Baby's First Butcher Shop of the Day

Life was tough in Victorian times -- so tough, in fact, that little girls in 1840 played with dollhouses that featured butcher shops, complete with miniature animal carcasses and floors covered in sawdust and blood. Why the grisly realism? According to Sarah Louise Wood, a curator at the Museum of Childhood at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the toy animal flesh wouldn't have been shocking, because this is how meat was presented and bought and, with limited methods of refrigeration, children would have been used to seeing preserved cuts of meat hanging up. Charming. [collectorsweekly]