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‘I had a doll like this, what did I do with mine? My Mother gave me one. Somebody thought she was rude, because under the skirt there’s the head and so every time I tipped her over, friends would say “Oh! I don’t like that!” I saw her and thought she was fun. Two totally different dolls and I used to laugh about it!’ Young girls are always interested in dolls and they have stories attached to them…. ‘I ended up having to give my dolls away. I got to an age and my Mother used to send huge drums, well everybody West Indian, they always sent a drum filled with all sorts of items, whether it’s coffee, sugar, and send a barrel of goods to Jamaica. So my Mum sent Clarke’s shoes, at the time there was a thing about Clarke’s shoes and she sent my dolls. I remember Mum saying I didn’t need my dolls anymore. And I always thought I had the worst doll. My sisters had tall white dolls with blonde goldilocks hair and bright blue eyes, I had a black doll called Black Betty, her hair was really thick and short and she always looked at me sideways, she never looked at me head on. I had the problem with what I considered my parents giving me an ugly doll and I remember envying my sisters because they had what I considered beautiful dolls. Eventually through time, after a couple of years, their dolls broke into bits, their eyes fell out but my Black Betty stood the test of time. In the end I gave her up and sent her in the barrel to Jamaica. I thought she’d be a friend to someone else and I was too old for her. So she’s been to Jamaica and I haven’t!’ These kind of toys were originally produced in the middle of the 19th Century and were known as Topsy-turvy dolls. They had many different variations not just black doll/white doll but also happy/sad and sleeping/awake. They were designed to tell stories or just to be more adaptable.
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