reluctant to buy another one I suggested that she make her own. Ahria was delighted at the idea, the only rule was that everything had to be handmade by her.
It is wonderful to see her get so much fun out of a cardboard box, straws, matchsticks and an old hat. I love the plant she made with a few dried up leaves from a house plant in our home.
It just goes to show you really don’t need expensive toys to have fun. Everything was already there at our own fingertips!