Doll Prams

Despite all the work that feminists, socialists and behavioural psychologists did in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, girls still copy their mothers and sons still copy their fathers. This was probably noticed thousands of years ago and dolls have probably been around since then. When prams (perambulators) were invented, doll prams were sure to follow soon after. There are some very famous doll prams. One of the most famous are the Silver Cross dolls prams, but more about Silver Cross dolls prams later

Doll Prams

People of most cultures used to, and still do, carry their babies in some kind of sling around their front or their back, but it is known that baby perambulators were being used in ancient Greece. Whether the rich also gave their daughters smaller versions to be used as doll prams is not known, but it is highly likely, given children's desires to copy their parents and parents' desires to please their children.

The word 'pram' comes from the Anglicised Latin word 'perambulator', which come from the Latin 'ambulare', which means 'to walk'. Therefore, the modern preference for the term 'stroller' is not far from the truth. In fact, prams were called 'baby carriages' before they were called perambulators. However, the word pram has always seemed to stick in the sense of doll prams or dolls prams.

Over the last few hundred years, one of the earliest prams in the West was developed by William Kent in 1733 for the Duke of Devonshire. A hundred years later, prams were popular among the British nobility and Queen Victoria ordered three for her household. In those days, prams were quite elaborate, ornate affairs and out of the reach or ordinary working class parents.

No-one really knows when the first doll pram was invented, but the first use of a pram for dolls could have been by a daughter whose parents had lent an old pram to her to play with her dolls with. Those early prams were low to the ground and so could easily be pushed by a child. Later baby prams would be no use as children's doll prams as the push bar was too high.

It is thought that the first real doll's pram was made by a worker at the Frampton Pram Factory between 1853 and 1880 for his daughter.

In 1877, a postman in Leeds, the United Kingdom formed a company for making baby prams called Silver Cross. They were distinguished from the earlier, low-slung wicker basket type baby prams by being made of a strong wooden body or carriage and hefty springs to support it. They had folding covers, some of which were reversible, and brakes. The company was granted a royal charter before its founder died in 1913. Silver Cross dolls prams can be bought today.

These early designs were very heavy and cumbersome with the emphasis on safety. It took until 1965 before an aeronautical engineer redesigned the pram using light-weight aluminium after listening to his daughter's complaints about travelling with a baby and pram.

The light-weight push-chair had arrived and these definitely could double as doll prams.