Was The Teddy Named After The "Teddy Roosevelt"

“It” was clearly the wickedest thing in America, if not the world, assuming that the clergyman in Michigan was right. From his pulpit he thundered that “it” was destroying all the natural instincts of Motherhood, and that “it” was leading God’s Own Country, the U.S.A., to race suicide.

The preacher in question was always regarded as being slightly unbalanced, anyway, so not many people paid much attention to him. After, all his hearers reasoned, what possible harm could “it” do to their children?

“It” was the Teddy bear.

Most of our readers have once owned a Teddy, now perhaps bald, battered, no longer beloved, or banished to the attic or the bottom of a trunk. However, older children love their Teddy bears still. Surprisingly enough, an amazing number of adults cling on to theirs, as others do to medals won in war, to sporting caps and cups, and to things that bring back memories of times long gone.

Clearly, the man who thought of this cuddliest of toys was inspired indeed, but like so many other inventions, we are not absolutely certain who did create the first one. It was probably a Russian immigrant to America, named Morris Mitchom, who had his brainwave in 1902.

It was triggered off by his President, Theodore Roosevelt, and “triggered” is the right word. Like Nimrod in the Bible, “Teddy” Roosevelt was a mighty hunter. This hearty, bespectacled Easterner of impeccable family, went West when he was young to be a cowboy, or, more accurately, a rancher, in the 1880s. He startled the locals in many ways and not least by his cheerfulness. “By Godfrey, but this is fun!” he would shout in the middle of a drenching prairie storm, or at the height of a lethal cattle stampede, or even when set upon by rattlesnakes or outlaws.

Later, he became President, partly because he had led a daring charge in the Spanish-American War at the head of a tough outfit of Westerners he called Roughriders. This exploit captured the public’s imagination and Teddy became one of the most popular presidents in American history.

One day, when hunting in Mississippi, he refused to shoot a captive bear cub. “Bully!” he probably cried, for it was one of his words. “Capital little animal, by Godfrey!”

A cartoonist called Clifford Berryman drew his version of the incident for the Washington Evening Star of November 18, 1902. He captioned it: “Drawing the Line in Mississippi”, and the cartoon also appeared in papers in other states.

Which is where our friend, Morris Mitchom comes in, for he saw this cartoon and, though a sweetshop owner in Brooklyn, New York, decided to branch out and make a bear cub just like the one in the drawing, a cuddly little fellow. He cut one out of brown plush, gave it moving legs and arms, and he put it in his shop window and labelled it with the immortal words, “TEDDY’S BEAR”.

Morris was a polite man and decided he ought to ask the President’s permission before bandying about his name, so he wrote to Teddy the First and got back a pleasant reply: “I don’t think my name is worth much to the toy bear cub business, but you are welcome to use it.”

Unfortunately, when Mitchom died in 1951, this key letter could not be found, by which time Germany had claimed the credit for the Teddy bear. It transpired that the Steiff Company, widely known for its soft toys, had produced a bear in 1902. Richard Steiff, nephew of the firm’s founder, was a keen artist, and often sketched bears at the Stuttgart Zoo. Finally, he made a toy bear, but his aunt thought little of it. However, the next year at the Leipzig Fair, a representative of an American firm so liked the bear that he ordered 3,000.

Now there is no doubt that the Steiff Co. was in the bear business early, but in its eagerness to grab the credit, the family came up with a story that has been flatly denied by the Roosevelt family. Allegedly, when Teddy’s daughter, Alice, was married in 1906, all the table decorations were Steiff bears and – again allegedly – when Roosevelt was asked what sort the bears were, he replied: “A new species called Teddy bears.” No member of the Roosevelt “inner circle” present at the wedding will allow the truth of the story. It seems that the Steiffs started making bears about the same time as Mitchom, but that to him goes the credit for the real thing.

For the record, it was not just children who responded to the new toy. From the beginning, adults adored them, especially as car mascots. Berryman and Mitchom had started something which still continues to the present day.