Boys in White Dresses: Childhood Gender Expression in the Nineteenth Century

Based on today’s norms, the children in the above photographs might appear to be girls. Even early museum records reference the drawing on the right as “Portrait of Two Young Girls” and the painting on the left as “Little Girl with Dog.” Many visitors are surprised to hear, however, that two of the three children pictured above are boys.

The hyper-gendering of young children’s clothing in the U.S. today is a recent phenomenon, not common before the 1940s. Previously, little boys wore dresses and long hair until the age of six or seven. White dresses, since they could be bleached clean, were the most functional clothing option for all children.

A Housekeeper's Scrapbook

Domestic life of the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is illuminated at the Gibson House through its authentically preserved rooms and collections. One item that provides insight into the house’s history of domestic service is a paperback entitled “A Housekeeper’s Scrapbook.” Located in the kitchen pantry on the ground floor, the volume contains a collection of printed recipes, as well as loose clippings of other recipes and home remedies.

This scrapbook is a simple encapsulation of one aspect of servant activity—kitchen work—and is instrumental to the telling of the story of servant life during this time period. The meticulously detailed recipes reflect the specificity and accuracy required of a household cook.  

Many house museums like the Gibson House are constantly trying to discover more information about their domestic staff and making efforts to incorporate their stories into the site’s larger narrative. The history of servants, many of whom were Irish, is a significant part of not just the Gibson House story, but of Boston’s history. The wave of Irish immigration in the nineteenth century helped make Boston the city it is today.

By Emma Rose Cunningham, museum intern

The Forgotten Midnight Rider

William Dawes

Paul Revere Statue, Boston

 

One of the many connections the Gibson family has to Boston history is its link to William Dawes (1745–1799), uncle to Catherine Hammond Gibson (1804–1888), builder of the Gibson house. William Dawes, the half-brother of Catherine’s mother, Sarah Dawes Hammond (1768–1859), was the Boston Patriot who rode alongside Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride of April 18, 1775. While Paul Revere has been commemorated in Longfellow's famous poem and by a bronze statue in front of Boston's Old North Church, William Dawes has not been so honored. In an attempt to remedy this, Helen F. Moore published a poem in 1896, one verse of which reads:

'T'is all very well for the children to hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
But why should my name be quite forgot,
Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?
Why should I ask? The reason is clear —
My name was Dawes and his Revere.

The Pink Brooch

Social status was very important during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and many women were judged and critiqued on what they wore and how they presented themselves. This beautiful, statement-making brooch that belonged to Rosamond Warren Gibson (1846– 1934) descended through the Gibson family. In 2010 it was acquired by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Purchased through Skinner Auction House, the brooch had an estimated sale price of $1,500–$2,000 but ended up selling for $7,110.

An evocative time piece, the brooch is made of 18-carat gold and displays pink topaz and old mine-cut diamond accents. Suspended from the brooch is a tear-drop-shaped pendant set with matching pink topaz and diamonds. Its original leather fitter box bears an applied sticker on the underside that reads “Jones, Ball, & Poor.” Jones, Ball, & Poor was a prominent silversmith company on Boston’s Washington Street during the nineteenth century.

We’re not sure how Rosamond acquired the brooch—whether it was inherited or given to her as a gift—but it seems the type of piece she would have reserved for special occasions.

By Emma Rose Cunningham, museum intern

Photo Credit: Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Sources:

Museum of Fine Arts Boston website: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/gem-set-brooch-with-pendant-drop-549750

Skinner Auction House website: https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2529B/lots/264

The Gibson Ladies and the Vincent Club

A century ago, most Bostonian women of a certain social standing participated in any one of the numerous, yet highly exclusive, women’s clubs in the city. Exclusivity characterized the nature of the clubs, but the majority actually focused their energy on various types of charity work—a noblesse oblige approach to social groups.

The Vincent Club was one such philanthropic organization. Founded in 1892, the club originated to support the Vincent Memorial Hospital, established one year earlier in the memory of Mary Ann Vincent, a magnanimous Boston actress. The Vincent Memorial Hospital, originally located in the West End, filled a niche in Boston; the hospital’s medical staff cared primarily for wage-earning, indigent women.

Vincent Club fundraising techniques exceeded the common luncheon. The club’s annual fundraising show—a vaudeville performance inspired by Mary Ann Vincent’s theatrical career and featuring the “Vincent Ladies”—arrived on the social scene every year beginning in 1893 to great anticipation. The “Vincent Show” typically took the form of a topical satire, featuring Boston’s finest young women performing a multitude of acts. Themes ranged from the inaugural “Breaking the Ice” show to the 1959 musical depicting life on an “interplanetary space platform.” The show also served as a light-hearted debutante ball, in which young women made their “stage debut as singers and dancers.”

Unlike a traditional debutante ball, however, there was a strict ladies-only rule on stage and in the audience. In 1899, the Boston Daily Globe published its annual Vincent Show preview feature, stating, “It was distinctly stated and printed on the tickets that no gentlemen would be admitted…. [T]hose who appeared in the leading roles had the supreme confidence of appearing before a friendly audience and were as much at ease as if entertaining in their own drawing rooms.”

Mary Ethel Gibson (1873–1938), referred to in the Boston Daily Globe as having “always been popular in society,” was a founding member of the Vincent Club along with her mother, Rosamond Warren Gibson (1846–1934). Rosamond planned and directed the first theatrical performance, while Mary Ethel performed in that 1893 show, starring as a man named Lord Adonis Fickleton.

In 1941, the Vincent Memorial Hospital merged with Massachusetts General Hospital, providing gynecology services while maintaining its own identity. When the Vincent let its independent hospital license expire in 1988, MGH agreed to keep the VMH’s name associated with its former programs. 

The Vincent Club is still extant, with a current membership of 1,200 women. A fancy spring gala has since replaced the Vincent Show as the main fundraising event. Male attendees are welcome at the gala, as the “no men allowed” rule was rescinded in 1920.

By Maddie Webster, museum guide and intern

Sources

“Boston's Vincent Club: Elite and Thriving.” New York Times (1923–Current File), Feb. 20, 1971. http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bc.edu/docview/119389407?accountid=9673.

Laura Haddock, “Traditional Vincent Club Drill to Renew Memories of Show’s Women’s Activities.” The Christian Science Monitor (1908–Current File), Feb. 28, 1947. http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bc.edu/docview/515991751?accountid=9673.

“History,” Vincent Memorial Hospital, http://vincentmemorialhospital.org/history/.

“Mary Gibson a July Bride.” Boston Daily Globe (1872–1922), Jul. 21, 1911. http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bc.edu/docview/501764479?accountid=9673.

“Society Women in a Vaudeville Show.” Boston Daily Globe (1872–1922), Apr. 28, 1899. http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bc.edu/docview/499054147?accountid=9673.

“Vincent Club Headliners Through.” Boston Daily Globe (1928–1960), Mar. 22, 1959. http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bc.edu/docview/250878367?accountid=9673.

“Vincent Club Revue Promises Gala Opening.” Boston Daily Globe (1928–1960), Mar. 8, 1936. http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bc.edu/docview/815157287?accountid=9673.

Gail Wetherby, e-mail message to the author, August 12, 2016.

Charlie Gibson’s Prison Reform League Targets the Deer Island Prisons

Charles “Charlie” Hammond Gibson, Jr., often referred to as “Mr. Boston” by neighbors, was deeply involved in his community. Ever the public servant, he volunteered in various city government departments and interest groups over the years. Making a foray into the social movement known as progressivism, Charlie proposed significant prison reforms as the secretary for the Massachusetts Prison Reform League from 1913 to 1916.

A principal concern of the League during that time was the bleak Suffolk County House of Correction on Deer Island. Since Boston’s earliest years, Deer Island had been designated as a place to send pariahs—a holding area for the enemy, the ostracized, and the ill. The island was first used as a detention facility for Indians during King Philip’s War in 1675, then as a quarantine station in the late 1600s and again in the 1840s for sick Irish famine refugees.

Thousands of society’s unwanted had been buried on Deer Island by 1858, when the House for the Employment and Reformation of Juvenile Offenders, a misdemeanor detention center for boys, was established there. Various incarnations of low-security prisons inhabited the area thereafter, most notably the Suffolk County House of Correction, which included two prisons, from 1882 until 1991.

Items from the Gibson House Collection: The White House Cook Book

The White House Cook Book

In the center of the Gibson House kitchen stands a table with a few objects on it, including a cookbook currently turned open to a page detailing various recipes for jumble, a ring-shaped cookie or cake. This cookbook is the 1905 edition of the White House Cook Book by Mrs. F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann.

The title page describes the cookbook as “A comprehensive cyclopedia of information for the home, containing cooking, toilet and household recipes, menus, dinner-giving, table etiquette, care of the sick, health suggestions, facts worth knowing, etc.” Wondering what “toilet recipes” entail? As it turns out, homemakers could mix together natural ingredients for almost any personal care or beauty aid they might have needed: “hair invigorator, lip-salve, and instantaneous hair dye” are but a few of the toilet recipes in the book.