M.J. Chase Company

From: https://www.museumofplay.org/blog/play-stuff/2012/10/martha-jenks-chase%E2%80%99s-simple-dolls-for-simple-doll-play

Written by, Patricia Hogan, 10/2/2012

For more than 100 years, parents have criticized the talking, walking, crying, eating, and drinking dolls that appeared on the market. They have complained that mechanical dolls leave little to children’s imaginations. These complaints sound familiar today, what with the scores of dolls such as Baby Alive, Baby Check-Up, Baby Annabell, Baby Wet and Wiggles, and Little Mommy Hide and Peek. In fact, toy makers and doll makers have offered so many crawling, creeping, speaking, walking, drinking, and eating dolls that mothers (much more involved in parenting than fathers were a century ago) and child-rearing experts called for reform. One mother (among several, actually) did something about it.

In 1899, Martha Jenks Chase of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, began applying her talents as a seamstress to making cloth dolls and the collection of the National Museum of Play includes 37 examples of her creations. A doctor’s wife with progressive ideas, Chase objected to the American-made mechanical dolls that filled store shelves. She felt the inventors’ interest in technology overwhelmed children’s imaginative capacity to make the dolls “come alive.” Chase also judged the fashion dolls manufactured in Europe inappropriate because they encouraged children to crave material things. She pronounced most dolls too fragile and too heavy for children’s play. To counter these deficiencies, Chase made her own dolls of stockinet (a cotton knit used for undergarments), stiffened with sizing, and molded into the likeness of real-life children. She painted her dolls with insoluble paints to make them washable. Their cotton stuffing (many dolls of the day were filled with sawdust) also made the dolls lightweight, soft to the touch, and more desirable for the doll play Chase observed in children. Chase’s dolls encouraged children to display affectionate and nurturing behavior in their make-believe play.

Martha Chase set up her doll-making operation at her home in a backyard building called the Dolls’ House. Chase’s small cottage industry employed a number of women as molders, painters, and seamstresses. By 1913 the workers of the Dolls’ House produced play dolls, dressed or undressed, in six sizes ranging from 12 to 30 inches and retailing for $2.50 to $7.50. The dolls, though not cheap by early 20th-century standards, reached customers nationwide and sold well in department stores like Macy’s, Best & Co., Gimbel Brothers, and Wanamaker’s, as well as toy stores such as F. A. O. Schwarz.

At the turn of the 20th century, toy makers introduced dolls based on characters from history and popular children’s books to promote gender-neutral doll play. Chase began making her story character dolls in 1905 when she offered several figures from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. She made dolls of George and Martha Washington, Roger Williams, and characters from Charles Dickens’s novels. Martha Chase died in 1925, and her family continued in the doll-making business into the 1970s. Her ideas about doll play remain as relevant today as they did 100 years ago.

From: http://images.ourontario.ca/Cobourg/53553/data

Media Type:

Text

Item Type:

Photographs

Description:

History of The M.J. Chase Company Inc.

Source: The Toronto General Hospital Archives TGH 0005 Series IX

Acquired: December 2007

Date of Publication:

1911

Subject(s):

Sutherland, Annie Lauder

Local identifier:

Sutherland-Annie-Lauder-07-02

Language of Item:

English

Geographic Coverage:

Toronto

Ontario, Canada

Latitude: 43.70011 Longitude: -79.4163

Copyright Statement:

Copyright status unknown. Responsibility for determining the copyright status and any use rests exclusively with the user.

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Full Text

OF THE HISTORY OF THE M.J. CHASE COMPANY INC. sent me February 12, 1957.

History of the M.J. Chase Company Inc.

An idea conceived prior to 1880, by the wife of a Pawtucket R.I. physician, years later developed into an important training aid in nursing education.

Mrs. Martha J. Chase desired to give her five children a toy doll that would be an improvement over the dolls then available, delicate. mostly bisque head, imported dolls. The immediate result was a play doll satisfactory to herself and her children.

For awhile Mrs. Chase made toy dolls for her children and friends and for charitable fairs. One day, a few years later (exact date unknown), a buyer from a Boston Department store saw one and asked Mrs. Chase to make some to sell. That day she turned a hobby into a career. By 1900 Chase dolls were internationally known, and sold in better department stores throughout the country. The early Chase stockinette dolls are now valuable collectors items.

The Chase stockinette dolls were in many sizes, from eight inches to three feet. The earlier dolls had painted heads, arms and legs, and a sateen covering on the body. Later, models were made that were painted overall, making them washable and watertight. There were few changes in the hair and face styles of the Chase stockinette doll. A Dutch cut hair style was made about 1920.

As Mrs. Chase's hobby grew into a business, she built a small shop in her back yard. This building, with later additions, served M.J. Chase Co., for years. It was locally known as the "Doll House".

About 1905 Mrs. Chase developed a group of character dolls. There was Alice-in-Wonderland series, including Alice-tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, The mad-hatter, The Dutchess and Frog-footman. There was also a darkie series, of Mammy and two pickannies, and, there was a Dickens series of Little Nelle and Mr. Gamp.

The Chase hospital doll (adult size) were developed by an instructor of nursing, Miss. Lauder Sutherland of the Hartford Hospital in Hartford Connecticut, made an inquiry if a life size doll could be made like the Chase stockinette doll. Mrs. Chase with the help of her husband, made patterns, worked out the methods and developed an adult size figure. The Hartford Hospital still possesses the first doll, although it has since been modified, particularly the hair style, through later renovations.

As the years passed additional facilities were added and improved on to make the Chase Hospital doll more effective as a teaching aid. At present, the adult size Chase hospital dolls include a female model, a male model, and a simple sexless lay figure.

The Chase hospital baby also developed from the original toy doll. The hospital baby was introduced in 1913. It was weighted and had passages or openings, such as the otic and nasal passages, to make it distinct from a toy doll. Through the years the Chase hospital baby has also been improved and other features incorporated to make it suitable for teaching of pediatrics.

LOCATED AT TORGEN HOSP. ARCHIVES TGH 00005 SERIES IX SCHOOL

BOX 1 FF#1- “MRS. CHASE”-DOLL