THE GAMES VICTORIANS PLAYED

In our last post, we paid homage to the newest token on the Monopoly game board, i.e. "the cat", which voters chose as the replacement for "the iron" token, which was voted off following a month long competition on Hasbro's Facebook page. And it started us thinking (it doesn't take much, trust us) about what sort of games those fun-loving Victorians played back in the days before Monopoly, video games, and Words With Friends. Turns out they played some pretty interesting ones, some of which we can't imagine anyone playing now. Intrigued? We were hoping you would be. Well, don't just sit there, then. Start scrolling.

We don't know about you, but whenever the phrase "Victorian parlor games" comes up (which it does quite a bit..at least in the circles in which we travel), we immediately picture a group of well-appointed young ladies and gentlemen entertaining themselves with a round of charades or shadow buff. In other words, we imagine them playing adult versions of games that, today, we associate exclusively with children. But although the Victorian era was, in some ways, a more innocent time than the one in which we currently live, when it came to at-home entertainment, it wasn't always "Come on, everyone, let's start pantomiming!" Hard as it may be to believe, there were board games around long before the invention of Monopoly, some of which still exist in updated forms today, and others that could never have existed in any other period of history.

Tiddlywinks is quite possibly one of the most ridiculed in-door games in history. At one time considered primarily a children's game, it gained a degree of favor among adults in the Victorian era, including a family by the name of Fitzwilliams who used a 15th-century Donatello bronze called The Madonna and Child as the family Tiddlywinks bowl until it was appropriated by the Victoria and Albert Museum. In its original form, Tiddlywinks is a very simple game, involving the use of a "squidger" to flip flat discs (known as "winks") into a bowl and trying to prevent your opponents from taking (or "squopping" them) by covering them with more of your own winks. But as the game became more popular among adults, the rules were refined to make it more competetive (and interesting) for the players. And the game is still going strong today, with two national organizations (the ETwA and the NATwA) to its credit, both of which are overseen by the International Federation of Tiddlywinks Association (the FTwA). But of course you don't have to be a serious competitor to play Tiddlywinks. For those who want to squidge and squop without an international federation looking over their shoulder, there are still plenty of non-professional versions of the game on store shelves, just waiting for someone to buy them, take them home, and start the funfest.

You may remember "Chutes and Ladders" from your formative years, but the game that many of us know by that name is actually a modernized version of a Victorian-era game called "Snakes and Ladders." Unlike Tiddlywinks, "Snakes and Ladders" was always considered a children's game, but as with its current incarnation, it was a game that families often played together. Based on an ancient Indian board game (hence the "snakes" reference), it was introduced into Victorian England in the early 1890's and has remained popular despite the name change...or perhaps because of it.

It's hard (no, wait...impossible) to imagine a toy company producing a board game called "Seal Hunting" today, the object of which is to kill as many innocent, defenseless seals as possible. These days, we have video games for that, in which the object is to kill people or zombies, not seals. But while we moderns might frown on a game called "Seal Hunting", while ignoring ones involving virtual human bloodshed, the Victorians had no such qualms and were quite happy to let their children while away an hour or two honing their seal hunting skills by virtue of a simple board game.

Ooo, anyone up for a game of Pig-A-Back? Apparently, some people were back in the 1890s, which was when this odd little board game was first introduced in England. Like "Snakes and Ladders", it's based on an ancient Indian board game called...wait for it...Pachisi. Yes, that's right...Pachisi, another classic game played by the Victorians (who called it "Ludo") and which some people (who call it "Pachisi") still play today.

Considered the "National Game of India", Pachisi (or Ludo) was originally played on a cloth "board" with either two dice or six cowrie shells. No doubt some die-hard Victorians (especially those who had once been employed by the East India Company during the British Raj period) insisted on using the cloth for authenticity, but the game could be purchased with a conventional board as well, and no doubt was, by Victorians who hadn't been employed by the East India Company or who just liked the game and didn't give two hoots what they played it on.

And of course what sort of Victorian game board post would this be if we didn't mention the Holy Grail of Victorian board games, or as we refer to it today, the "Ouija Board"? Known to the Victorians as a "talking" or "spirit" board, the "game" that eventually became the "Ouija Board" was simply a manufactured version of what amateur and professional spirit seekers had been doing for years using a simple wooden planchette or glass over a handmade board or cloth inscribed with numerals and the letters of the alphabet. If there is one thing the Victorians are famous for, it's the interest that so many of them had in the supernatural and its accompanying rituals and artifacts. And while not every Victorian made a point of attending seances or inviting friends over for a table tipping session, there was probably always someone in the neighborhood who had a "talking board" and was willing to bring it to the party for some after-dinner parlor fun. How many Victorians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Well, it depends on whether there was electricity in the house or not, and whether they were playing with the "talking board" on that particular night. Because if they were, they probably would have wanted the parlor to stay dark anyway.

There you have it. Our little visit to the Victorian parlors of yore for a quick perusal of the games that were played in them. We hope that you found it enjoyable and perhaps even somewhat edifying. We look forward to seeing you next time. And don't forget to leave your calling card on the way out.