Summary

“Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny” is excerpted from the catalog of the Museum of Psychology exhibition “Little Defective Adults—Attitudes toward Children from 1700 to 1950” (173).

The Victorian mathematician Reginald Dacey believes in the importance of scientific teaching, and even his wife’s death in childbirth does not distract him. Reginald is shocked to learn that his son’s nanny is abusive. When he fires her, he conceives the idea of an automatic nanny: “Rational child-rearing will lead to rational children” (175). Reginald himself may be more rational than any woman, but he would still be too emotional for pure rationality.

The Automatic Nanny goes on sale in March 1901, and the advertisements focus on parents’ fears of lower-class, foreign female influence on their children. The machine enjoys brief popularity before an infant dies when his parents tamper with the mechanism to make it last longer between...