5 Victorian Era Games

Lawn Tennis Lawn tennis was officially invented in 1874, according to Durham University, and quickly grew in popularity. Major T. H. Gem and Mr. Perera are credited with creating the game and designing a court in the garden of Perera’s home in Warwickshire. The dimensions the men used to design the court are still used for tennis courts today, though the net height is different. Gem and Perera are said to have played the game as early as 1869. By the late 1870s and early 1880s, tennis clubs were all the rage throughout Victorian England and America. Today, we know the game simply as “tennis.”

Happy Families Happy Families was a card game introduced in the mid-1800s, according to BBC Primary History. The game was played with a pack of 48 cards with printed pictures on them. Each card featured a different member of one of 12 families, and each family had four members. All 48 cards were dealt to the players at the start of the game. Three or more players could play, but depending on the number of players, some players would begin the game with fewer cards than others. The goal of the game was to collect as many families as possible, which meant collecting groups of four cards. To do this, when it was a player’s turn, he would ask another player if a certain family member was “at home.” If the player had the card, he would give it to the asking player. If the player did not have the card, he would tell the asking player that the family member was “not at home,” and then it would be the telling player’s turn to ask. Once all of the families were collected, the players then asked each other if they had certain families. The player who collected all 12 families was the winner.

Tiddlywinks Tiddlywinks was also invented during the Victorian period and became very popular in the 1890s. This game, which is still played today, was usually played on the floor, and although it started as a parlor game for adults, it became especially popular among children. The goal of the game is simple: To flip as many small “winks” into a cup as possible. Today, the winks are plastic disks, but in the past they have been made of wood, ivory or metal, among other things. Their shapes have varied, too, from square to winks shaped like tiny golf clubs. Many other inventors copied the game, but it fell out of popularity in the early 1900s almost as quickly as it became popular.

Ludo Ludo was a board game derived from the ancient Indian game of Pachisi. It was invented in 1896 and quickly became popular in Victorian England and America. The game is played by rolling a dice and seeing which player can go around the board and return his or her tokens to “home” first. The board features four equal, colored areas of red, blue, yellow and green, and each colored area matches four tokens. It is very similar to a well-known modern game called “Sorry!”

Badminton Contemporary badminton was invented in the mid-1800s, when it was brought to England by British officers who had played a similar game in India. The original game was played as far back as the 1600s. It was called shuttlecock, and players hit a shuttlecock back and forth with bats. The net didn’t appear until the 1800s, and by 1898, the first tournament was held in England, and what we know as badminton was established. The game was also popular in America during that time and into the early 1900s.