Sugared Toast

A newcomer to Westbury, in the west of England, described a custom that followed a birth in a well-to-do household. When the mother had been doing well for thirteen or fourteen days, the husband held the gentleman’s party, at which his friends ate rounds of toast spread thick with moist sugar, piled in a punch bowl and drowned in boiling hot home-brewed ale. When the bowl was empty each guest put money into it, and it was carried to the nurse who had been hired to attend the mother.