EXHIBITS

Image of Johnson’s definition of “child” [click to enlarge]

Samuel Johnson published the first edition of his A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 and included illustrative quotations with each of the definitions.  Johnson's Dictionary is not as objective as we expect modern dictionaries to be and some of his definitions are clearly prejudiced or incomprehensible.  The Dictionary comprised two volumes and, despite its faults, gives very precise definitions for the different meanings of many words.  

 The image to the right is of Johnson's definitions for the word "child" and these definitions give us a unique insight into the eighteenth-century concept of a "child."  Johnson provides six definitions of "child" based on the context surrounding its use.  However, the first and second definitions are the most useful to an exploration of child commodification.  The first and second definitions are also the most familiar to modern English users: "an infant, or very young person" and "one in the line of filiation, opposed to the parent."  Like Johnson's definition of "childhood" that is explored below, the first definition is geared toward establishing a specific time frame that qualifies a person as a "child," while the second definition is more concerned with the location of a person within a family's lineage.

Image of Chambers’s entry on “child” [click to enlarge]

Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia; or An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, further referred to as Cyclopaedia, was first published in 1728 and concerned itself with defining the terms used by the arts and sciences as well as accounts of things that were impacted by the arts and sciences.  While "child" is defined in his Cyclopaedia, Chambers' chose to include more information about population growth and the treatment "of the acute diseases of Children" than about children themselves.  

The accounts he includes about women having several hundred children help create a sense of the increasingly young population that eighteenth-century countries were contending with.  While the examples Chambers includes from Tuscany and Paris seem a bit outlandish, even for the eighteenth century, the example of Mrs. Honeywood from Kent easily illustrates the exponential growth of a younger population.  Honeywood had sixteen children, twelve of which survived and had children.  Honeywood's "Grandchildren in the second generation, amounted to 114; in the third 228; [and] in the fourth they fell to 9."  With the exception of the third generation, each generation demonstrates the decreasing infant mortality rates of the eighteenth century and the rapid increase of England's population.

Image of Johnson’s definition of “childhood” [click to enlarge]

Johnson provides three definitions of “childhood” in his dictionary and they aren’t all that different from modern definitions.  The first and second definitions are fairly similar, both establish childhood as a period of time early in the life of a child or, as his example from Shakespeare implies, the early stages of an idea or emotion as well.  The second definition also places an upper limit on the period of time included in childhood—limiting childhood to the years between infancy and puberty.  The first two definitions are slightly abstract and Johnson’s third definition doesn’t help make our understanding of eighteenth-century childhood more concrete—calling childhood “the properties of a child” without listing any of those properties.  Johnson’s decision to not list the properties of a child could have been because the elements and experiences that make up childhood vary widely based on economic, social, and geographical factors. 

Image of Chambers’ entry on “charity schools” [click to enlarge]

While Chambers doesn‘t provide an entry on childhood, he does provide an entry about charity schools in the eighteenth century—which is part of what the Foundling Hospital.  According to Chambers, charity schools were built by parishes for “teaching poor children to read, write, and other necessary parts of education,” presumably because that education would make them more useful to society at large.  

More interesting than Chambers decision to define the purpose of charity schools are the number of children he says benefited from them during 1710 in and around London.  Between eighty-eight charity schools 2,181 boys and 1,221 girls were taught, of those children, 967 boys, and 407 girls “had been put out [as] apprentices.”  Prior to the opening of the Foundling Hospital and the publication Swift’s Modest Proposal, there was evidence that it was possible to take children off of the streets and shape them into useful, working members of society.